The sun dipped behind the western jagged peaks. He cast long, blood-red shadows through the lattice windows of the Magic charm Inspection Hall.
The heavy oak doors creaked open with a slow, deliberate groan.
Proctor Sun marched in, his dark silk robes rustling stiffly over his boots. In his right hand, he carried an official expulsion scroll stamped with the black wax seal of the Disciplinary Hall. In his left, a heavy iron seal inked in indelible vermilion.
Behind him trailed three senior apprentice scribes, smirking openly, eager to watch the “Exploding Scribe” stripped of her sect medallion and marched to the night-soil gates.
“Time has expired,” Proctor Sun announced, his voice ringing through the cavernous stone hall with cold, office finality. “Shen Yue! Present your quarterly quota, or surrender your apprentice badge right away.”
Shen Yue stood beside the long check table.
Her soot-stained face was clean now, washed with cold well water. Even so, the burn holes in her sleeves remained. Her chin was held high, her breathing slow and measured in the exact alternating rhythm Lin Ke had drilled into her skull.
Beside her, leaning against the stonework with his arms tucked into his grey clerk sleeves, Lin Ke stood in silence. He watched the judge with deadpan calm distance.
“Here are my five Flame-Barrier Magic charms, Proctor Sun,” Shen Yue said, her voice clear and fully empty of tremors.
* * *
She gestured toward the velvet-lined dark wood tray on the table.
Arranged in a precise, equidistant row lay five box-shaped slips of pale yellow moon-mulberry paper. Each slip was inscribed with the fine, detailed red hexagrams of the Flame-Barrier scripture, the red stone ink dry, flat, and fully empty of shimmering instability.
Proctor Sun sneered, his sour eyes flicking to the papers with shrugging contempt.
“Five intact sheets?” Sun scoffed, folding his arms. “Any half-blind apprentice can draw five drawings if they dilute the spiritual ink to water. The test isn’t whether the paper survives the brush, girl. The test is energetic retention.”
Sun stepped toward the testing basin in the center of the hall. A two-foot-wide cooking pot of black dark rock carved with energetic dampening runes and filled with raw spirit sand.
“Under Sect Academic Bylaw 12,” Sun lectured pompously, “a standard outer sect Flame-Barrier Magic charm must show a minimum of forty percent energetic retention upon activation. Anything less than forty percent fails to deflect an iron arrow, rendering it combat-ineffective.”
He picked up the first magic charm from the tray with iron tongs.
“Let’s see if your paper holds forty percent. Or if it dissolves into hot grease like the rest of your trash.”
Sun dropped the yellow paper into the center of the dark rock basin, channeled a thin spark of Stage 5 spiritual energy from his index finger. Then it struck the activation node.
FWHUMP.
A sound like an unfurling silk sail swept through the hall.
The magic charm didn’t burn away into ash. The red stone script flared into an intense, blazing bright amber light that swelled outward in a flawless, hemispherical dome of semi-clear golden fire.
The barrier locked into place three inches above the sand.
It didn’t flicker. It didn’t hum with churning shaking. It stood as rigid and still as a dome of solid, polished topaz, fully silent. It cast warm, steady light across the stone ceiling beams.
Proctor Sun blinked, his smug grin faltering.
He reached for the brass test dial mounted on the rim of the basin. A care spiritual gauge designed to measure the thickness and retention of barrier fields.
The bronze needle on the gauge twitched.
It swung past the forty-percent minimum mark without slowing.
Fifty percent. Seventy percent. Eighty-five percent.
With a crisp, metal ping, the needle settled firmly at ninety-four percent.
The three senior apprentices gasped all at once, their eyes bulging as they leaned over the judge’s shoulder to verify the dial.
“Ninety-four percent...?” one apprentice whispered in horror. “That’s impossible! Elder Sun’s personal master-grade magic charms only retain eighty-eight percent!”
“Check the gauge!” Sun snapped, his face turning an ugly shade of plum. “The dampening runes must be fouled with sand!”
He swept the sand with his sleeve, grabbed the second magic charm with his tongs. Then he jammed it into the basin.
FWHUMP.
A second dome of solid, shaking-free golden fire erupted.
The needle swung: Ninety-four point two percent.
Sun shoved the third magic charm into the basin: Ninety-three point eight percent.
The fourth: Ninety-four point one percent.
The fifth: Ninety-four point five percent.
Five in a row tests. Five matching, flawless deployments. A standard deviation of less than zero point four percent across five manual fabrications.
In the world of magic charm crafting, such terrifying consistency was seen only in old family arrays carved by ancient immortals.
Proctor Sun stood frozen before the glowing basin, his iron tongs trembling in his hand.
The heavy iron seal slipped from his fingers, bouncing off the dark wood table and landing face-down in the dust with a hollow thump.
* * *
Lin Ke stepped forward from the shadows, his hands clasped politely in front of his grey robes.
“Proctor Sun,” Lin Ke said in a calm, measured office drone. “Five specimens submitted in rule-following with Quarterly Requisition Docket 7-A. Average energy retention: ninety-four point one percent. Standard variance well within Sect City law Section Nineteen tolerances. Please endorse the passing grade on Line Three.”
Sun turned his head slowly, staring at Lin Ke as though seeing a ghost.
His eyes flicked from the deadpan clerk to Shen Yue, whose chin remained steady and proud. The judge’s teeth ground together with a heard, sickening squeak.
He had promised Young Master Zhao that Shen Yue would be disgraced, expelled. Then he delivered to the debt courts before nightfall. Now, with five flawless ninety-four-percent magic charms registered on the official testing basin in front of four witnesses, signing an expulsion writ would bring an immediate punishment review from the Array Pavilion Elders upon his own head.
Sun shook with suppressed rage. He picked up his seal from the dust, wiped the lint from the face. Then he slammed it onto Shen Yue’s apprentice manifest.
“Passed,” Sun choked out, the word tasting of poison on his tongue.
He shoved the stamped parchment across the table, his eyes burning into Shen Yue’s with poisonous hatred.
As Shen Yue reached for the paper, Sun leaned forward over the desk. His voice dropped into a vicious, sibilant whisper meant only for her ears:
“Don’t rejoice, girl.”
The judge’s lips curled into a hungry sneer.
“You have passed today’s check. But Young Master Zhao has already bought up every merchant contract for high-grade moon-mulberry paper in the province. Tomorrow morning, your family’s workshop will receive a demand notice for five thousand spirit stones in defaulted raw material bonds.”
Sun backed toward the heavy oak doors, his cold laughter echoing down the hallway.
“Let’s see how many ninety-four-percent barriers you can draw... When you have no paper left to write on.”