The Grand Exhibition Pavilion of Canglan was a three-story monster of white quarried marble and gilded cedar, sprawling over an entire square kilometer in the capital's premier artisan ward.
Inside the Great Registration Hall, the vaulted ceiling rose sixty feet above polished jade floor tiles. Sandalwood incense hung thick in the air, mixed with the sharp tang of refined charcoal and suffocating aristocratic arrogance.
Blacksmith grandmasters, formation experts, and alchemical refiners from the empire’s thirty-six sects strutted across the hall in flowing silks of purple, vermilion, and embroidered gold. They swung jewel-encrusted smithing hammers and waved jade-inlaid tongs, followed by sprawling retinues of young masters bragging loudly of three-thousand-year-old clan lineages and secret ancestral quenching oils.
Near the central registration desk, Austin waited in line, holding his rigid birchwood clipboard.
He wore his standard field kit: dented midnight-blue hard hat, heavy denim dungarees, oil-tanned leather tool belt, and steel-toed work boots. Across his right shoulder, locked in its quick-release magnetic holster, rested his five-foot, iridescent blue Stellar-Steel pipe wrench. Around his boots, twelve gray pebbles and thirty pine needles circled smoothly at three revolutions per minute in silent gravitational orbit.
Austin pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose, squinting at the vaulted ceiling with a critical eye.
"Terrible facility management," Austin muttered, shaking his head until his hard hat creaked. "Look at those brass chandeliers. Three tons of gilded iron hung on single-link decorative chain with zero secondary safety wire. And where's the marked egress routes? A thousand high-stage cultivators packed into a single vestibule, dragging eight feet of trailing silk that creates severe tripping hazards. If an alchemical kettle has a thermal runaway in the foyer, this whole hall becomes a class-one stampede disaster."
Beside him, Li Xiaoyao shifted uncomfortably in his traveling tunic, eyeing the terrifying spiritual auras of Foundation and Golden Core elders crowded around them.
"Patriarch," Xiaoyao whispered, shivering slightly, "that elder on the left is Grandmaster Mo of the Burning Sky Pavilion! Rumor says his Seven-Flame Furnace can melt dragon scale into flying swords! And behind him is the Young Clan Head of the Thousand-Array Sect!"
"I don't care if he melts dragon scale," Austin said, watching Grandmaster Mo heft a fifty-pound, ruby-studded war hammer onto his left shoulder. "Look at his lifting posture. Carrying fifty pounds of deadweight on one trapezius without a balance sling. Lumbar alignment is totally shot. In five years, that guy's gonna have degenerative thoracic scoliosis. Ergonomic trainwreck. And look at that cauldron on cart three—open flame beneath a pressurized copper vessel with no safety relief valve. One stuck float valve and that boiler launches straight through the roof trusses like a mortar shell."
Trotting near their heels, Cerberus Pug lay flat on the cool jade tiles near the entrance. All three heads rested across his forepaws, happily chewing on an oversized iron wagon bolt he’d found by the city gate, working the rusted threads like a dog gnawing a marrow bone.
*Crunch. Snerk. Sssss.*
Before Austin could take his turn, an arrogant young master in crimson brocade from the Scarlet-Furnace Clan tried to push ahead of him, waving a velvet pouch of spirit stones.
"Out of the way, peasant," the young master snapped, shoving toward the counter. "Make room for a true disciple of the kiln!"
Austin didn't shove back. He simply swung the rigid birchwood clipboard horizontal, bracing the flat edge against the young master’s breastbone like a barrier gate at a toll booth.
"Hold your horses, bub," Austin said flatly. "Single-file queue. No cutting the staging lane. Second off, look at your footwear."
The youth blinked, looking down at his feet. "What?"
"Embroidered silk slippers with paper-thin leather soles and open embroidered vamps," Austin said, shaking his head. "Zero puncture resistance. Zero drop-impact protection. You're walking through an active trade staging zone where men are hauling fifty-pound bronze anvils. A dropped casting would crush your metatarsals into jelly. Put on certified safety toes or clear the lane before you get cited."
Beside them, Pug’s center head lifted, took a deep sniff of the young master’s lavender-scented silk, and let out a wet snort that coated the youth's satin hem in gray soot.
The young master looked down at Pug’s six glowing ruby eyes, looked at the crackling violet sparks dancing along the dog's collar, turned the color of curdled milk, and backed up four paces into the queue without another peep.
"Next applicant!" a bored, high-pitched nasal voice called from behind the registration counter.
Austin stepped forward, resting his forearms on the polished mahogany desk.
"Morning," Austin said in his flat, deadpan contractor voice. "Here to check in for the artisan expo. Where do I pick up my vendor badge, facility pass, and booth table assignment?"
Sitting behind the ledger was Imperial Registrar Elder Han.
Han was a thin, sour-faced bureaucrat of the Imperial Artisan Academy, draped in layered saffron robes. Perched on his hooked nose was an ostentatious monocle carved from spirit-reflecting crystal. Han slowly lowered his chin, peering over the crystal rim at Austin.
He saw the faded blue denim. He saw the grease-stained hemp work shirt. He saw the yellow grease pencil tucked behind Austin's ear.
Elder Han's thin lips curled into a sneer of pure bureaucratic disgust. He waved a perfumed silk handkerchief in front of his nose as if dispelling foul sewer gas.
"A mortal laborer?" Han sneered, voice carrying over the murmurs of the hall. "A common ditch digger in the sacred registry of the Centennial Imperial Expo? Tell me, boy, did you get lost looking for the wheelwright's alley, or did someone hand you two coppers to haul charcoal for a real artisan?"
"I’m an independent contractor," Austin replied, tapping the birchwood clipboard with his grease pencil. "I'm here for commercial exhibition booth registration. I’ve got an official event quest flag on my log."
Han let out a dry, hacking laugh that drew loud snickers from neighboring smiths and their entourages.
"An 'independent contractor'?" Han mocked, leaning across the counter. "Listen closely, ditch-boy. The Grand Imperial Exhibition is strictly divided into three noble arts: **Heavenly Artifact Forging**, **Ancient Array Inscription**, and **High-Spirit Alchemy**! We do not have a category for patching peasant plows, sharpening rusty scythes, or re-caulking privy buckets!"
Austin brought up his internal quest menu, scrolling through the registration index.
"Put me down under Common Heavy Casting and Material Reclamation," Austin said, unclipping his yellow grease pencil to sign the parchment. "And make sure the assigned booth has a solid twenty-amp line or at least an anchor point for an external dynamo. I need stable current for my diagnostic bench."
Elder Han stared at Austin as if the young man were reciting nursery rhymes in pig Latin.
"Twenty-amp line? External dynamo?" Han muttered, monocle twitching. Then his face stretched into nasty glee. "Common Heavy Casting... hah! The gutter division! The scrap-heap tier where broken-down village blacksmiths sell horseshoe nails and bent hinges to scrape together carriage fare home!"
Han yanked open a neglected bottom drawer, pulling out a battered wooden token carved from cheap ash-wood.
"Registration fee is ten spirit stones, laborer," Han said smugly, resting his chin on his knuckles, waiting for the peasant to stutter and plead poverty. "Pay the statutory entry fee, or the city guards toss you out into the beggar ditch."
Austin reached into the utility pouch on his tool belt.
He didn't pull out spirit stones. Instead, he pulled out a six-inch off-cut of bright orange copper-conductite wire—a spare piece of grounding lead left over from wiring the lightning diverter on Sunset Peak.
He set the coiled orange strand squarely onto the mahogany counter.
"I don't carry local rock currency on my person," Austin said evenly. "Take this six-inch off-cut of high-purity, oxygen-free conductite grounding wire. Tensile strength of three hundred megapascals, electrical resistivity of zero point zero zero one ohms per kilometer. That covers ten stones with change to spare. Keep the surplus as an administrative processing fee."
Han glared down at the bright wire like it was a dead rat, refusing to touch it with bare skin.
"Junk! Filthy peasant wire!" Han sneered. He grabbed the ash-wood token, slammed a heavy brass seal onto its face, and shoved it across the desk with a vicious grin.
"Take your booth token, peasant! **Table Ninety-Four**! Out in the rear northern exterior courtyard, tucked against the stone perimeter wall, right between the public latrines and the refuse incinerator! Enjoy your trade fair! Try not to gag on the night-soil fumes while you peddle your rusted scrap!"
Cruel laughter rippled through the hall:
*"Table Ninety-Four! The dumpster corner by the outhouses!"*
*"Nobody’s walked down the north wall since the last century!"*
*"Serves the peasant right for tracking mud into the Artisan Academy!"*
Austin picked up the battered wooden token.
He held it to the chandelier light, reading the carved numeral: **#94**.
Without a word, Austin accessed the exhibition architectural floor plan through his HUD, evaluating Table Ninety-Four's spatial parameters with cold contractor logic.
Austin’s eyes widened with deep, professional satisfaction.
"Table Ninety-Four," Austin nodded, his voice deadpan yet brimming with genuine respect. "Direct proximity to municipal waste management for instant slag dumping. Maximum natural cross-ventilation to evacuate welding fumes and flux gases. And best of all, zero pedestrian foot traffic to bump into my precision gauges or snag my extension cords. Phenomenal site logistics."
Austin looked Elder Han dead in the eye, giving the sneering registrar a crisp, approving nod.
"Thank you, sir. Genuinely great booth allocation. It's rare to find an exhibition coordinator who actually understands industrial airflow dynamics and workspace ergonomics."
Elder Han froze.
The smug smirk died on his lips. His mouth fell slack, monocle dropping onto his saffron silk chest on its golden thread.
*He’s... thanking me?!* Han's brain seized up. *I shoved him next to the latrines and the compost heap, and he’s praising my logistics?! Is this boy totally insane?!*
Austin slipped the wooden token into his tool belt, clicked his grease pencil, and turned toward the exit.
"Li Xiaoyao! Grab the mules," Austin called out, tapping the brim of his hard hat. "We’ve got Table Ninety-Four in the north yard. Clean sightlines, solid grade. Let's get the display bench leveled before the crowd shows up."
"Understood, Patriarch!" Xiaoyao replied with a broad grin, following his master with head held high.
Near the double doors, Pug stood up, stretched his long black spine, and let out a colossal triple-yawn that made the white marble pillars hum and shook plaster dust from the high ceiling moldings. The eight-hundred-pound Cerberus gave himself a vigorous shake, his spiked tails whacking a carved decorative balustrade with a loud *thwack*, then trotted cheerfully after Austin.
Behind them, Elder Han and thirty grandmaster blacksmiths stood frozen in the Great Hall, staring after the retreat in stunned, dead silence.