The hall smelled of ozone, fear, and scorched stone.
The three debt-inspectors who had dropped their clubs suddenly drew their short steel swords. Their blades shivered in the lantern light as they shielded the trembling Inspector Chai.
“Demonic arts!” one checker yelled, his voice cracking with hysteria. “He used a hidden talismanic plate under his skin! No mortal bone can bend an eighty-pound iron heavy club! Call the Disciplinary Vanguard!”
From the upper stairwell, a flurried, panting commotion broke out.
“Stop! In the name of the Outer Court Clerk hall, cease all hostilities!”
Elder Wu DeZheng came tumbling down the stone steps, his fine silk robes bunched in his fists, his face purple from hard effort. Behind him trailed two confused outer sect record-keepers holding stacks of ledgers.
Wu reached the landing, stopped dead. Then he saw the shattered blast door, the crushed flat stone slabs, and Chai Gang clutching his bloody, out-of-joint wrists in the corner.
Elder Wu’s knees nearly buckled.
“A bloodbath...” Wu wheezed, clutching his chest with both hands. “On my watch... Four years before retirement... They’ll strip my pension... They’ll feed me to the mountain carp...”
“Elder Wu!” Inspector Chai recovered his voice, stepping forward and brandishing the crimson scroll like a shield. “You arrive at the opportune moment! Your assistant clerk, Lin Ke, has wildly resisted a lawful check by the Outer Court Checker office! He has assaulted Senior Disciple Chai Gang with an unlisted forbidden build! Under Section 4 of the Disciplinary Code, I demand his immediate execution and the summary seizure of this entire ward!”
Elder Wu looked at the bent iron heavy club lying on the floor, then at Lin Ke, who stood bare-chested and calm, streaming the physical mass of an iron mountain.
“Lin Ke...” Wu squeaked, trembling. “Did... Did you strike Senior Disciple Chai?”
“I didn’t strike anyone, Elder,” Lin Ke replied. His voice was calm, clear, and fully empty of fight-or-flight rush. “Senior Brother Chai struck my forearm with an unbonded weapon. The weapon suffered material fatigue and failed under its own moving heavy rush. As you can see, I’m unarmed.”
Lin Ke raised his empty hands, displaying his flawless, pale skin.
“Lies!” Inspector Chai shouted. “Look at the writ! We have a legal mandate to inspect and seize!”
Inspector Chai thrust the crimson parchment toward Elder Wu’s nose.
Lin Ke didn’t look at the ink with mortal eyes.
He focused his spiritual intent into his optic nerves, activating his newly refined system test.
Tianfu. Blame.
In the grey sandbox of his mind, the parchment dissolved into chronological commit layers.
Every brushstroke carried an energetic timestamp. A leftover soul imprint left by the scribe who had ground the ink and pressed the seal.
The test stack trace unfolded with crystal-clear clarity:
Lin Ke smiled. It was a cold, thin, terrifying smile. The smile of a systems administrator who had just found an unsigned root exploit in an intruder’s script.
“Elder Wu,” Lin Ke said, his voice ringing like a bronze gong through the hall. “Don’t look at the text. Look at the vermilion seal on line four.”
Wu paused, blinking through his sweat. “Line four?”
“The seal belongs to Junior Inspector Liu of the Third Logistics Bureau,” Lin Ke said. He stepped closer and pointing with a slate-grey index finger. “Under Sect Office Statute 88, Clause C, an emergency on-site search of a Grade-An heavy-duty smelting work-yard needs the explicit, third-tier counter-signed name of Chief Inspector Han of the Punishment Trial.”
Inspector Chai’s face instantly lost every drop of blood.
“Also,” Lin Ke continued, his tone cold and exact and merciless, “the red stone ink of that seal is barely six hours old. It was stamped at three in the morning. Eleven hours after you issued Form 44-D, Elder Wu. They backdated the header to create the illusion that their check preceded your biosecurity quarantine order.”
Lin Ke turned his pitch-black eyes onto Inspector Chai.
“In plain sect terms: this is an unsigned, secret, backdated instrument. Senior Disciple Chai Gang and Inspector Chai didn’t execute a lawful audit. They committed armed trespass against an Elder’s direct quarantine seal.”
The hall went deathly silent.
Elder Wu stood frozen.
His eyes darted from line four of the parchment, to the wet, smeared red stone seal, to Inspector Chai’s trembling hands, and finally to Chai Gang nursing his bloody wrists against the wall.
The fear in Elder Wu’s plump chest suddenly reversed flow-charge.
The man was scared of the Royal Checker office. He was scared of losing his pension.
But a petty junior checker bypassed his power. Then, forged a writ in his own district. Then he smashed down his heavy-duty blast doors four years before his retirement?
That was not fear.
That was office fury.
“You...” Elder Wu’s voice began as a low, dangerous rumble.
“Elder Wu, wait—” Inspector Chai stammered, backing toward the stairs.
“YOU FORGED A WRIT IN MY WARD?!” Elder Wu roared, his double chin quivering with righteous, office rage.
The fat elder lunged forward with astonishing speed, snatching the crimson scroll from Inspector Chai’s hands.
Wu shoved the scroll into the face of his record-keeper. “Verify it! Look at that seal! Is Chief Inspector Han’s counter-signed name there?”
The record-keeper adjusted his glasses, took one look, and shook his head wildly. “No signed name, Elder Wu! It’s a Grade-2 junior stamp! It has zero jurisdictional validity over a Class-Four quarantine!”
Elder Wu turned back to Inspector Chai, his eyes bulging with triumphant venom.
“Armed trespass!” Wu shrieked, spitting flecks of spit onto the clerk’s silk lapels. “Destruction of sect blast public works! Gross rule-break of Biosecurity Form 44-D! Tried sabotage of the Seventh Ward’s production quota!”
Wu pointed a trembling, furious finger at Chai Gang.
“Confiscate that bent iron heavy club as material evidence of criminal vandalism! Record-keeper! File Form 99-B: Immediate Jurisdictional Contempt and Extortion Fine ticket! Levy a punitive fine of two hundred spirit stones against the Grand Fortune Merchant Clan’s local bonded account!”
“Two hundred stones!” Inspector Chai gasped, his knees shaking. “Young Master Zhao will—”
“Young Master Zhao can choke on a bucket of sulfur melted rock waste!” Wu screamed, thoroughly drunk on his newfound office leverage. “Get out of my ward! Get out before I summon the True Core Elders to impound your clan’s warehouses for contempt of sect governance!”
Chai Gang didn’t wait to be told twice.
The broken guard scrambled to his feet, cradling his bloody wrists. Then he bolted up the stone stairwell like a whipped dog.
Inspector Chai and the three debt-inspectors followed right behind him, tripping over their robes in their haste to escape Elder Wu’s wrath.
The heavy thud of the outer gate slamming shut echoed down the hall.
Elder Wu stood on the landing. He panted heavily, clutching the forged crimson scroll to his chest like a trophy of war.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a trembling sleeve. Then he turned slowly to look at Lin Ke.
The fat elder looked at Lin Ke’s bare, pale chest, his perfectly upright spine, and the slate-grey metal sheen beneath the skin of his knuckles.
“Lin Ke...” Wu said, his voice dropping to a cautious, awed whisper. “Your... Your arm. It really bent eighty pounds of iron?”
“Material deep ring, Elder,” Lin Ke said deadpan, without a trace of pride. “The heavy club was forged from poorly cooled pig iron with too much carbon brittleness. When struck against high-thickness bone, the moving wave reflected inward.”
Wu stared at him, then let out a long, wheezing breath that sounded like a deflating bellows.
“I don’t care about carbon,” Wu muttered, waving a hand dismissively. “I care that the writ is dead, the Grand Fortune Clan owes us two hundred stones. My pension is safe.”
Wu turned toward the stairs, then paused, looking back over his shoulder.
“The monthly quota, Lin Ke. Can you pour the leftover sixty pounds?”
“We’ll pour two hundred pounds before sunset, Elder,” Lin Ke replied. “Grade-2 Cold-Patterned Iron. All officially approved under Form 12-A.”
Elder Wu smiled—a wide, oily, contented smile. “Excellent. The Seventh Ward now has full, unimpeded clearance to trade its surplus. Keep the furnaces burning, Clerk Lin.”
Wu scurried up the stairs to file his citations.
Lin Ke stood in the quiet cellar.
Meng Shan and Shen Yue stepped out of the shadows of the vault. She looked at him with awe and relief.
“We won,” Shen Yue whispered, her eyes shining.
“We survived the audit,” Meng Shan corrected, picking up his shovel with a grim nod.
Lin Ke looked down at his hands.
The physical commit was saved. The skeleton was refactored. The legal firewall had held.
And deep inside his dantian, the five vortexes of Yang fire were spinning with violent, speeding up speed.
The bottleneck was breaking.
Qi Gathering 4, Lin Ke realized, his eyes narrowing in the dark.
It’s time to compile the next realm.