The Grand Commodity Exchange of the Heavenly River was a huge, vaulted tiered arena spanning three hundred paces. He was built from banded star-granite and heavy with heavy Precursor iron arches.
Inside, the roar of human commerce was ear-splitting.
More than four thousand traders, ship captains, potion-made brokers, and sect buyers crowded the tiered marble galleries, waving wooden bidding sticks, shouting fractional price quotes, and tossing brass message cylinders to runners sprinting through the aisles. Above the central trading pit hung a massive clockwork price board. A sixty-foot Precursor brass rig where thousands of numbered plates clattered and flipped continuously. It tracked the minute-by-minute fluctuations in grain, spirit ore, and magic charm paper.
Clack-clack.
Lin Tao and Tie Shan stood at the entrance of the trading floor, the crowd of silk-robed merchants parting around the giant’s massive frame like river water breaking against a granite reef.
Tie Shan carried his twelve-pound iron pry-bar in his right hand, the chisel point tapping softly against the stone floor with every second step:
Ting... Ting... Ting.
The clear, metal sound was quiet. But it carried a clear, heavy thickness that made nearby traders turn their heads, their eyes widening as they noticed the crimson silk sash with the silver tigers and the star-gold Dragon Medallion on Lin Tao’s chest.
