The shadow of the royal dreadnought Heavenly Mandate lay across the mountain road like an iron shroud.
Four hundred paces above the blossoming meadow, the warship’s sixteen floating arrays shook with an unrelenting, low-hum that set the pebbles on the road dancing. A choking smell of scorched copper and white-hot stone oil drifted down upon the wind, mixing uneasily with the sweet scent of wild clover and blooming mountain pears. High above the copper keels, hundreds of bronze-clad royal sailors moved along the weather decks like ants across a floating city, their polished breastplates catching the morning glare.
Lord Scribe Wu stood on the damp turf. He grabbed the three-foot sky silk scroll in his trembling, ring-adorned hands.
Behind him, twenty royal dragon-guards stood with axe-spears lowered. Their bronze chestplates reflected the morning sun in dazzling glints of gold. Marquis Zhao remained seated upon his floating sedan chair, hovering three feet above the ground. The Marquis’s face was a high-born mask of carved marble, his cold eyes fixed on Lin Tao’s ragged gray traveling coat with deep contempt. Between the hovering warships and the blooming fields, the mountain air felt charged with static, every hair on Lin Tao’s forearms prickling with latent electric potential.
