The Grand Staging Post of Entry hall 534 had been converted into the tactical nerve center of the Azure Firmament Sect’s invasion.
In the center of the vast, pillared hall, Zhu Heling’s signal-masters had erected an elaborate comms hub. An eight-sided bronze fire bowl four paces wide, burning sky spirit-coals that produced a column of dense, violet smoke that rose into an inverted copper funnel. Through this funnel, sight signal-discs and deep ring-mirrors sent encoded flashes of light through the Ark’s upper air-flow shafts, coordinating the movements of the rear guard posts, the supply sledges. The outer airships anchored forty leagues above the sea.
Surrounding the fire bowl were twelve scribes and alchemists, seated at folding campaign desks covered in silk cipher-rolls, tally boards, and crystal receiving-globes.
“Signal from the outer fleet!” a scribe called out, his eyes pressed to the brass eyepiece of a receiving telescope. “The Seventh Patriarch has arrived at the seawall breach! He demands an immediate report on the extraction of the Sovereign Master builder’s core! If the Round hall is not secured within one hour, the Patriarch will deploy the Heavenly Thunder Cannons from the flagship!”
“Inform the Patriarch that the Grand Borer is within two hundred paces of the Round hall gates!” the chief signal-master shouted back, his hand adjusting the shutter-vanes of the fire bowl. “The northern avenues are secured! The pushback from the local caretaker has been contained!”
