The wind across the Western Stage of the Great Crucible Coliseum tasted of burning bitter pine-resin and powdered mica.
The Scribing Ring was not sand. It was a massive slab of white spar-stone marble, ninety feet across. It was surrounded by four thirty-foot bronze poles hung with defensive wards to prevent stray runic explosions from burning to ash the front rows of the audience.
Shen Yue stood behind her chosen workstation. A scarred oak drafting table equipped with two cheap clay inkwells and three sheets of coarse, grayish mulberry bark paper.
Across the ring stood Scholar Han, the premier magic charm prodigy of the Golden Script Guild.
Han was eighteen years old, dressed in flowing robes of azure silk stitched with silver astrological charts along the sleeves. His workstation was carved from solid sandalwood, bearing five crystal dishes filled with red stone ground from royal spirit-wells.
In Han’s right hand rested his weapon. The Nine-Star Dragon-Beard Brush, a legendary heirloom valued at ten thousand spirit stones, its metal ring carved from white mutton-fat jade, its bristles gathered from the whiskers of an underground spirit-carp.
The brush didn’t even need manual ink dipping. A spiritual pool in the handle automatically fed high-pressure red stone to the tip in a flawless, computer-straight line.
