The mutiny did not begin with the common folk. It fermented in the spoiled pride of displaced fighters who could not bear to stand in line behind weavers and potters.
On the twelfth afternoon of the Safe hall, a faction of two hundred rogue fighters from the Sunken Sea sects seized the backup food spreading depot in Entry hall 062. They had gathered under the leadership of a former sect elder named Lu. A gaunt, sharp-eyed man whose dantian still held leftovers of late Foundation-stage spiritual qi, and who had spent his life commanding mortal serfs upon the northern rice barges.
Barricading the entrance to the depot with overturned grain carts and heavy chests of dried salt-fish, the fighters demanded privileged quarters on the upper terraces, exemption from the latrine-cleaning rotas, and triple rations of cold-pressed kelp-oil and dried meat.
The food depot of Entry hall 062 was one of six strategic reserves established by Yan Zhiqiu to buffer against supply disruptions. Built inside a vaulted stone granary that had once stored grain for ancient water-mapping expeditions, it held forty tons of dried salt-cod, twenty tons of tightly packed barley flour, and five hundred jars of refined kelp-oil. The depot was operated by sixteen elderly weavers and disabled dock-hands whose calm, careful bookkeeping ensured that five thousand families received their exact daily rations without bickering or favoritism.
