Stone shards ricocheted off the cobblestones like grapeshot as Magistrate Vane-Locke rose from the impact crater.
A cloud of pulverized mortar billowed around his purple silk robes, but not a single thread was torn.
The magistrate dusted a speck of gray powder from his shoulder, his cold eyes scanning the inner perimeter.
Behind him, twenty surviving Blood-Wolf raiders clambered through the breach in the shattered wall, their heavy ring-mail clattering as they formed a tight semi-circle.
Baron Derrick Vance hurried down from the main hall veranda to meet them, his broadsword gripped in both hands.
“The southern lane was a crossbow trap,” Derrick rasped, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “The boy fortified the shed with Ghost Market siege bows.”
“Burning pitch and wooden barricades are tricks for mongrels,” Vane-Locke said, his voice flat and cutting. “They mean nothing to me.”
The magistrate stepped forward, raising his right arm like a cleaver.
A blinding arc of compressed iron Qi burst from his palm, stretching fifteen meters wide.
The blade of gray spiritual energy screamed through the air, striking the outer wooden barricades fifty yards ahead.
Crack.
The oak logs and ironwood posts sheared clean in half, collapsing into a heap of splintered kindling.
The twenty Blood-Wolf raiders let out a ragged cheer, their courage instantly restored by the magistrate’s effortless power.
Inside the bedroom, the Fallow Slate flared behind Kaelen’s closed eyes at two hundred and thirty-seven hours.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Inaction Tally: 237 Hours 00 Minutes] [Current Multiplier: 238x] [Stage 1 Vessel Limit: 240 Hours (241x)] [Condition: Fallow Distension (Near Peak)]
The low, heavy vibration of Iron Bone Early spiritual pressure traveled through the floorboards like an earthquake.
Kaelen felt the subtle weight settling over his chest.
It was the ten-fold Law Suppression that an Iron Bone master naturally exerted over all Mortal Pulse cultivators.
Under that invisible aura, common fighters felt their blood sluggish, their meridians heavy, and their muscles trembling with exhaustion.
Fighting an Iron Bone brute in an open yard before my timer caps is a fool’s errand, Kaelen thought, his head resting quietly against the linen pillow. You do not fight a runaway bull with bare fists when you can build a granite wall, light a smoky fire, and let the beast choke on its own pride.
Two days earlier, Kaelen had given Sera Thorne and Old Barnaby strict orders for this exact moment.
Knowing an Iron Bone cultivator imposed a ten-fold Law Suppression on Mortal Pulse fighters, he had instructed them never to engage Vane-Locke head-on in the open lane.
High above the inner courtyard, a bronze warning gong sounded three sharp notes.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Following Kaelen’s battle plan to the letter, Sera did not attempt to hold the shattered outer wooden barricades.
Instead, she led all fifty Ghost Market guards back behind the inner courtyard’s solid granite herb-press walls, locking the heavy iron-plated gates behind them.
The wall was four feet thick, constructed from solid blocks of dressed mountain granite.
For thirty years, those stones had absorbed the pressure of screw-presses crushing ironwood roots and stone mushrooms.
Down in the distillery cellar, Old Barnaby heard the gong and spat on his calloused hand.
“Time for the seasoning,” the old man chuckled, grabbing a long iron chain connected to the main furnace damper.
With a sharp jerk, Barnaby hauled the chain down and locked it to an iron cleat.
Inside the three brick kilns beneath the courtyard, hundreds of pounds of dry quicklime, crushed black pepper, and powdered bitter sulfur fell onto the glowing charcoal beds.
Hiss.
The chemical mixture did not burn with open flame.
It vaporized instantly into dense, acrid clouds of pale yellow and white smoke.
Under the push of three hand-cranked bellows, the stinging fog roared up through the stone flues, venting directly into the narrow lane outside the granite wall.
Within thirty seconds, the entire corridor between the outer breach and the inner wall was engulfed in a blinding wall of smoke.
“What in the hells is this?” a Blood-Wolf raider shouted, dropping his spear to claw at his watering eyes.
The man took a single breath and immediately fell to his knees, vomiting violently as the concentrated pepper scorched his throat.
Even Magistrate Vane-Locke froze, his purple sleeve snapping up to cover his mouth.
His eyes burned with furious tears, the caustic lime eating at his eyelashes despite his hardened iron skin.
Cultivators of the Iron Bone realm could stop steel blades with their flesh, but their lungs still required clean mountain air.
“Cowards!” Vane-Locke snarled, his voice muffled by the silk cloth. “Smoke cannot save you from imperial justice!”
He took a heavy stride forward, intending to smash through the gray fog.
Whistle.
From a narrow slit three feet above the ground, a thick iron-chain net shot out with the crack of a bowstring.
The four corners of the net were weighted with solid lead balls, wrapping tight around the magistrate’s knees and waist.
The coarse links had been soaked in sour vinegar and coated with sticky resin, clinging fast to his silk robes.
Vane-Locke let out a furious growl, flexing his thighs to shatter the iron links.
Snap. Snap.
The heavy chain snapped under his immense physical force, but the brief entanglement halted his momentum completely.
Before he could take another step, three more nets whistled through the smoke, wrapping his shoulders and pinning his left arm.
“Keep the rotation tight!” Sera Thorne’s voice echoed from behind the granite parapet. “Volley fire on my mark!”
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Through five narrow murder-holes cut into the granite blocks, the repeating arbalests barked in rhythmic succession.
Volleys of Spirit-Iron bolts hissed through the yellow fog, targeting the shapes of the coughing bandits behind Vane-Locke.
Three Blood-Wolf cutthroats collapsed with steel quarrels buried deep in their ring-mail vests.
The rest scrambled back toward the outer courtyard, desperate to escape the blinding cloud.
Vane-Locke tore the remaining nets from his chest, his face purple with mounting rage.
“Die!” he roared, swinging his fist at the nearest murder-hole.
A beam of gray iron Qi exploded from his knuckles, slamming straight into the four-foot-thick granite wall.
Boom.
The stone face chipped and cracked, spraying powdery grit across the alley, but the solid granite held firm.
The wall did not buckle.
Behind the stone, the Ghost Market mercenaries simply moved three feet to the left and slid fresh magazines into their arbalests.
Minute after minute dragged by in the choking gloom.
Every time Vane-Locke stepped forward, another weighted net wrapped his limbs, followed by a punishing volley of armor-piercing bolts.
Whenever he loosed a devastating blast of Iron Bone Qi, the granite absorbed the shock, leaving only surface scars on the heavy stone blocks.
Thirty minutes passed.
Then sixty minutes.
The magistrate was reduced to hacking his way forward foot by grueling foot, his breath wheezing through scorched lungs.
Deep inside the shed bedroom, Kaelen lay listening to the muffled thuds echoing through the stone foundations.
The golden light of the Fallow Slate pulsed with increasing urgency behind his brow.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Inaction Tally: 238 Hours 30 Minutes] [Current Multiplier: 239x] [Stage 1 Vessel Limit: 240 Hours (241x)] [Condition: Fallow Distension (Peak)]
Two hundred and thirty-eight hours and thirty minutes.
Only ninety minutes remained until midnight.
The golden characters shimmered with an unbearable intensity, vibrating like an overwound clock spring.
The pressure inside his nine diamond pulse gates had expanded to the absolute limit of what his mortal flesh could contain.
Ninety minutes, Kaelen thought, feeling the immense spiritual tension humming in his teeth. Sera and Barnaby have bought every second I asked for. The trap in the lane is holding him exactly as planned.
Suddenly, the temperature inside the bedroom plummeted.
Kaelen opened his eyes.
High above, the circular glass skylight in the ceiling showed the night sky.
The full moon had climbed to the absolute zenith of the heavens, a brilliant silver disc surrounded by a ring of pale blue frost.
Its cold light beamed straight down into the room, falling directly across the small cot where Mina Vance lay.
A soft, agonized whimper escaped the little girl’s throat.
The Frost-Marrow Decay had reached its midnight crisis.
The dormant Yin energy within her bones surged in violent resonance with the full moon overhead.
Waves of pure, freezing blue mist began to pour from her collarbones, spilling over the edges of the cot like liquid ice.
Crack.
The timber floorboards beneath her bed groaned as thick crystals of white frost spread outward in geometric rings.
The wool blankets stiffened into solid sheets of frozen fabric.
Mina’s skin turned the translucent color of skimmed milk, and her small lips darkened into a bruised, lifeless blue.
Her tiny fingers curled into tight fists, trembling uncontrollably against the freezing sheets.
Kaelen turned his head slightly on the hammock.
Beside his pillow sat the small octagonal box carved from warm mutton-fat jade, where Barnaby had placed the unsealed Void-Frost Lotus Supreme Pill in readiness for midnight.
Inside the warm jade box, the sapphire-blue cure pill glowed with ninety-nine silver-blue cloud veins through the translucent stone lid.
Three years of accumulated frost-poison planted by Evelyn and the magistrate are trying to freeze her heart before the moon turns, Kaelen thought, his eyes narrowing slightly. Vane-Locke believes he can harvest her marrow like wheat, and Father thinks he can trade her life for an iron manual. Neither of them will ever touch this room.
He reached out with a steady hand, resting his fingers against the jade lid.
He could feel the soothing, balanced warmth radiating from the medicine inside.
Out in the smoke-filled lane, the battle had reached a bloody standstill.
Baron Derrick Vance leaned against the shattered wooden post, coughing violently as the stinging pepper burned his throat.
Through the thinning haze, he watched Magistrate Vane-Locke smash his eighth iron net into pieces with a furious roar.
Vane-Locke’s purple robes were shredded, his face blackened with sulfur soot, and his forehead bleeding from sharp stone splinters.
The Iron Bone master was unstoppable, but he was moving like an insect stuck in thick honey.
At this rate, it would take another hour to batter through the inner granite doors.
Derrick’s blood ran cold.
He knew that if the full moon passed without delivering the girl, Vane-Locke would hold the Vance clan responsible for the failure.
The magistrate would execute Derrick for treason before sunrise.
“We cannot wait for the magistrate to break the gate,” Derrick hissed to his four personal bodyguards.
The four guards, dressed in black steel breastplates, huddled close to their patriarch.
“Lord Baron,” the lead guard whispered. “The front is completely sealed. Where can we go?”
Derrick pointed his bloodstained sword toward the low stone wall bordering the old laundry yard.
“The manor’s original builders dug a drainage culvert thirty years ago,” Derrick muttered, his voice trembling with frantic urgency. “It runs beneath the kitchen pantry to drain wash water during the spring rains.”
The guards looked at each other in surprise.
“The culvert bypasses the entire granite wall,” Derrick whispered, his eyes gleaming with desperate resolve. “It opens directly behind the shed’s back hearth.”
Leaving Vane-Locke to draw the arbalest fire in the smoke alley, Derrick and his four guards dropped to their hands and knees.
They slipped behind the crumbling laundry tubs, finding the rusted iron grate hidden beneath a mound of dead oak leaves.
Derrick hooked his fingers into the bars and wrenched the grate free with a muffled scrape.
One by one, the five men crawled into the narrow stone tunnel, their armor scraping against the wet limestone walls.
They crawled twenty yards in pitch darkness, guided only by the faint vibration of the battle overhead.
Inside the quiet herb shed kitchen, the old iron stewpot sat on the cold hearth.
The air smelled faintly of dried mint and roasted barley.
Suddenly, a dull thump sounded from behind the wooden storage shelves lining the back wall.
Thump.
The mortar between the old bricks cracked with a sharp snap.
Then, with a deafening roar of splintering timber and tumbling stone, the entire back wall caved inward.
Dust and smashed jars of pickled roots exploded across the kitchen flagstones.
Baron Derrick Vance burst through the jagged hole, covered in gray slime and cobwebs, his broadsword gleaming in the dim lantern light.
Behind him, four armored guards tumbled into the room, their weapons drawn and ready to kill.
Derrick’s eyes locked onto the open bedroom doorway ten feet away, where Mina lay freezing beneath the moonlight.
“Found you, little wretch,” Derrick growled, his face twisted in vicious triumph as he charged toward the girl’s bed.