Table Ninety-Four stood in the far northern corner of the outer courtyard.
An old mossy retaining wall ran behind it. A stone drainage ditch choked with dandelions lay to the left. Twenty yards to the right, a timber shed held scrap lumber and spent charcoal.
To a proud cultivator, the spot was an insult.
To Austin, it was prime real estate.
“Look at this space. Ten meters clear on every side. No silk curtains blocking the view. Solid stone under the table. Plain yellow pine, good joints, no fancy veneer to peel in the sun.”
He set a small metal level on the planks. The bubble sat slightly left of center. Austin pulled a cedar shim from his pocket and tapped it under the northwest leg with his boot.
The bubble settled between the black lines.
“Dead level. Can’t do precision work on a wobbly bench.”
Xiaoyao tied the mules to an iron ring in the wall. They began cropping clover beside the ditch.
Pug curled up against the warm stone and rested all three heads on his paws. Soon his snores rolled across the yard like distant thunder.
Austin wiped grit from the table, then opened the first cedar crate. He removed the packing straw and lifted out four twenty-pound bars of Tier 4 Stellar-Steel.
They were brutally plain.
Every edge was straight. Every corner was clean. There were no gold dragons, no spirit rubies, and no glowing runes. The deep-blue metal caught the sun and returned a soft violet shine.
Austin stacked three bars on the bottom and one on top. Beside them, he laid his pipe wrench across a roll of drawings to keep the wind from taking them.
Then he made a sign on a sheet of brown cardboard.
He tacked the sign to the table and sat down with a hard-boiled solar egg.
At Table Ninety-Three, three young blacksmiths from the Silver-Hammer Sect were arranging their own display. Their eight-foot axe-spear had been forged from Crimson-Fire Silver, covered with forty-nine fire rubies, and wrapped in silver wire and red silk.
Their leader, Lu Chen, looked over and laughed.
“Look! The ditch-digger brought four blue paving bricks to the Imperial Expo!”
“No runes? No gem sockets?” another disciple said. “They look like doorstops from a demolished warehouse. And what is this nonsense about ram pumps and O-rings?”
Lu Chen leaned against Austin’s table with a smirk.
“Hey, grease-monkey. If you want royal buyers, pay an engraver to carve a fake dragon on those bars. Nobody touches raw iron without a little spiritual glitter.”
Austin swallowed his egg and took a sip of jasmine tea.
“Glitter doesn’t make steel stronger, bub. Every ruby you sunk into that shaft is a stress notch, three inches apart. First hard block, the thing snaps in half. You didn’t build a polearm. You built a floor lamp.”
Lu Chen’s face turned red. “You insolent—”
A murmur at the courtyard gate cut him off.
An elderly man in midnight-black silk entered with four royal chamberlains. Seven silver stars marked the crest of the Imperial Artisan Guild on his robe.
Grandmaster Ouyang was the dynasty’s Chief Metallurgical Inspector and the lead judge of the Centennial Expo. The Peak Golden Core elder had spent three hundred years studying rare ores.
At the moment, he was rubbing his temples. He had just spent four hours judging flashy, badly made weapons presented by arrogant sect heirs.
“Useless junk,” he grumbled. “They glue twenty fire gems onto brittle iron and call it a Dragon Cleaver. No grain control. No understanding of the metal. They’re running jewelry shops, not forges.”
Then he stopped.
His divine sense caught something strange near the refuse shed. A cold knot of gravity bent the air around a lattice so dense and orderly that his spiritual sea recoiled.
His head snapped toward Table Ninety-Four.
His gaze fixed on the four blue bars.
Ouyang’s monocle slipped from his eye. His jaw fell open.
“That sapphire shine... the light bending around the edges...” he whispered. “By the ancestors...”
He shoved past his attendants and ran across the courtyard. He skidded to a halt before the table, boots spraying gravel.
“Young man, may I test this material?”
Austin took another bite of egg. “Go ahead. Just don’t nick my sign.”
With shaking hands, Ouyang drew the Sacred Dragon-Tooth Diamond Chisel from his spatial ring. The ancient void-dragon fang was the Imperial Guild’s finest testing tool, reserved for Heaven-Tier ores.
He gathered his full Peak Golden Core power. Spiritual fire raced along his arms. With a roar, he brought the chisel down on the top bar.
CLAAAAAAANG!
The blast shattered every cup and pitcher at Table Ninety-Three. Lu Chen and his two companions flew off their stools and landed in the dandelion ditch.
Ouyang staggered back three steps, his arms numb to the shoulders.
Pug woke with a start. White diamond dust drifted past his noses. He sneezed three times, glared at Ouyang, and growled until the retaining wall shuddered. Then he circled twice and flopped down again.
Ouyang looked at his hand.
Only the chisel’s cracked silver handle remained. The dragon tooth had become white powder.
The Stellar-Steel bar was unmarked. Its edge was still sharp, and its face shone without a scratch or dent.
Ouyang’s knees gave way.
THUD.
The dynasty’s Chief Metallurgical Inspector knelt in the dirt. His trembling gaze dropped to the cardboard sign.
[STELLAR-STEEL SAMPLES — TRADE FOR PUMP PLANS AND O-RING FORMULAS]
He threw back his head and shouted loud enough to echo across the citadel.
“GUARDS! SEAL THE PALACE DISTRICT! RING THE NINE-DRAGON CHIMES! BRING THE IMPERIAL GOVERNOR! SUMMON THE GUILD COUNCIL! SACRED STAR-METAL HAS APPEARED AT TABLE NINETY-FOUR!”