The smell of fresh pine shavings and drying lime whitewash replaced the stench of scorched ozone across the central peak.
Three weeks had passed since the fall of the Heaven-Ascending Pagoda.
Lin Ke sat in a high-backed wooden chair on the terrace of the newly chosen Logistics Clerk hall. His right shoulder was bound securely in stiff leather and cedar splints. A warm sheepskin blanket covered his lap, hiding the healing puncture scars across his thighs.
His glassy glass spirit veins, wrapped in their newly fused Ashen Iron jackets, hummed with clean, low-latency balance.
Across the low tea table, Elder Wu DeZheng was weeping into a bowl of bitter chrysanthemum tea.
“Fifty years!” Wu sobbed, blowing his nose loudly into a ritual silk handkerchief. “Fifty more years of forced office tenure! My old family retirement token was supposed to mature in three years! Now they’ve made me High judge!”
“Supreme High judge of Office Rule-following, Elder Wu,” Lin Ke corrected mildly. He took a careful sip of warm bone-broth with his left hand. “With total veto power over all sect resource allocations.”
“That just means if a grain cart is late, they come to my house to scream!” Wu wuthered, clutching his head in his fat hands. “And look at the borders! The scouts report twelve battle-skiffs from the Iron Sword Pavilion massing near the northern gorge. The Blood River Sect has pitched forty war-tents on the southern riverbank! They think we’re helpless because the Grand Elder is gone!”
