The challenge thrown down by Lin Tao was an economic declaration of war.
In the private watching box overlooking the auction stage, Guild Master Jin’s hand gripped the gold-trimmed railing so tightly that the polished rosewood cracked beneath his rings. His face was a dark, poisonous mask of murderous rage, his Late Foundation Establishment aura leaking out in freezing gusts of wind that made the red silk curtains shudder.
“Insolvent?” Jin snarled, his voice carrying down to the stage like the grating of two millstones. “The Golden-Sable Trade ring has cleared forty million silver transactions without a single default! You dare insult the strength of our banking house in front of the southern nobility?”
Lin Tao stood beside the star-iron cask, his four-inch steel metal pen resting in his right fingers, his expression fully undisturbed by the elder’s killing intent.
“Then clear the account, Guild Master Jin,” Lin Tao replied quietly. “Thirty-six thousand silver bits. Place your settlement ring on the central locked deposit stone stand and verify your liquidity. Unless your vaults are as empty as your promises.”
The eight hundred merchants in the hall watched in total, stone-hard silence. To challenge the trade ring’s solvency in open court was unheard of. Yet the boy stood there with thirty casks of genuine sky dew in his ring and the star-gold Dragon Medallion on his chest.
