The final breath of the royal fleet came with the setting of the sun.
The golden light faded behind the western limestone ridges. Then, the last backup charge bank inside the flagship’s third holding deck discharged with a soft, mournful sigh that sounded like air escaping a punctured bellows. A faint puff of blue, aromatic ozone drifted from the lower gun deck. It was followed by total, unbroken silence.
Across the entire northern basin, from the pass road to the southern river marshes, all twelve sky-warships were now dark, silent, and dead.
In the cabbage fields of Province Seven, the dragon frigate Iron Phoenix had settled another six inches into the black mud, its bronze dragon prow now serving as a convenient clothesline for three peasant women drying washed hemp linen. In the terraced vineyards, the escort barge Iron Tortoise was fully surrounded by village children who were busily scraping copper scale from its lower trim-vanes to sell to local blacksmiths.
Not a single spirit stone remained lit up in any fire.
In military logistics, Lin Tao observed. He stood beside the cold pear-wood table, an army without fuel is not an army. It’s a huge, hungry civilian population dressed in metal suits. Twelve sky-dreadnoughts carry nearly five thousand mouths that need bread, clean water, and shelter every single day. Marquis Zhao came to collect ten million spirit stones. He is now responsible for five thousand starving men trapped three hundred miles from the nearest royal supply depot.
