Apprentice Fang didn’t arrive alone.
Behind his two covered carriages walked eight elite outer sect guards wearing polished silver armor and carrying heavy iron axe-spears, their helmets crested with the azure cloud crest of the Seventh Hearth. The carriages were laden with twenty heavy wooden chests. Their iron bands shone under the purple volcano bowl dusk.
Fang leaped down from the driver’s box, his white silk robes spotless, his young face streaming triumphant exhilaration.
He rushed toward the stone hut of Pit Seven. He dropped to one knee before Lin Tao with deep, genuine thanks.
“Master Lin!” Fang exclaimed, his voice ringing with youthful pride. “I delivered the thirty pounds of Dragon-Bone essence to my master an hour before sunset yesterday! When Master Lu tested the purity in his spirit fire, he dropped his jade pipe in shock!”
Lin Tao wiped a speck of copper dust from his sleeve. “Did the cooking pot pass check?”
“Pass?” Fang laughed with pure joy. “Master Lu declared it a miracle of the ancestors! He said the Dragon-Bone essence was purer than anything refined by the Grand Elders in thirty years! He used it to finish his batch of Foundation-Cleansing Pills—and out of a hundred pills, ninety-two were Grade-Eight, with zero pill toxicity!”
Fang stood up, gesturing proudly toward the two heavy carriages resting in the courtyard.
“Master Lu was so delighted that he right away promoted me to Senior Hearth Student!” Fang continued eagerly. “He asked where I got such divine essence. I told him that an ancient reclusive master living in the Lower Slag Pavilion had developed an esoteric technique to reclaim unburned medicine from exploded cooking pots.”
“And what did Master Lu say?” Lin Tao asked calmly.
“He wants a permanent contract!” Fang said, opening the lid of the nearest wooden chest.
The inside of the chest gleamed with stacks of silver metal bars—two thousand silver bits, with thirty high-grade spirit stones and four uncut Precursor star-iron crucibles.
“Master Lu sent two thousand silver bits as an advance payment,” Fang explained. “He promises two hundred silver bits for every pound of purified essence we deliver. He has authorized us to claim every single exploded cooking pot from the Upper Sect’s four refining pavilions! No one will ever question where your scrap comes from again!”
Tie Shan walked over to the chest, picking up an eight-pound metal bar of solid silver. His broad thumb tested the thickness before looking back at Lin Tao with a nod.
“Good trade,” Tie Shan rumbled.
“The trade is acceptable,” Lin Tao said, looking at Apprentice Fang. “We’ll deliver twenty pounds of purified Dragon-Bone essence every fourteen days. But I have two conditions.”
Fang bowed respectfully. “Name them, Master Lin! Anything within the Seventh Hearth’s power is yours!”
“First,” Lin Tao said, pointing to the second carriage, “I want all the damaged formation jade slips and Precursor building fragments stored in the Upper Sect’s scrap vaults. Every broken magic charm, every burnt comms board, and every cracked boundary pylon belongs to me.”
“Consider it done!” Fang said instantly. “The scroll-keepers treat those broken jade slips as worthless trash. They will be glad to clear the shelves!”
“And second,” Lin Tao continued, his eyes narrowing slightly, “I need to know what Senior Deacon Qian is planning.”
Fang’s smile vanished, his face tightening with sudden, uneasy caution. He glanced around the courtyard before leaning in close, his voice dropping to a tense whisper.
“Deacon Qian is furious,” Fang murmured. “He was working with Overseer Meng to move counterfeit pills through the Black-Viper Triad. Now that Meng’s shipments have stopped, Qian has lost thousands of silver bits. He suspects that an outsider has seized control of the Slag Pavilion. He has petitioned the Grand Punishment Trial to dispatch an official clerk to inspect the volcano bowl.”
Lin Tao’s expression remained fully calm, his left eye calculating the timeline.
“When does the clerk arrive?” Lin Tao asked.
“In five days,” Fang whispered. “And Master Lin... The clerk isn’t a common scribe. It’s Senior Inspector Han—a man known across the sect as the ‘Iron Mirror,’ who has never overlooked a single copper bit in forty years.”
Apprentice Fang shivered as he spoke the name. In the Azure Cloud Sect, the name of Senior Inspector Han struck terror into the hearts of corrupt elders and lazy students alike. Han was famous for tearing open the floorboards of old family halls to find hidden silver. He had personally sent three outer sect deacons to the headsman’s block for misplacing fifty pounds of grain.
“Senior Inspector Han doesn’t take bribes, Master Lin,” Fang urged in a wild whisper. “He doesn’t care about favors or family connections. If he finds a single ounce of unexplained spiritual essence in this volcano bowl, he will seize Pit Seven and hand it over to the Grand Trial!”
Lin Tao listened with calm, unblinking eyes.
“An clerk who can’t be bribed is the most predictable entity in any high council, Apprentice Fang,” Lin Tao replied evenly. “A corrupt man will invent crimes to extort silver. But an honest clerk looks only at the numbers. And numbers don’t lie.”
Lin Tao gestured to the neat stacks of bamboo tally scrolls resting on his slate desk.
“Let Senior Inspector Han bring his iron counting frame,” Lin Tao said, a faint, cold smile touching his lips. “We’ll give him a ledger so spotless that he will use it as a teaching manual for his junior scribes. A corrupt bureaucrat hates an honest ledger. But an incorruptible clerk lives and dies by verifiable numbers. We have nothing to hide, and everything to prove.”
Fang let out a long breath, looking at Lin Tao with deep awe. He had never seen anyone, elder or student, speak of the terrifying Senior Inspector Han with such casual, cold and exact confidence.
“I’ll return to the Seventh Hearth before midday, Master Lin,” Fang said, bowing deeply once more. “I’ll search the archive cellars for every scrap of Precursor formation jade I can lay my hands on. When the clerk arrives, the Seventh Hearth stands behind you.”