Dawn broke over the high peaks of the Azure Cloud Sect in a shroud of freezing white fog.
In the grand marble courtyard of the Disciplinary Hall, seventy armed guards stood in rigid formation. Their polished iron polearms shone dully in the gray morning light. The banners of the Disciplinary Bureau—black silk stitched with a silver court balance—snapped wildly in the cold mountain wind.
At the top of the white marble steps, seated behind a massive desk of stone-hard sandalwood, sat Disciplinary Elder Song.
The elder was wrapped in luxurious sable furs, his sharp, narrow face tightened in an expression of deep irritation. Before him lay stacks of official bamboo scrolls, tax ledgers, and copper-bound account books. Beside his right hand sat a fine, detailed brass clepsydra water-clock, its slow, rhythmic drips marking the passing seconds.
At the foot of the steps stood Acting Senior Overseer Hu.
Hu was dressed in full formal regalia. A high-collared bronze breastplate, a clean scarlet sash. His ritual broadsword strapped to his hip. His face was pale, his eyes rimmed with red veins from a sleepless night of wild panic. But his stance was puffed up with arrogant, dramatic grief.
“Elder Song,” Hu proclaimed, bowing deeply with exaggerated sorrow, his voice echoing across the silent courtyard for the benefit of the gathered guards. “It’s my mournful duty to report a total natural disaster in Sector Four!”
Elder Song dipped his horsehair brush into dark black ink, his eyelids drooping with cold boredom.
“Proceed, Overseer Hu,” Song said dryly. “The morning is freezing, and my tea is growing cold. What has broken now?”
“At the fourth watch of the night,” Hu declaimed, striking his breastplate with a clenched fist, “a massive earth-shaking shift snapped the bedrock of the central haulage drift. More than fifty tons of hanging granite collapsed, fully obliterating the drift and sealing the lower shafts.”
Hu paused, wiping an imaginary tear from his cheek.
“Eighty debt-bound laborers of the second and third shifts were crushed instantly beneath the stone. Among them was the rebellious slave Lin Tao and his brute friend Tie Shan. I personally led a rescue calm distance to the threshold. But the toxic earth-fumes and falling boulders forced our retreat. To prevent the collapse from propagating to the Upper Sect’s pavilions, I was forced to order the emergency iron drop-gate sealed.”
Elder Song paused, his brush hovering a fraction of an inch above the clean bamboo scroll.
The elder’s sharp, office eyes flicked upward, studying Hu’s trembling hands and the sweat glistening beneath his bronze helmet. Song was a master of office intrigue. He knew that whenever an overseer reported an unpreventable natural disaster, it almost always meant that millions of copper bits had gone missing.
“Eighty men,” Song murmured, his voice silky and dangerous. “That represents thirty percent of this month’s labor force. The Grand Elders expect six thousand pounds of refined copper flux by the full moon, Overseer Hu. How do you propose to meet that quota with eighty corpses rotting beneath fifty tons of granite?”
“It’s an act of the Heavens, Elder!” Hu pleaded, dropping to one knee. “I request an immediate emergency share-out of five hundred silver bits from the Disciplinary Reserve to hire fresh coolies from the outer valleys. An official waiver forgiving this month’s flux deficit!”
Song sighed, tapping the butt of his ink brush against the sandalwood desk.
To forgive the deficit was simple paperwork. To allocate five hundred silver bits was an expense that would need his personal stamp. But an open investigation by the Grand Elders would expose the bribery networks that Song had spent eight years carefully constructing. It was far cleaner, far safer, to sign Hu’s report, bury the eighty dead slaves under the rubble of history, and pocket a thirty-percent kickback from the emergency relief fund.
Song lifted the heavy jade stamp of the Disciplinary Bureau, hovering it over the red vermilion ink-pad.
“Very well, Overseer Hu,” Song said coldly. “Your diligence in containing the collapse is noted. The eighty slaves are declared deceased by act of Heaven. The sector is unsafe.”
Hu’s face broke into a broad, triumphant grin. He had done it. The ledgers were balanced, the witnesses were crushed, and Lin Tao’s insolent throat was choked with stone.
Before the jade stamp could touch the parchment, a sound echoed across the courtyard.
It wasn’t the sound of wind.
It was the deep, rhythmic, earth-shaking thud of marching boots—eighty pairs of iron-shod quarry boots striking the marble paving stones in perfect, terrifying all at once.
The heavy iron gates of the Disciplinary Courtyard shuddered under a massive bone-shaking blow.
The iron bolts snapped with an ear-splitting screech, and the double gates crashed inward. It slammed flat against the marble flat stone slabs.
Through the drifting morning fog, a column of eighty soot-stained miners marched into the courtyard, their faces hardened like chiseled flint. Their hands gripping was heavy crowbars and twelve-pound sledges.
At their head walked Lin Tao, his land-mapper metal pen resting lightly in his callused fingers, his cold, observant eyes locked onto the trembling figure of Overseer Hu. Beside him towered Tie Shan. It carried a massive crate of refined copper flux stamped with Hu’s personal crest.
Elder Song’s jade stamp froze in mid-air, slipping from his fingers to clatter against the sandalwood desk.
Overseer Hu spun around. His face drained of all color until it was as white as tombstone chalk, his jaw hanging open in sheer, pure horror.
“You...” Hu stammered, stumbling backward into the marble stone railing. “You’re dead! You were sealed behind fifty tons of granite!”
Lin Tao halted ten paces from the foot of the marble steps. His voice was calm, measured. Then he carried across the frozen courtyard with the cold clarity of a winter wind:
“The report is inaccurate, Elder Song. The eighty dead have arrived to balance the books.”
The courtyard dropped into a dead, choking silence.
Not a single guard moved. The seventy armed guards stood frozen in their ranks, their iron polearms wavering as they stared in disbelief at the soot-stained column of eighty men standing in the center of the courtyard. The morning fog drifted between the ragged miners. That made them look like an army of vengeful spirits risen from the bowels of the mountain.
At the top of the marble stairs, Elder Song’s face turned from irritation into utter, blank shock. The horsehair brush fell from his limp fingers. It rolled across the official bamboo scroll. Then it left a jagged trail of black ink across the made death certificates.
Beside him, Overseer Hu choked on his own breath. He grabbed the handle of his broadsword with trembling, white-knuckled hands.
“Guards!” Hu shrieked, his voice cracking into a high-pitched, frantic scream that echoed off the high marble walls. “Kill them! They’re escaped convicts! Cut them down before they speak!”