Ninety-nine royal banners snapped above the Central Jade Dais. Two hundred and fifty thousand spectators rose in a rolling roar. Vendors in the concourses sold roast mutton and scallion cakes while cultivators blew bronze trumpets and threw red spirit blossoms into the air.
Austin stood on the dais with one boot on an uneven jade slab. He tested it with his heel.
The ceremony already felt like an unskippable cutscene after a long raid. While the crowd cheered, he studied the structure overhead. The balconies had no cross-bracing. The jade pavers had no room to expand in the heat. Four stone columns sagged under three hundred decorative bronze wyrms.
If this crowd starts jumping together, those brackets will snap. Complete death trap.
He wore his usual oil-stained denim, leather tool belt, steel-toed boots, and blue hard hat. His five-foot Stellar-Steel pipe wrench hung over one shoulder.
Xiaoyao stood beside him at attention, hugging Austin’s clipboard like a family heirloom.
Pug lay on the royal carpet with a roast spirit-ox thighbone as thick as a bridge beam. One head cracked the joint. The middle head drooled on the gold-embroidered dragons. The third snorted with pleasure.
Governor Zhao emerged in layered vermilion silk. His knees shook hard enough to make his jade belt pendants jingle. Two marshals followed with a velvet cushion.
“By decree of the Royal Ministry of Works and the unanimous judgment of the Grand Artisan Guild, we award the Grand Champion Gold Medallion to Master Chu of Sunset Peak and Master Tang of Canglan!”
Before handing it over, Zhao read a second order into the record. Tang’s workshop was licensed to teach hydraulic tools. The Royal Guild dropped its claim to the jack design, and any maker could license it directly from Tang or Sunset Peak. Austin would receive no ceremonial title and owe the court no appearances.
Tang accepted his copy of the order. He chose the public workshop over the mansion that had been offered to Austin.
Zhao bowed and presented the cushion.
A three-inch disk of Nine-Yang Spirit Gold rested on the velvet. An imperial dragon coiled around an anvil on its face.
Austin picked it up by the red cord. He flicked the rim and listened.
Tiiiiiing.
Good, clean metal. Decent scrap value.
A blue notice appeared.
Austin slipped the heavy medal into his overall pocket beside a roll of thread tape.
“Fifteen percent less tool wear. That saves real money on cutting tips and grinding wheels.”
Zhao raised both hands.
“BRING FORTH THE GRAND TREASURE! BRING FORTH THE DIVINE SECRET OF THE NORTHERN ABYSS!”
Four Golden Core commanders climbed the stairs. Sweat ran down their pale faces. Between them hung a three-foot chest carved from Ten-Thousand-Year Glacial Spirit Jade.
Gold chains sealed the chest. Nine purple talismans burned with cold fire along its seams. Arctic mist poured over the sides and coated the dais with frost.
Austin frowned.
Paper seals on a freezing chest. The glue will fail as soon as water forms. Whoever approved this needs their union card pulled.
Zhao traced three hand signs over the latch. The talismans curled into ash, and the chains fell away.
“Behold the greatest prize of the Centennial Jubilee,” he said. “A First Epoch relic recovered from the deepest Northern Waste three thousand years ago!”
He opened the lid.
A twelve-inch cube of dull black alloy sat on black velvet.
The arena fell silent.
For three thousand years, the dynasty’s greatest formation masters and patriarchs had studied it. Their spiritual senses found nothing inside. Heaven-Grade swords could not scratch it. True fire left it cool. It had no dantian, no spirit veins, and no circulating qi.
On one face was a recessed socket containing six gold-plated copper pins. Fine lines crossed the casing and pulsed with soft cyan light.
Zhao dropped to one knee and held up the chest.
“Patriarch Chu, this unreadable relic of the Ancient Gods is yours. May its secrets light your path to immortality!”
Austin stepped closer. Cold mist rolled over his boots. He adjusted his glasses and stared at the socket.
His HUD filled with blue text.
A slow, genuine grin spread across Austin’s face.
“A pre-collapse biosphere server. Standard six-pin port. Runs on four hundred and eighty volts DC.”
He bent close to inspect the pins, ignoring Zhao.
“Gold plating to prevent corrosion. Clean data lines. No blood sacrifice. No chanting at the moon. The ancients weren’t just cultivating. They were running power and building server racks. Beautiful work.”
Austin pushed aside the ritual tools. He gripped the black cube with one bare hand and lifted all forty pounds from the chest as easily as a box of machine parts. Then he tucked it under his left arm.
He tapped the casing with his grease pencil.
Tink.
“Solid casing. No loose fasteners. Good heat capacity. This’ll make a perfect controller for my Floor Two furnaces. Saves me wiring a cabinet full of relays. Thanks, Governor. Appreciate the hardware.”
Zhao’s mouth opened and closed without sound.
“Y-You’re welcome, Patriarch. You mean to use the Ancient Core... to control smelting furnaces?”
“Automated temperature control. Can’t let the melt drift more than two degrees during a pour. Uneven heat ruins the metal.”
Before Austin could leave, daylight vanished.
WHOOOOOOOOOOSH!
The temperature dropped thirty degrees in one breath. A freezing gale swept through the arena. The silk banners froze and snapped apart. Frost raced across the jade floor.
Above the arena, the sky split beneath a ten-mile spiral of silver sword light. Clouds spun with a shriek like breaking glass.
Spiritual pressure crushed the crowd into their seats. Mortals gasped. Foundation disciples fell to their hands and knees. Even Golden Core elders clutched their ribs in terror.
A voice like frozen iron thundered from the storm.
“IGNORANT MORTAL INSECT!”
Decorative roof tiles shattered along the rim.
“YOU DARE TOUCH THE SACRED FIRST EPOCH RELIC WITH YOUR GREASY CARPENTER’S HANDS?”
“HAND OVER THE BLACK CUBE! IT BELONGS TO THE SOVEREIGN OF THE SOUTHERN SKIES!”
The clouds parted.
A figure descended on ten thousand whistling silver blades. Long white hair whipped in the gale. White Daoist robes billowed around him, and his silver eyes burned like cold stars.
The terror of the southern provinces had arrived.
The Southern Sword Saint, Jiang Taixu.
Austin stood on the frosted dais with his hard hat pulled low. He looked up with pure annoyance.
“Terrific. An unannounced fly-in with no clearance, plus ten thousand loose blades over a crowded city. The safety citations are writing themselves today.”