The morning fog in the Disciplinary Courtyard was thick, cold, and smelled of wet granite and stale incense.
Seventy armed guards stood frozen in their ranks. Their polished iron polearms shook in their gauntlets. Not a single man raised his weapon. In the harsh, superstitious hierarchy of the Azure Cloud Sect, death was supposed to be final. It was sealed beneath mountains of rock and court ink. Yet standing before them on the polished white flat stone slabs was an entire working shift of eighty soot-stained miners, their eyes clear, their breathing steady, and their shoulders broad under the weight of iron and stolen treasure.
At the head of the marble stairs, Elder Song’s face had drained of all office arrogance. The elder stared down at Lin Tao, his thin lips twitching in disbelief, his right hand still hovering near the spilled black ink on his sandalwood desk.
Beside him, Overseer Hu was shivering wildly. The bronzed breastplate across his chest rattled with every wild breath in, the scarlet silk sash fluttering against his thighs.
“Guards!” Hu shrieked again, his voice cracking into a shrill, frantic pitch that echoed off the high marble rows of stone pillars. “Why do you stand there like wooden stumps? Cut them down! They’re escaped convicts using foul sorcery to impersonate the dead!”
The seventy guards looked toward Elder Song. In the Disciplinary Bureau, an overseer could bark orders. But no guard dared draw blood in the central courtyard without the explicit nod of the head judge.
Elder Song didn’t nod.
The elder’s sharp, calculating eyes traveled from Lin Tao’s calm face down to the massive hardwood crates resting on the flat stone slabs.
“Silence, Overseer Hu,” Elder Song commanded, his voice cold, dry, and sharp as a razor. “This is the Disciplinary Hall of the Azure Cloud Sect, not a common slaughterhouse. No man is carried out in this court until his tally has been checked.”
Song stood up from his sandalwood desk, smoothing the luxurious sable furs around his narrow shoulders. He dropped three marble steps, his gaze fixing on the four hardwood crates carried by Tie Shan and eleven hardened quarry haulers.
“You,” Song said, pointing a long, jade-tipped finger directly at Lin Tao. “You’re the slave Lin Tao. The records state you were crushed two hours ago beneath fifty tons of metamorphic granite in Sector Four.”
“The records were filed in haste, Elder,” Lin Tao replied quietly, his voice ringing with steady, cold and exact clarity. “A physical audit needs physical check. We have brought both.”
Lin Tao turned toward Tie Shan and gestured with his chin.
Tie Shan stepped forward, his boots ringing like anvils against the marble. With a single, fluid heave of his massive shoulders, the giant dropped the main hardwood crate onto the center flat stone slabs.
CRACK.
The white marble beneath the crate shattered into a spiderweb of hairline fissures under the crushing weight.
Tie Shan wedged his iron pry-bar beneath the lid, gave a single sharp twist of his thick wrists. Then it ripped the hardwood planking apart.
The morning sun, breaking through the gray valley mist, struck the inside of the crate.
A blinding, rainbow-bright emerald glare exploded across the courtyard. Packed tightly within layers of dried mountain moss were eighty solid metal bars of refined copper flux, each six inches long, shimmering with the intense spiritual soft glow of packed earth-veins.
A collective gasp ripped through the seventy guards.
Even Elder Song flinched, his narrow eyes expanding until the whites showed fully around his pupils.
“Refined copper flux...” Song whispered, his breath catching in his throat. “Grade One potion-made spark... Four hundred pounds in a single chest...”
“Sixty-four tons, Elder,” Lin Tao said smoothly, stepping beside the shattered crate. “Stacked in two hundred and twelve sealed crates within the abandoned Precursor water tank beneath the third drainage water chute. Each crate is branded with the crimson seal of the Disciplinary Bureau, and signed with the private warehouse mark of Acting Senior Overseer Hu.”
Old Man Geng stepped forward from the ranks of the miners, his clouded eye-milky eyes blazing with righteous fury. He held up a set of heavy brass balance scales, thrusting them toward the court desk.
“Look at the pivot, Elder!” Old Geng rasped, his voice trembling with years of suppressed hatred. “Hu hollowed out the brass pivot and poured six ounces of lead into the tare balance weight! For five years, every basket of ore we dug was weighed light by fifteen percent! He starved our sons, whipped our elders, and reported the veins as barren to pocket the surplus for his own smuggling ring!”
Lin Tao reached into his tunic. Then he drew the yellow parchment retrieved from the assassin in Sector Nine. He unrolled it with a single flick of his wrist, holding it high for every guard to see.
“And when his stolen cache grew too large to hide from your dawn audit, Elder Song,” Lin Tao continued, his voice cutting through the frozen courtyard, “he hired blades of the Black-Ditch Brotherhood to murder his laborers in the dark. Stamped with his personal copper seal. Stamped with his blood.”
The silence in the courtyard was total.
Overseer Hu looked at the gleaming flux, looked at the hollowed brass scales. Then he looked at the crimson wax seal fluttering in Lin Tao’s grip. Every route of office evasion, every made ledger, every lie he had prepared had been crushed into dust by undeniable physical weight.
In the Azure Cloud Sect, stealing sixty-four tons of strategic flux was High Treason. The punishment was not mere decapitation. It was nine days of spirit vein flaying followed by public dissolving in the potion-made fire.
Hu’s eyes rolled back in pure, manic terror.
“Lies!” Hu screamed, his sanity snapping like dry kindling. “All of it’s lies! You filthy quarry rat, you crawled out of hell to ruin me!”
With a screech of scraping metal, Hu tore his ritual broadsword from its sword sheath.
A jagged blade of pale yellow Qi erupted along the three-foot steel edge, crackling with the violent, unstable energy of an early Foundation Establishment brute. Hu lunged down the marble steps, his blade aimed straight for Lin Tao’s throat.