The daylight above felt like a physical blow.
After fifteen hours in the cool, dry gloom of Sub-Vault Zero, emerging through the fire cellar into the morning glare of the Seventh Ward made Lin Ke’s eyes water with stinging tears. The air in the courtyard was thick with cold mountain fog. It smelled of wet soot and burned sealing wax.
Across the courtyard, twenty Law Enforcement Hall judges stood in rigid formation, clad in heavy, blue-enameled breastplates, their hands resting on the pommels of matched broadswords.
Red wax ribbons—the official seals of court seizure—had already been nailed across the charging doors of Furnace Four and Furnace Two.
The seventy fire slaves of the Seventh Ward had been herded into the southern gravel pen, forced onto their knees under the watchful, unsheathed sabers of four Foundation Establishment court guards.
In the center of the courtyard, flanked by an ornate iron fire bowl, stood Zhao Wuji and Chief Judge Lu.
Zhao wore a clean outer robe of white fox fur over his gold-stitched azure silks, a delicate jade cup of warm spiced wine cradled in his left palm. Beside him, Chief Judge Lu—the high-ranking court officer of the Outer Punishment Board—held a four-foot scroll of stiff white parchment bearing the heavy crimson seal of the Grand Hall of Records.
