The news that the Nine-Dragon Barrier had deadlocked spread through the mortal lines like wildfire.
From the western ridges of the Jagged Pass to the eastern swamps of the Iron Dragon Gap, fifty thousand liberated mortals began their disciplined advance across the Desolation of the Nine Pillars. There were no wild war cries, no reckless charges, and no chaotic skirmishing. They moved with the measured, terrifying rhythm of an army of master craftsmen who had built their own siege works and understood every foot of the ground.
At the center of the advance, Captain Wu led three thousand heavy spearmen from the Azure Basin. Their star-iron breastplates shone in the pale moonlight.
Behind them marched seven thousand stonemasons from Mount Taiyi. He carried their heavy sledgehammers, star-iron pry-bars, and six-foot timber levers over their shoulders. And behind the masons came the ten thousand mirror workers, their red copper plates now secured in straw-padded barrows, their water-clocks packed inside wooden cases, marching forward as the technical core of the liberated army.
In the vanguard approach trench, Lin Tao stood watching the columns assemble before Pylon 00.
Elder Chen walked up beside him. He leaned on a polished ash-wood staff, his aged face lit up by the distant torches of the Imperial City.
