The dust inside the Outer Sect Historical Registry smelled of mildew, silverfish, and dead empires.
Lin Ke stood before a twelve-foot shelf of rotting bamboo scrolls and yellowed sheepskin registries, his fingers tracing the lacquered spine of the country merchant rolls.
Outside the archive window, the midday bells of the Azure Cloud Sect tolled three times, marking the change of the watch.
To sell thirty metal bars of Grade-3 Feather-Pattern Essence Iron under the Seventh Ward’s ledger was an invitation to office seizure. The Grand Fortune Clan’s rule-book proxies would impound the metal before the ink on the receipt was dry.
I need a shell company, Lin Ke thought. An independent legal entity possessing legacy sovereign trading privileges.
He closed his eyes.
Tianfu. Blame.
At double test model speed, Lin Ke’s enhanced blame engine cut through hundreds of years of office revisions.
He bypassed the modern commercial charters—every guild formed in the last fifty years carried standard “Cartel Harmonization Riders” that subordinated their trading volume to the Grand Fortune monopoly.
He dug deeper into the archive stack, searching the historical commits back to the Third Cleansing Era.
Sixty years ago. Seventy years ago.
There.
A dormant record flared in pale grey text:
Lin Ke analyzed the metadata header.
The charter had been granted to Meng Shan’s late grandfather, Meng Cang, seventy-two years ago. Just then, the quarry clans had carved the foundational terraces of the Azure Cloud Sect.
The charter was issued under the ancient Third Regional Autonomy Mandate. Because of that, it possessed an extraordinary legal grandfather clause:
The South Mountain Stonemason Guild holds sovereign, unending rights to extract, refine, and openly trade any stone or metal resource derived from quarry concessions, exempt from outer sect guild price-fixing decrees and cartel pre-emption covenants.
The Grand Fortune Clan’s monopoly charter had been granted barely twelve years ago.
Under Sect Constitutional Canon 01: Prior Sovereign Charters take total legal precedence over subsequent regional monopolies.
The charter wasn’t dead. It was merely dormant. Shelved because Meng Shan’s family had been too poor to pay the two-spirit-stone biennial office renewal fee!
Lin Ke cut the mental branch.
He opened his physical eyes, pricking his left thumb pad with his iron metal pen.
“Branch checked: main.”
He pulled the heavy bamboo scroll from the bottom shelf, tucked it into his canvas satchel, and walked straight to Elder Wu DeZheng’s office.
Elder Wu was sitting behind his dark wood desk, nursing a cup of expensive chrysanthemum tea and admiring the approved receipt for the two-hundred-stone fine he had levied against Chai Gang’s sponsors.
“Elder Wu,” Lin Ke said, stepping into the room with Meng Shan following close behind.
Wu set his teacup down with a contented smile. “Ah, Clerk Lin! The pride of the Seventh Ward! The Punishment Trial upheld my fine this morning! Young Master Zhao’s steward looked like he swallowed a toad when he passed the spirit stones from their bonded account!”
“That was a tactical skirmish, Elder,” Lin Ke said, unrolling the ancient bamboo charter across Wu’s desk. “This is the strategic encirclement.”
Wu blinked, peering through his round glasses at the mildewed bamboo. “What’s this old junk? ‘South Mountain Stonemason Guild’? Meng Cang? That’s Meng Shan’s dead grandfather! The guild has been defunct for thirty years!”
“Not defunct. Dormant,” Lin Ke corrected, pointing to the red wax seal at the foot of the charter. “Under Sect Office Code, Section 12, Clause 8, an old family craft guild may be reactivated at any time upon payment of back-taxes and submission of Form 09-E: Ancestral Craft Guild Revival and Lineage Row Declaration.”
Lin Ke placed two clean, flawless spirit stones onto the desk beside the bamboo scroll.
“Two stones cover the delinquent filing fee,” Lin Ke said. “Meng Shan is the sole surviving direct grandson of Master Meng Cang. As the legal heir, he’s entitled to immediate reactivation of the South Mountain Stonemason Guild’s sovereign trading charter.”
Wu frowned, picking up the ancient scroll and squinting at the ancient seal-script.
Suddenly, the elder’s eyebrows shot straight up to his receding hairline.
“Clause Four...” Wu gasped, his fat fingers tracing the text. “Sovereign trade exemption? Pre-cartel price autonomy? This... This charter predates the Grand Fortune Clan’s monopoly charter by sixty years!”
“Under Sect Constitutional Canon 01,” Lin Ke said softly, “prior sovereign charters can’t be subordinated to subsequent monopoly agreements. Any try by Zhao Wuji to block South Mountain trade would violate the ancient Founder’s Covenants—a transgression carrying automatic forfeiture of clan merchant standing.”
Elder Wu stared at Lin Ke, then at Meng Shan, and then down at the two spirit stones on his desk.
A terrifying, wicked grin spread across the fat elder’s face.
“You want to use Meng Shan’s grandfather’s guild to bypass Zhao’s forward iron monopoly,” Wu whispered. His belly shook with suppressed laughter. “You want to sell the Seventh Ward’s surplus through an ancient shell company that Zhao Wuji’s lawyers can’t touch!”
“The Seventh Ward will sell raw, raw melted rock waste tailings to the South Mountain Guild for one spirit stone per hundredweight—fully legal under ward salvage regulations,” Lin Ke explained smoothly. “The South Mountain Guild then ‘refines’ that salvage in its private quarry facilities and sells the finished metal bars on the open market. The ward hits its quotas. The guild retains the profits. And Zhao Wuji can’t file a single injunction without violating the Founder’s Covenants.”
Elder Wu grabbed his heavy bronze seal with a triumphant squeal.
“Form 09-E!” Wu barked, pulling a yellow thick parchment scroll from his cabinet and stamping it with thunderous force. “Approved! Approved! Reactivated! Master Meng Shan, you’re now officially the Guildmaster of the South Mountain Stonemason Guild!”
Meng Shan stood stiffly in his leather armor, blinking in shock as Elder Wu thrust the newly stamped gold-and-vermilion charter into his calloused hands.
“I’m... A Guildmaster?” Meng Shan stammered, looking at Lin Ke.
“You’re the legal executive of an unbeatable merchant entity,” Lin Ke said, clapping a slate-grey hand onto Meng Shan’s broad shoulder. “And our first board meeting begins right now.”
Two hours later, under the cover of the dense mountain fog, a heavy handcart rumbled into the chaotic expanse of Cloud Mist Market.
The cart was driven by Meng Shan, who wore a clean linen tunic over his leather cuirass, with the official bronze medallion of the South Mountain Guild pinned prominently to his chest.
Behind the cart walked Lin Ke, dressed in simple traveling robes. His brass measured tongs and pocket ledger tucked into his sash.
Inside the cart, cushioned by straw and wrapped in oiled canvas, lay thirty gleaming metal bars of Grade-3 Feather-Pattern Essence Iron—three hundred pounds of 99.9% pure, rainbow-bright, spiritual steel.
They halted in front of the Spirit Treasure Hall—the largest independent trading emporium in Cloud Mist Market, known across three provinces for its strict neutrality and deep liquidity.
Meng Shan walked through the grand cedar doors. He carried a single twenty-pound metal bar in his bare hands.
He placed the metal onto the check scales in front of Chief Appraiser Song.
CLANG.
The appraiser, a gaunt Foundation Establishment elder with a braided white beard, leaned forward with bored contempt.
He touched the metal bar with his Qi-sensing jade needle.
The needle didn’t just vibrate.
It screamed with a high-pitched, crystal-clear chime. A brilliant halo of silver-blue spiritual soft glow erupted from the metal, casting rainbow-bright feather-pattern shadows across the vaulted timber ceiling of the hall!
Chief Appraiser Song leaped to his feet so fast he knocked his teacup off the table.
“Grade-3 Feather-Pattern Essence Iron!” Song shouted, his voice ringing through the crowded trading floor. Every wandering swordsman, rogue fighter, and blacksmith within fifty paces froze, their heads snapping toward the counter. “Ninety-nine point nine percent purity! Clean dendritic posture! Who refined this?”
Meng Shan stepped forward, chest out, presenting his newly minted charter medallion with stoic quarry dignity.
“The South Mountain Stonemason Guild,” Meng Shan rumbled. His deep voice carried the rock-steady weight of granite. “We have thirty metal bars in the cart outside. Three hundred pounds total.”
Appraiser Song wiped his trembling hands on his silk robes, his eyes bulging with manic skilled greed.
“The Grand Fortune monopoly charges twenty-five spirit stones per pound for Essence Iron of this caliber! What’s your asking price, Guildmaster Meng? Name it!”
Meng Shan took a breath, recalling Lin Ke’s exact order.
He looked around the packed trading hall, meeting the stunned eyes of dozens of outer sect blacksmiths who had been choked by Zhao Wuji’s forward contracts.
“Eleven spirit stones,” Meng Shan declared, his voice ringing like a bronze bell.
“The South Mountain Guild sells Grade-3 Feather-Pattern Essence Iron at an open spot price of eleven spirit stones per pound.”
The entire Spirit Treasure Hall went dead silent for two full seconds.
Then, the trading floor exploded into total, ear-splitting pandemonium.