Crown Prince Jiang Chen looked at his sister’s grease-stained cowhide apron as if it were a heap of rotting garbage.
“Ninth Sister,” Jiang Chen said, his voice laced with the cold venom of royal bloodlines. “You were born of the Sovereign Jiang Clan of Great Da-Qi. Your veins carry the embers of the Nine-Sun Phoenix. Yet you follow this backwater carpenter, wearing the filthy rags of a blacksmith’s apprentice.”
Princess Jiang Ling’er didn’t flinch.
Her leather welding apron was strapped tight across her chest, adorned with brass rivets, three pressure gauges. A high-pressure bleed-off pipe hub mounted on her right hip. Her eyes, glowing with the steady golden heat of her solar dragon core, locked onto Jiang Chen’s face with total indifference.
“I’m the Chief Thermal Venting Checker of Ironwood Peak,” Ling’er said calmly. “And my apron is clean. It only has machine grease on it. Your robes, however, are soaked in arrogance and unvented hot air.”
Jiang Chen’s face darkened into an ugly scowl.
He raised his right hand. He held an old family treasure of the Great Da-Qi Imperial House: the Nine-Sun Peacock Fan.
Woven from Saint-tier phoenix feathers bound in dragon bone and solar crystals, nine plumes of fire erupted from the fan with a flick of his wrist.
