Meng Shan slammed his iron-hard metal shield onto Inquisitor Xie Dong’s chest bone.
The heavy bronze edge pinned the judge flat against the wet dark rock floor with six hundred pounds of unbending crushing pressure. The leftover fifty Executioners, blinded and scorched by the steam trap, had surrendered their axe-spears to Bao Hong’s foundry crews. Their hands bound with was heavy silver grounding wire.
Xie Dong lay in the sulfur puddle, both arms limp and ruined, blood bubbling from his nostrils.
Yet he looked up at the three thousand scribes gathering at the edge of the cooling gallery. Then, a wet, rattling laugh tore from his throat.
“You think... You’ve won something, mortal?” Xie Dong coughed, spitting a mouthful of clotted black blood onto Meng Shan’s boots. “You think you can hold me hostage and trade for terms with the Ninth Thunder Court?”
Zhao Wuji stepped forward, adjusting his cuffs. “An Judge-General of the Internal Enforcement Division is worth at least three million spirit stones and a full pardon from the Grand Clerk hall.”
“I’m worth nothing!” Xie Dong snarled, his eyes bulging with fanatical malice. “To Lord Lei Qian, I’m an expendable ink brush! Before I dropped to this sewer, the Minister noticed the tracking data anomalies in the dispatch logs. He knows the registry is compromised.”
