“Enough!”
The roar of Marquis Zhao shattered the morning air like the blast of a siege cannon.
The golden sedan chair plunged three feet downward. It slammed into the road with a violent crunch of gravel. The Marquis stepped off the floating platform. Clad in full golden dragon-scale plate, the Soul Formation warlord strode toward the check table, each stride causing the earth to tremble beneath his boots. A choking halo of golden, flame-like spiritual pressure radiated from his broad shoulders, scorching the nearby clover and wilting the roadside grass in an expanding circle of brown ash.
The dragon-guards instantly snapped to attention, their axe-spears raised in salute.
Scribe Wu dropped to his knees in the mud, bowing his head until his winged cap touched the dirt. “Lord Marquis! Forgive this miserable servant! This insolent beggar is weaving demonic sophistry to confuse the Ministry’s arithmetic! He seeks only to stall your wrath!”
Marquis Zhao stopped three paces from Lin Tao, his towering six-and-a-half-foot frame dwarfing the slender mortal.
The Marquis’s hand gripped the handle knob of his dragon-bone broadsword. The weapon was humming with unsheathed, lethal intent. His golden eyes, slitted like a hunting beast’s, bore down into Lin Tao with the plain murderous fury of a royal noble who had never in his life been contradicted by a commoner. The heat rolling off his armor was like standing before an open smelter hearth, baking the sweat dry on Lin Tao’s forehead. The dragon-bone sword sheath pulsed with hungry crimson…
