The rain turned the melted rock waste heaps into grey, bubbling grease.
Lin Ke stood in the shadow of the drafting shed. He watched three figures huddled beneath an oiled leather awning at the North Market Gate. Each man wore the black-and-gold shoulder tab of the Grand Fortune Merchant Clan, with heavy iron-headed clubs resting against their hips.
The man in the center was Zhao Ba. A thick-necked, scar-faced outer student at Qi Gathering 3, infamous for breaking the thumbs of defaulting debtors.
Beside Lin Ke, Meng Shan wiped rain from his heavy jaw.
“Zhao Ba has been out there since dawn,” Meng Shan murmured. “He stopped Old Man Liu’s cabbage cart three hours ago, overturned every basket, and dumped the cabbages into the mud looking for hidden brass wire. He has an official warrant from the Outer Court Market Checker office authorizing ‘Contraband Interdiction’.”
Lin Ke looked down at his ledger.
Sect bylaws were rigid, massive stone, and brutally punitive. Clause 14 of the Outer Office Code stated that any student caught transferring refined metal outside approved guild syndicates was subject to immediate seizure, thirty lashes with a copper whip, and three years in the lower sulfur shafts.
To Zhao Wuji, controlling the gate was simple arithmetic. If the Seventh Ward couldn’t sell its surplus, it couldn’t buy food, herbs, or replacement tools. Within two months, the ward would enter insolvency. He allowed the Grand Fortune Clan to foreclose on its smelting crucibles for pennies on the spirit stone.
“We need to get one hundred and fifty pounds of Cold-Patterned Iron through that gate,” Meng Shan said. “Could we take the western cliff path? It’s steep, but—”
“No,” Lin Ke interrupted.
He didn’t need to guess. He started a mental branch.
Tianfu. Branch.
In the grey sandbox, Lin Ke ran the western cliff route.
The path was an eighty-degree incline over slick, mossy shale. In test model, Meng Shan hauled the seventy-pound iron pack without incident, but when Lin Ke stepped onto the loose scree, a slab of shale gave way under his right boot.
He dropped four feet onto an outcrop.
Snap.
The blunt impact sent an axial blast wave directly up his left shin bone. His hardened, melted rock waste-choked marrow couldn’t absorb the shaking. The bone snapped cleanly across the mid-shaft.
Next, he simulated bribing the gate guards.
Lin Ke approached with five low-grade spirit stones. In test model, Zhao Ba took the stones with a sneer, called the three debt-inspectors from the guardhouse, and taken away the cart anyway. The Grand Fortune Clan paid them an annual retainer of fifty stones. Five stones was an insult that merely confirmed guilt.
Never fight a firewall on its own terms, Lin Ke reminded himself coldly. You don’t break through a firewall. You forge an office packet with higher priority headers.
He examined the rule-book landscape.
Who had power over the North Market Gate? The Market Checker office.
Who had power over the Market Checker office? The Outer Court General Office—specifically, Elder Wu DeZheng’s department when it pertained to dangerous materials and sanitary disposal.
And what was Elder Wu’s single greatest terror?
Not debt. Not Lin Ke.
Elder Wu lived in mortal, paralyzing fear of the Royal Outside and Sanitation Board. The traveling royal inspectors who arrived once every three years to inspect sect disposal pits. If a checker found unbonded toxic waste pooling near residential quarters, the head elder was stripped of his pension and fined ten thousand spirit stones.
Lin Ke modeled the office packet.
A dangerous waste disposal dispatch. Form 44-A: Expedited Escape of Corrosive Fire Melted rock.
If properly drafted, the document didn’t just authorize transport. It legally commanded immediate escape to the deep quarry pits outside the northern outer edge. Pits that happened to share an unfenced boundary with Cloud Mist Market.
Under Clause 8 of the Imperial Sanitation Mandate, any student or checker who delayed or obstructed dangerous waste transport was personally liable for all outside cleanup fines.
Lin Ke cut the mental branch.
He slipped his left hand into his sleeve, found his iron metal pen. Then he pricked the calloused skin of his thumb.
“Branch checked: main,” he muttered.
“What now, Brother Lin?” Meng Shan asked, noticing the flat, icy calm in Lin Ke’s eyes.
“We don’t smuggle metal,” Lin Ke said, picking up his brush and a roll of official yellow office parchment. “We provide an urgent public sanitation service.”
Ten minutes later, Lin Ke was standing in Elder Wu DeZheng’s private accounting office.
The room smelled of dry paper and high-grade tea. Elder Wu was sitting behind a huge dark wood desk, carefully counting tiny jade tally-sticks into small velvet bags. His lips moving in was silent, anxious arithmetic.
“Elder Wu,” Lin Ke said, stepping across the threshold without knocking.
Wu jumped, nearly knocking over his inkstone. He scowled, clutching his chest. “Lin Ke! Have you no manners? I’m conducting delicate fiscal checks! What’s it now? Did Crucible Four crack?”
“Crucible Four is functioning within settings,” Lin Ke said, laying the yellow scroll flat across Wu’s desk. “The issue is the waste scum. The high-sulfur cold tailings Zhao Wuji delivered.”
Wu’s face puckered with disgust. “The waste scum? What about it? Dump it behind the shed!”
“We can’t,” Lin Ke replied, his voice deadpan and serious. “The sulfur-pyrite content reacted with our bitter salt flux, producing super-packed acidic ferric sulfate sludge. It’s currently leaching through the stone floor of the refuse pit.”
Elder Wu blinked. “So what? It’s just dirty water.”
“It’s thirty paces from the underground intake channel that supplies the Grand Elder’s lotus pond,” Lin Ke lied smoothly, his eyes unblinking. “If that acid reaches the lotus roots before sunset, the petals will turn black. When the Imperial Sanitation Checker office conducts its triennial water-table audit next month...”
Lin Ke paused, letting the silence hang like a headsman’s axe.
Elder Wu’s chubby cheeks lost every trace of color. The jade tally-sticks slipped from his numb fingers, clattering across the dark wood desk.
“The... The lotus pond?” Wu whispered, his voice rising an octave. “The Grand Elder’s pond? An... An Royal water audit?”
“If acidic contamination is detected,” Lin Ke recited from memory, citing Section 14, Paragraph 9 of the Royal Environmental Mandate, “the head office elder is held strictly and personally liable for outside remediation costs. Penalties begin at eight thousand spirit stones, with the immediate mid-air and forfeiture of all piled up retirement pension benefits.”
“Eight thousand stones!” Wu shrieked, half-rising from his cushioned chair. “My pension! They’ll strip my seal! They’ll send me to the southern salt marshes!”
“Not if we act right away,” Lin Ke said. He pointed a finger to the bottom of the yellow scroll. “I have drafted Form 44-A: Emergency Hazardous Waste Remediation and Holding Dispatch. It authorizes the Seventh Ward to right away transport three sealed barrels of acidic slurry to the deep outer quarry pits for limestone neutralization.”
Wu grabbed his official bronze seal with both hands. His fingers shook so wildly he could barely hold it straight.
“Sign it! Stamp it!” Wu gasped, splashing red vermilion ink across the bottom of the scroll and slamming the heavy seal down with all his weight. “Take ten carts! Take twenty! Get that poisonous muck off sect grounds right away! If anyone tries to stop you, tell them I’ll have them flayed!”
“One cart will suffice, Elder,” Lin Ke said, calmly picking up the wet, stamped scroll. “We’ll ensure sect purity is kept.”
Lin Ke stepped out of the office, the ink still warm against the parchment.
In the courtyard, Meng Shan had already loaded the heavy two-wheeled timber handcart.
At the very bottom of the cart lay one hundred and fifty pounds of Grade-2 Cold-Patterned Iron metal bars, laid flat and wrapped tightly in greased pigskin to prevent any metal clinking.
Above the metal bars, suspended on a false wooden floor Lin Ke had knocked together from discarded crates, sat two massive, open-topped oak barrels.
The barrels were filled to the brim with foul, bubbling, rotten-egg black sludge—the direct byproduct of their fire purge, mixed with rotten cabbage water and stale urine from the latrines to produce an eye-watering, gag-inducing stench.
“Load the draft notice on the front rail,” Lin Ke instructed Meng Shan. “Pull slowly. Don’t jog. Let the smell precede us.”
Meng Shan gripped the cart shafts, his broad shoulders flexing as he leaned into the leather harness. The cart lurched forward, its iron-rimmed wooden wheels rumbling heavily against the wet cobblestones.
As they approached the North Market Gate, the rain settled into a greasy mist.
Zhao Ba saw them coming from fifty paces away. The guard wrinkled his nose, spitting a mouthful of betel nut into the ditch as the choking stench of sulfur and rancid waste hit the guard post.
“Halt!” Zhao Ba barked, stepping into the center of the road.
Behind him, two armed debt-inspectors drew their iron-tipped cudgels, spreading out to block both flanks.
“What’s this filth?” Zhao Ba demanded, his hand resting on the handle of his heavy steel sabre. He glared at Lin Ke with open malice. “No cart leaves the heavy-duty precinct without Grand Fortune clearance. Drop the shafts.”
Meng Shan set the cart down with a heavy, squelching thud.
Lin Ke stepped forward, unrolling the yellow parchment so the thick, red stone-red seal of Elder Wu was displayed prominently in the lantern light.
“Form 44-A,” Lin Ke stated, his voice flat as cold slate. “Emergency Hazardous Waste Escape. Acidic fire runoff. Moving to the outer quarry for chemical neutralization.”
Zhao Ba sneered, barely glancing at the scroll. “I don’t give a damn about your fire runoff, little clerk. My cousin, Young Master Zhao Wuji, gave specific orders: nothing with metal content passes this gate. Step back.”
Zhao Ba reached behind the guard post bench. Then he pulled out an eight-foot solid iron probing rod, its narrowed tip designed to pierce through cargo sacks to detect hidden ore.
“You smell like shit, Lin Ke,” Zhao Ba chuckled. He stepped toward the barrels with a vicious grin. “Let’s see if you’re hiding sixty pounds of stolen iron bloom under this soup.”
Zhao Ba raised the heavy iron probe, positioning the sharp tip directly above the center of the first sludge barrel.
Lin Ke didn’t flinch.
Beneath his sleeve, his right hand rested lightly against his pocket ledger, his mind calculating the angle, speed, and fluid dynamics of the dropping steel.
Probe incoming, Lin Ke thought. Target depth: twenty-four inches. False bottom located at eighteen inches.
Zhao Ba smiled cruelly, gripped the rod with both hands, and drove it down with all his weight.