The air at the rim of Black Crag Basin crackled with cold static.
By the fifth morning of the blockade, the surrounding mountain slopes had been choked off fully. Captain Lu’s hired blades had erected three nested rings of spiked timber barricades outside the quarantine chain, their crossbowmen perched on portable wooden platforms with formation-piercing iron bolts knocked and ready.
At the edge of the gorge trail, a gold-trimmed carriage draped in purple velvet rattled to a halt over the gravel.
Zhao Wuji stepped down from the carriage steps, his silk boots avoiding the mud with practiced disgust. In his right hand, the young merchant heir held a stiff scroll of gold-foil parchment bearing the three-clawed vulture wax seal of Elder Kuang’s inner pavilion: a Sect Sovereign Debt Distraint Warrant.
“Captain Lu,” Zhao Wuji said, his voice ringing with cold triumph across the clearing. “The five-day delivery grace period for Smelting Ward Seven expired at cockcrow.
They have delivered zero pounds of refined coke. The contract is in total default.”
Captain Lu grinned, stepping forward with his Gale-Splitting Halberd. “Then the chain comes down, Young Master?”
“The chain comes down,” Zhao Wuji confirmed, holding the gold parchment high. “Under Sect Sovereign Debt Enforcement Statutes, default on strategic metalworking quotas grants the creditor immediate right of physical asset seizure—including all ward personnel.”
