By noon, the last bronze dragon-prow of the Third Imperial Fleet had cleared the northern mountain pass, vanishing into the heavy cloud banks that blanketed the central territories.
The silence that returned to the Southern Sovereign Basin was complete, pure, and eternal.
Lin Tao stood upon the high limestone ridge overlooking the great boundary pass. Behind him, stretching as far as the eye could see across seven liberated provinces, the rolling green plains of the Southern Sovereign Basin rippled in the spring breeze. Millions of acres of fertile, dark soil were soaking up unmetered ice-slow runoff. Wild clover and steppe grass waved in thick emerald waves. And in fifty thousand mortal hamlets, peasants were plowing their fields without fear of sky tax-ships. The iron bells in the distant village watchtowers chimed with clear, peaceful strokes, announcing the beginning of the spring planting season.
The ancient Precursor boundary pylons along the ridge were fully awake.
Their slender, black glass-like giant pillars pulsed with steady, rhythmic sapphire light. They projected an invisible, unbending magnetic quarantine barrier that sealed the southern airspace against royal drain tubes and secret sky-fleets. The air near the giant pillars smelled of ozone and crushed quartz. It hummed with the clean, grounded hum of a world-size system restored to baseline balance. Below on the lower terraces, mortal irrigation teams were already uncoupling the bronze pipes of the dismantled drain tube towers, redirecting cool mountain water into community reservoirs.
