The morning sun over the northern frontier didn’t gleam upon golden royal armor. It gleamed upon thirty square inches of retroreflective silver safety tape.
Standing beside the main freight gate of Iron Bastion was Murong Seven. The former Seventh Young Master of the Sovereign Sword Pavilion had undergone a total load-bearing transformation. Gone were the five-thousand-gold flowing silk robes, the jade hairpins, and the delicate spider-silk slippers. In their place were heavy leather work boots with two-inch hardened rubber soles, thick denim work socks, and bright, neon-orange bright twill overalls. A yellow plastic hard hat was strapped snugly under his chin, its brim shading clear tough clear glass safety goggles that rested over his sharp eyes.
In his left hand, he held a yellow pine clipboard clipped with a stack of pink carbon-copy check forms. In his right hand, he held his eight-foot solid copper grounding rod, using it as an imposing six-pound walking staff. Beside him, Xiao Yu sat on an overturned nail keg, wearing a matching pair of noise-canceling ear muffs, gently striking his steel tuning forks to test the surrounding hum of the outer edge fence.
“Phase is steady, Brother Murong,” Xiao Yu called out through his blindfold. “No static build-up on the east wire.”
“Copy that, tracking data,” Murong Seven barked, his voice filled with crisp military discipline. He made a sharp checkmark on his clipboard with a red grease pencil. “outer edge gate ground pushback currently reads zero point eight ohms. All clear for vehicular freight.”
Frank sat on the tailgate of his ox-cart twenty yards away, chewing on a dried apricot while filing down the burr on a three-quarter-inch spade bit. “Kid takes to paperwork like a duck to water,” Frank remarked to Shen Shitou. “Give an aristocrat a clipboard and a little power, and suddenly he’s running the whole yard like a federal port power.”
“He has good stance, Master,” Shitou rumbled, tightening a wire clamp with his bare fingers. “His lower-back remains upright.”
Before Frank could reply, a high-pitched sonic whistling tore through the upper cloud deck.
FSSSSSSSSSH!
Dropping from the southern sky were three figures riding atop five-foot flying swords forged from sky silver. They wore sweeping robes of golden brocade adorned with peacock feathers, trailing clouds of sparkling incense and sky mist. These were the High Emissaries of the Sovereign Sword Pavilion’s Northern Liaison Office, dispatched after the panicked sword attendants had sent word of Murong Seven’s defeat.
The lead emissary, Elder Bai, hovered twenty feet above the gate, his flying sword humming with arrogant power. He looked down at the freight entrance, his eyes scanning for the Seventh Young Master. He saw an ox-cart, a pile of gravel, a blind boy on a nail keg, and an absurd young man wearing glowing orange overalls and a yellow plastic bucket on his head.
“Where is Young Master Murong?!” Elder Bai demanded, his voice resonating with mid-stage Golden Core pressure that made the border guards tense. “We have received word that an unranked ditch-digger has ensnared the noble heir with dark illusions!”
Murong Seven didn’t look up from his clipboard. He made another neat red checkmark on his pink carbon slip. “Vehicle identification: Three unbonded airborne craft,” Murong Seven announced flatly. His voice carried clearly across the gate. “Running below fifty feet in an active construction zone without tail-rotor beacons or clearance.”
Elder Bai blinked, his high-born face freezing in stunned confusion. He leaned forward on his flying sword, squinting through the morning glare. “Murong Qi?!” Elder Bai shrieked, his voice cracking into horror as he recognized the voice and jawline beneath the plastic hard hat and safety goggles. “By the Ancestral Heavens! What... What hideous mockery is this?! Why are you wearing the glowing orange clothes of a roadside laborer?!”
The two junior emissaries gasped, clutching their sword handles in abject mortification. “Young Master!” the second emissary cried. “The Grand High judge’s daughter is waiting in the capital for your betrothal banquet! The clan elders sent us to retrieve you right away! Strip off those ugly clown-rags and step onto this flying sword!”
Murong Seven slowly raised his head, his clear safety goggles catching the morning sun with a flash. He pulled his red grease pencil from behind his ear and pointed it at the hovering elders. “Code Rule-break 109,” Murong Seven stated with cold severity. “Running a secret low-height flying vehicle over an active Class-1 construction zone without hard hats or eye protection. You’re creating a falling object hazard for ground personnel.”
Frank strolled over from the wagon. He carried a heavy box-shaped red rubber stamp and an ink pad. He handed the stamp to Murong Seven with a nod. “Active job site, apprentice. We don’t allow uninspected low-height traffic. If they don’t have a commercial air-worthiness certificate, they don’t get through the airspace.”
A sharp system window flared in Frank’s HUD, scrolling down with town code references.
Elder Bai’s face flushed purple with high-born fury. “Insolent mortal filth!” Bai roared, pointing his finger downward. “You dare speak of permits to the Sovereign Sword Pavilion?! We ride the winds by divine right! Murong Qi, you have lost your mind! If you’ll not step onto this blade willingly, we shall sever your limbs and carry your torso back to the Patriarch in an iron trunk!”
The three emissaries drew backup daggers, their flying swords diving toward the courtyard at two hundred miles per hour!
WHOOOOOOSH!
The sharp sonic wind whipped through the gate, scattering dust across the road. Murong Seven didn’t flinch. He stamped the pink carbon slip with Frank’s red rubber stamp: Rule-break CONFIRMED: GROUNDING AUTHORIZED.
“Secret airspace breach,” Murong Seven announced. “Air-ground intercept started!”
Murong Seven lifted his eight-foot solid copper rod with both hands. His steadied Purple Thunder Sword Bone—now fully free from spirit vein spasms—ignited within his chest. Two hundred current units of pure violet star-fire surged through his arms, flowing smoothly into the copper shaft. Murong Seven drove the solid copper rod three feet deep into the damp flat stone slabs!
CLANG-BOOM!
The strike was not a conventional spiritual attack. It was an aimed, clear magnetic pulse coupled directly to the underground leylines of the castle outer edge grid!
SHZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!
A dome of packed magnetic flux erupted upward from the ground in a forty-foot upright metal tube! The physics of high-hum power-coil took immediate effect. The three flying swords, forged from high-flow rate sky silver, entered the intense fluctuating magnetic field at two hundred miles per hour. In less than a nanosecond, massive eddy currents were induced within the silver blades. The silver rapidly heated to over eight hundred degrees. The delicate runic forward thrust circuits carved into the metal experienced instant heat breakdown!
POW! POP! FZZZZZT!
Sparks showered from the three flying swords like exploding fireworks. The spiritual floating fields collapsed with a hollow pop.
“My sword!” Elder Bai shrieked as his weapon suddenly transformed into an inert bar of hot silver. “The leylines... The leylines have died!”
Deprived of lift and wind-cutting control, the three Golden Core emissaries plummeted thirty feet through the air, flailing their arms like flightless turkeys!
WHOOSH-SPLAT!
Directly beneath their descent was a newly excavated, forty-foot-long drainage trench that Niu Mang had spent the morning digging. The trench was five feet deep, filled with freezing, thick, sticky black marsh mud, decomposing ditch weeds, and gray laundry runoff from the guard post barracks.
SCHLUCK-CHUUUUNK!
All three golden-robed emissaries slammed face-first into the freezing black muck, their peacock feathers snapping, their wide silk sleeves soaking up gallons of foul swamp water. Elder Bai pulled his face out of the mud, coughing up black silt and half-rotted reeds, his golden hairpins tangled with decomposing watercress.
“Demon...” Bai wheezed, his eyes wide with shivering shock as he looked up at the trench rim. “He stripped three flying swords of their spirit with a single copper rod?!”
Standing on the trench rim, looking down at them through clear safety goggles, was Murong Seven. The young apprentice held his clipboard in one hand and his yellow grease pencil in the other. He peeled the pink carbon slip from the clipboard, flicked his wrist. Then he let it flutter down into Elder Bai’s mud-caked lap.
“Fine ticket 409-B,” Murong Seven said in a chilling office flat voice. “Reckless low-height operation of an ungrounded vehicle, failure to wear bright PPE in an active digging zone, and polluting an unpermitted drainage ditch.” Murong Seven leaned on his copper rod, adjusting his hard hat. “Fine: five hundred high-grade spirit stones per person. Payable at the site office before Friday. If you wish to appeal this fine ticket, you may submit a formal petition in triplicate to Master Lu between the hours of seven and eight in the morning.”
The two junior emissaries began to cry into the mud. He shivered wildly from the freezing water and the soul-crushing humiliation. “The Young Master... Has joined a sky construction guild!”
Elder Bai clutched the pink fine ticket slip with shaking fingers. He stared at the clean, sharp-angled black ink characters as if they were an old family death warrant.
Frank strolled up to the edge of the trench, hands in his overall pockets. He looked down at the three muddy elders. “Niu Mang dug that trench with a two-to-one slope,” Frank observed mildly. “You boys are lucky the sides didn’t cave in on you. Next time you want to visit our job site, land in the chosen parking lot and check in with the safety officer.”
Before Elder Bai could sputter an answer, the sky above the castle suddenly turned dark.
WUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-WAAAAAAAAAA!
A wailing air-raid siren began to shriek from the high castle walls of Iron Bastion. Along the outer edge walls, the emerald defensive lamps that had been glowing since the morning suddenly flickered, sputtered, and died all at once! The entire twenty-mile defensive outer edge fell into pitch-black shadow as the castle’s main spiritual power array fully flatlined!
Soldiers shouted in panic from the castle walls. General Zhao’s voice boomed through an amplification horn across the parade grounds: “Emergency! The central spirit-stone reserve is empty! The outer edge wards have collapsed! Night is falling in three hours, and the shadow-beast horde is gathering beyond the ridge!”
Murong Seven spun around, his safety goggles flashing in the sudden gloom. He gripped his copper rod and looked toward Frank. “Master! The town grid has experienced total blackout!”
Frank took his pocket watch from his pocket, checked the time, and let out a calm breath. “Right on schedule,” Frank muttered, putting away the watch. “Three hours until sundown. Crew, grab the post-hole diggers, the insulators, and thirty spools of copper wire. It’s time to run a town power spreading grid.”