The bronze-plated gates of the Imperial Patent Tribunal Hall tore open with a violent, high-pressure groan.
Meng Shan lowered his four-hundred-pound iron slab. The blunt edge was dripping with chipped gilt and snapped hinge bolts. Behind him, five hundred rogue fighters, fire smiths, and 404 Workshop apprentices poured into the great marble atrium like an uncurbed river breaking an earthen dyke.
Their iron-toed fire boots left greasy, coal-smudged prints across the polished white spar-stone tiles.
Above them, towering marble pillars rose forty feet to a vaulted ceiling painted with the allegorical triumph of the Four Great Academies over chaos.
The Trial clerks, who had spent decades levying hungry licensing taxes from behind rosewood desks, cowered behind fancy cedar screens. He dropped their brushes and grabbed their ledgers like scared mice.
At the far end of the grand atrium stood the heavy, blast-proof doors of the Grand Provincial Archive Vault—four inches of solid star-iron, embossed with royal patent seals.
The doors were slightly ajar.
Through the gap, the acrid stench of sulfur matches, lamp oil, and burning paper billowed into the hall.
