To Chief Arbiter Yan Baichuan, the red stone ink box on the table was not an office accessory. It was the boundary stone of land-wide power.
For three thousand years, no Master Teacher token above 4-Star had ever been issued without the unanimous vote of the Nine Arbiter Clans, three rounds of holy debate, and a direct ceremony to the old family tablets. The idea that a mortal carpenter could walk into the inner sanctum, level the ink pad with a yellow pencil, and stamp his own 6-Star Master Teacher license was an offense against the entire established hierarchy.
“Halt!” Yan Baichuan shouted, shoving his chair back against the star-iron wall.
He lunged across the rosewood table with hands outstretched, aiming directly for the heavy golden seal in Frank’s grasp.
“Only the Chief Judge may authorize a Master Teacher!” Yan Baichuan roared.
Frank didn’t look up. His yellow-tinted safety glasses remained focused entirely on page four of his sign-off booklet, checking the posture of Box 12-An against the margin lines.
As Yan Baichuan lunged across the table, Frank took a half-inch step to his right.
To the naked eye, it looked like a slight shuffle of Frank’s work boots. To the underlying spatial mesh, however, that small shift was a zero-drag fold. The space occupying Frank’s last map points simply slid three inches to the left like an oiled pocket door.
