The wind off the northern pass grew colder, rustling the gold-threaded silk scrolls across the pear-wood check table.
Lin Tao’s metal pen moved with clean, steady care. It slid from the country check tables to the central share-out schedules at the bottom of the fourth silk panel. His left eye tracked the glowing red stone traces, following the tiny current-carrying pathways that linked the Southern Basin’s debt directly into the central treasury’s master ledger in the Celestial Capital. The lines branched and looped across the silk like an overgrown thicket of wild brambles, with dozens of ancient ministerial validation seals nested within one another like puzzle boxes.
Beside the table, Scribe Wu’s smug expression was beginning to curdle into deep, gnawing unease.
The royal scribe had expected the ragged mortal to cry, beg for mercy, or try to dispute the sacred power of the Emperor’s seal. Instead, Lin Tao was treating the Master Tribute Ledger like a malfunctioning high-pressure pump, systematically isolating every pipe and valve to find where the pressure had backed up. Every question Lin Tao asked peeled away another layer of office illusion. He exposed the crude machinery beneath the sky poetry.
“Look at this junction,” Lin Tao said, resting the tip of his star-white-gold needle above a complex, spiraling seal embossed in purple gold.
