Twenty-three minutes and ten seconds remained on Grandpa Fu’s pocket watch before the Mandatory Orphanhood Overwrite finished carving fatal accidents into ten trillion jade destiny books.
Up above the central bridge of Floor Two, Grand Proofreader Mo Wu raised his mountain-sized Iron Stamp of Tragic Canon with both hands. Meanwhile, his third, invisible Omniscient Proofreading Eye hovered defensively over the Central Printing Press on the mezzanine of Floor Three directly behind him.
“Enough chatter from unedited side characters!” Mo Wu snarled, ten thousand twenty-foot Censor-Ink Golems leveling their serrated spears in a wall of pitch-black iron around the staircase.
“My Omniscient Eye guards the Master Ink-Vein on Floor Three, and my ten thousand Golems guard this bridge! None of you shall come within a hundred miles of the Central Printing Press before the thirty-minute canon lock completes!”
Down on the stone walkway, Gu Changsheng nodded thoughtfully, as if deeply impressed by the security setup.
“An Omniscient Proofreading Eye that monitors every single word written in the library, huh?” Gu Changsheng said aloud, tucking his iron wok spatula under his arm and pulling out a thirty-foot banner of crisp white Frost-Pine rice paper. “That must mean you have the highest literary standards in the entire Supreme Origin Heaven, Proofreader Mo.”
