The spiritual pressure streaming from Elder Yan’s Golden Core foundation felt like thirty tons of wet sand pressing down on Lin Ke’s shattered chest.
Lin Ke lay on the improvised axe-spear stretcher, his head resting against a folded wool horse-blanket. A long, three-inch iron acupuncture needle—pushed in by Shen Yue into Acupoint Fengchi at the base of his skull—hummed faintly, bleeding off leftover skull static to keep his vision from blacking out entirely.
Standing to the right of Elder Yan’s hovering jade disk, hands tucked comfortably into wide sleeves of white ermine-trimmed brocade, was Young Master Zhao Wuji himself.
Zhao Wuji had arrived by private flying barge the moment the border wards cleared.
His face was smooth, pale, and high-born, unmarred by a single speck of fire soot or mountain mud. A faint, contemptuous smile curved his lips as he looked down at Lin Ke, the look of a royal merchant prince observing a cockroach that had somehow managed to soil his silk slippers.
Beside Zhao stood Merchant Liu, clutching his five-wax-stamped ledger with gloating satisfaction.
“Elder Yan,” Zhao Wuji said, his voice melodic, cultured, and carrying the easy rhythm of easy high-born privilege. “The Grand Fortune Trade ring filed the first grievance two hours ago. As you can see, the Great Iron Vein’s main lift shaft has been collapsed, thirty yards of sovereign curtain wall lie in ruins. The monitoring array at the country capital detected an unsanctioned, ultra-high-thickness purple lightning pillar of demonic origin erupting directly from this…
