Master Lu Jian spat over the railing of the Sovereign Aurora.
The sixty-year-old master architect squinted across the dark gulf at the colossal black ramparts of Wall Number One and Wall Number Two. He held his heavy brass Feng-Shui compass in his left hand, turning the dial with his thumb while tapping a scarred carpenter’s square against his knee.
“Look at that outer masonry,” Lu Jian growled, his voice thick with the gravel of forty years on construction sites. “The joints are uneven, the foundation piers are misaligned by three degrees, and the drainage grates are completely clogged with slag. Whoever poured this foundation should have his union card revoked and his boots thrown in the river.”
Aboard the central parapet of Wall Number One, an old man in elaborate emerald robes stepped forward.
It was Grandmaster Gui-Gong, the Chief Imperial Architect of the Heavenly Plunder Bank. He had a Goodness score of negative seventy-six. He wore three layers of gold chains around his neck, and his long, oiled beard was tucked into an embroidered sash.
“Insolent mortal carpenter!” Gui-Gong yelled through a horn of bronze, his voice dripping with condescension. “How dare you critique the sacred architecture of the Nine Plunder-Heaven Walls! These ramparts were engineered by the finest grandmasters of the Upper Heavens over fifty thousand epochs! They are fortified with unyielding Chaos-Iron and eternal greed-stone! A million Dao-Lords could pound against these stones for an eternity without dislodging a single grain of mortar!”
