Heavy iron chains dragged across the marble floor of the Supreme Mercenary Guild Clearinghouse.
Commissar Gu-Du stumbled forward, propelled by a firm shove from Commander Tie Niu. Gu-Du’s face was a patchwork of purple bruises, his broken nose taped up with crude white gauze. His silk coat hung in scorched tatters, and he kept looking over his shoulder as if expecting a firing squad.
Su Wan and Shen Qiaoqiao strode into the central auditing chamber. Behind them walked General Tie Canghai and Lin Mo.
The chamber was lined with ten thousand shelves of glowing jade ledgers, cataloging every transaction across fifty thousand years of frontier warfare. At the far end of the room stood a massive vault door forged from nine-layer black spirit-iron.
Shen Qiaoqiao stepped up to the vault console. She pulled a brass audit stamp from her briefcase and slammed it onto the central biometric panel.
CLACK—!
“Taichu Counter-Audit Division, exercising emergency forensic jurisdiction,” Shen Qiaoqiao announced sweetly. “Override bank encryption protocol nine. Open the master sub-ledger.”
The heavy vault gears groaned. The six-foot-thick iron door swung wide, releasing a stale gust of cold, dry air.
