As Zhu Heling spoke those mocking words, a sudden shift in the air swept across the High Dais.
It began as a subtle, pervasive coolness that seemed to rise from the surface of the unrolled parchment. In the choking, rotten-egg heat of the Grand Round hall. There, the blast furnaces pumped scorching coal-smoke into every crevice, the heat directly above the scroll dropped by nearly twenty degrees in the span of ten heartbeats.
With that coolness came a smell. An aroma so clean, so pure, and so profoundly alien to the iron-scented air of the heavy-duty court that every man within thirty paces turned his head in confusion.
It was the fragrance of deep river-silt, of cold mountain springs bubbling through limestone crevices, and of wet green moss thriving on the underside of underwater bridges. It was the clear, ancient scent of living water.
For eighteen months, the Grand Round hall had known only the foul exhalations of heavy industry: the stench of burning hard coal, the biting acid of sulfur fumes, and the rancid scorch of whale lard used to cool the cutting-lathes. Men lived and died in this tiered arena without ever tasting clean air, their lungs blackened by soot and their skin coated in a permanent film of machine grease. Now, as the river-scent spread across the dais, soldiers on the second and third tiers lowered their pikes in wonder. They inhaled deeply as if awakening from an eighteen-month fever.
