The morning mist didn’t clear. It thickened into an oily, yellow-green smog that smelled of roasted arsenic and dying embers.
At the fifth watch, the heavy iron boots of twenty armed men echoed along the narrow dark rock defile leading into Pit Seven.
Melted rock waste Overseer Meng walked at the head of the calm distance, wearing a full suit of polished bronze layered-scale armor over his filthy silk robes, a heavy bronze-headed war mace resting across his right shoulder. His face was twisted in a manic, bloodthirsty grin. The betel nut between his yellow teeth dyed his lips a hideous, gore-like crimson.
Behind him marched sixteen pavilion guards wearing studded leather armor. They carried iron-tipped poleaxes and heavy hunting crossbows loaded with barbed steel bolts.
Walking beside Meng was Viper Chen, his chain-scythe coiled loosely around his reptilian arm, his cold eyes scanning the rocky walls for any sign of pushback.
“Surround the pit!” Meng bellowed, his voice echoing off the dark rock cliffs like the roar of a rabid hound. “Block the ramp! Every slave in Pit Seven is declared a rebellious mutineer! Anyone who resists is to be carried out on the spot!”
The sixteen guards moved into a disciplined cordon, leveling their heavy crossbows toward the sunken floor of the basin.
The pit was fully silent.
There was no sound of weeping, no wild scrambling of scared laborers, and no desperate pleas for mercy.
Standing alone at the narrow throat of the basin—a natural chokepoint six paces wide between two towering walls of solid dark rock—was Tie Shan.
The young giant stood barefoot in the cold ash, stripped to the waist. It showed a torso of massive, chiseled bronze thickness that looked as though it had been carved from the mountain itself. His scarred, unbending face showed neither fear nor hatred. His dark eyes were fixed on Overseer Meng with the cold, unmoving patience of a headsman waiting for the clock to strike.
Across his broad shoulders rested his twelve-pound cold-drawn iron pry-bar, balanced as lightly as a willow branch.
Behind Tie Shan, standing on a raised slate ledge twenty paces back, was Lin Tao.
Lin Tao stood with his hands clasped casually behind his back, his patched linen tunic fluttering in the cold volcano bowl wind. His left eye was cool, observant, and glowing with faint emerald tracking data. He watched the approaching soldiers as if reviewing an assembly line of defective parts.
Behind Lin Tao, hidden in the shadows of the stone hut, forty scavengers stood in total, breathless silence. It grabbed heavy iron crowbars and stone-splitting sledges.
Overseer Meng halted ten paces from Tie Shan, sneering in arrogant disbelief.
“Tie Shan, you brainless brute,” Meng spat. He pointed his heavy bronze mace at the giant’s chest. “You think because your skin is thick, you can block twenty armed guards? Drop that iron bar and crawl on your belly. I might only cut off your hands before tossing you into the fire!”
Tie Shan didn’t blink. He slowly lowered the twelve-pound iron pry-bar from his shoulders, planting the blunt chisel-tip into the dark rock flat stone slab between his feet with a bone-shaking THUD that shook through the stone floor.
“The way is shut,” Tie Shan rumbled, his voice low, deep-throated, and shaking with the huge thickness of his Iron-Bone core.
Viper Chen narrowed his slit pupils, his reptilian instincts flaring with sudden, sharp warning. “Overseer... That brute isn’t a mortal coolie. His bone thickness is at the Peak Iron-Bone stage. A crossbow bolt won’t penetrate his muscle.”
“I don’t care if his bones are made of star-iron!” Meng shrieked, his patience snapping under the wild pressure of his rotting lungs. “Crossbows, fire! Put twenty bolts through his throat!”
The guards raised their crossbows.
Before a single trigger could be pulled, Lin Tao’s voice rang out from the raised ledge—calm, cold, and clear as a winter morning bell:
“Overseer Meng. Before you order your guards to commit capital treason, you should inspect the delivery invoice in my hand.”
Lin Tao raised his right hand, unfurling a long parchment scroll that fluttered in the dawn wind.
The scarlet wax seal bearing Meng’s unique thumbprint caught the morning light, perfectly visible to every guard in the front rank.
“Two hundred crates of lethal counterfeit medicine,” Lin Tao declaimed, his voice echoing off the high dark rock tiered arena for every soldier to hear. “Sold to the Black-Viper Triad for four thousand silver bits. Signed with your blood-stamp. Signed with your seal.”
Meng froze, his blood freezing in his veins.
“The Disciplinary Bureau under Elder Song is already reviewing the ledger, Overseer,” Lin Tao continued softly. His gaze locked onto Meng’s bulging, bloodshot eyes. “You came here to bury forty witnesses in the dark. But the ledger is already balanced, and the court is waiting.”
Meng’s sanity snapped.
“Kill them!” Meng screamed, his voice cracking into a spray of bloody foam as he raised his heavy bronze mace and charged forward. “Kill them all! Burn the pit to ash!”
The sixteen guards, whipped into a frenzy by Meng’s hysteria and the promise of double silver bonuses. They raised their iron-tipped poleaxes and charged through the narrow defile in a screaming, bloodthirsty wave.
Tie Shan didn’t retreat.
The young giant drew a massive, shuddering breath of the cold volcano bowl air, his barrel chest swelling until the muscles across his shoulders locked into a solid wall of living bronze. He raised his twelve-pound iron pry-bar with both hands, planting his heavy boots into the stone, his eyes burning with the rock-steady fury of forty men who refused to die in the dark.
Behind him on the ledge, Lin Tao’s left eye flared with brilliant emerald vectors. He locked onto the moving flight path of twenty charging bodies.
The four-inch steel metal pen gleamed in his hand, ready to strike the bedrock.
Lin Tao didn’t feel fear. He felt the cold, crystal-clear focus of an engineer about to execute a stress test on a failing bridge. The sixteen guards, the screaming overseer, and the coiled mercenary were not impossible to climb obstacles. They were merely dynamic mass variables entering a tuned kill zone.
The battle for Pit Seven had begun.