The stench of scorched silk rose from Lord Scribe Wu’s waist like burning hair.
“Ai-ya! Hot! It’s burning me!”
The royal scribe shrieked in agony, dancing backward into the mud as he clawed wildly at the iron ring holding his fourteen jade office seals. But the seals were no longer passive chunks of stone. They were trapped in the high-hum spinlock, querying the sky silk sixty thousand times every minute. The spiritual friction generated by the endless looping queries was transforming the jade into glowing heat charge banks.
With a desperate, wild heave, Scribe Wu ripped the sash from his waist and flung the entire iron ring onto the wet grass of the meadow.
The cherry-red jade touched the damp turf. Then, a violent cloud of hissing white steam blew up into the air. The wet clover around the ring shriveled and blackened in seconds, the soil baking into cracked terracotta. The fourteen jade cylinders continued to spin on their iron ring, whining with a high-pitched, mosquito-like shriek that made the dragon-guards clamp their hands over their ears. Small arcs of blue lightning leapt from metal tube to metal tube, etching fractal scorch marks into the muddy earth.
Across the pear-wood table, the Great Tax Scroll was undergoing a similar transformation.
