With four hundred and fifty thousand high-grade spirit stones safely loaded into the reinforced steel deposit safe beneath the ticket booth, Li Xiaoyao methodically issued one thousand perforated cardstock tickets.
Each ticket was cut from stiff, sixty-pound manila stock, cleanly stamped with a purple ink hexagon, and imprinted with a unique alphanumeric identifier: *RAID-001 through RAID-1000*.
The thousand holy crusaders received their cardstock passes with trembling, reverent hands. To these battle-hardened Golden Core elders and Foundation Realm paladins, the stiff paper—crisp, mathematically square, and utterly devoid of calligraphic flourish—felt like a divine talisman of passage issued directly by the gatekeepers of the underworld.
"Advance to the primary breach portals!" Patriarch Guang Ming commanded, his voice ringing with renewed celestial authority. He raised his seven-foot Solar Godblade, its golden edge catching the midday sun. "Disciples of the Ten Sacred Sects! We have signed the Fourteen Scrolls of Renunciation! We have paid the ransom of the earth! Now, we advance into the Nether-Labyrinth to claim our righteous destiny!"
At the front of the obsidian entrance archway stood two heavy, three-arm brass turnstiles.
Austin had installed them with meticulous, uncompromising craftsmanship. The mounting baseplates were anchored six inches deep into the volcanic bedrock using eight 5/8-inch stainless steel wedge anchors, torqued to ninety foot-pounds. Beside each turnstile stood a vertical brass pedestal containing an optical barcode scanner slot, a directional brass guide plate, and an illuminated indicator lamp—currently glowing a steady, impassive crimson.
Leading the crusader vanguard was Commander Zhao Ba, a towering martial titan from the Radiant Sun Orthodoxy. His massive breastplate was forged from three tons of refined celestial iron, his biceps were as thick as ancient pine trunks, and his shoulders were broad enough to block a city gate. Across the Central Continent, he was known as the Mountain-Shattering Vanguard, famed for battering down fortress gates with his bare chest.
Zhao Ba marched heavily up to Turnstile Alpha, his iron boots ringing like anvils against the flagstones.
He stared down at the three rotating brass arms blocking the thirty-inch pathway, his thick, bushy eyebrows knitting together in scornful disbelief.
"A three-pronged brass barrier?" Zhao Ba scoffed, his deep, booming voice echoing across the courtyard like rolling thunder. "A toy for infants! Does the Demon Lord of Sunset Peak truly believe these flimsy metal twigs can halt the righteous vanguard of the Radiant Sun?!"
Zhao Ba raised his heavy iron-plated boot, preparing to kick the brass rotor into twisted scrap metal with a single blow.
"Hold! Brother Zhao, look at the brass pedestal!" warned an elder of the Ten Thousand Sword Zenith, pointing a trembling finger at the narrow brass slot. "There is an aperture for the sacred paper talisman! The clerical youth instructed us to present our passes!"
Zhao Ba grunted in disgust. "Nonsense! A warrior does not submit to paper!"
Nevertheless, eager to breach the gates, Zhao Ba pulled his manila ticket from his iron gauntlet. Without looking at the printed arrows, he violently shoved the ticket into the brass scanner slot upside down and backwards.
The optical sensor buzzed with an irritable, low-frequency electrical tone:
*BEEEEEEEEEEP.*
The indicator light remained stubbornly, defiantly crimson. Deep within the pedestal, a hardened alloy steel ratchet pawl engaged against the internal gear teeth with a decisive, unyielding *CLACK*.
"What manner of foul sorcery is this?!" Zhao Ba bellowed.
Placing both of his massive iron gauntlets against the top brass arm, Zhao Ba threw his entire weight forward, channeling forty thousand pounds of brute Golden Core cultivation force directly into the mechanism.
The turnstile did not budge by a single micrometer.
Austin had not built the turnstile out of soft ornamental brass. The exterior housing was polished brass, but the internal drive shaft was four-inch solid 4140 chromoly steel, and the central locking pawl had been waterjet-cut from Grade-5 heat-treated titanium alloy, bedded directly into the bedrock with non-shrink structural grout. To shear the locking pawl, Zhao Ba would have needed to generate enough torsional force to snap the axle of an imperial siege train.
Veins bulged along Zhao Ba’s forehead like thick blue worms. His face turned deep crimson with suffocating humiliation.
Behind him, nine hundred and ninety-nine holy crusaders—including the supreme patriarchs and abbots of the continent—were watching him struggle futilely against a waist-high brass tripod.
"Insolent metal stick!" Zhao Ba roared, his martial pride shattering into berserk rage. "I am Zhao Ba! Breaker of Walls! Pulverizer of Fortresses! I shall not be humiliated by a three-legged stool! I shall leap across your petty threshold and shatter the underworld beneath my heels!"
Channeling his Golden Core spiritual energy into his thighs, Zhao Ba’s leg muscles expanded against his iron greaves. With a ferocious war cry, he vaulted into the air, aiming to clear the turnstile in a magnificent, soaring arc of righteous martial valor.
He flew precisely four feet into the air.
The moment his iron-plated greaves crossed the invisible infrared sensor beam traversing the gap above the turnstile rotor without a valid scanned barcode, the perimeter deterrent circuit tripped.
*BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!*
This wasn't a lethal, soul-shattering bolt of heavenly lightning. Austin had deliberately stepped down the high-voltage feed from the auxiliary capacitor bank through a 12-volt, 50-amp pulsed perimeter controller—dialed in to match the exact kick of a heavy-duty commercial cattle fence.
A sharp, crisp, cerulean electrical arc snapped from the brass casing and struck Zhao Ba squarely in his iron-plated groin armor.
"YEEOOOOOWWWCH!"
The mighty Mountain-Shattering Vanguard let out a piercing, glass-shattering shriek that broke three octaves into a breathless soprano.
The 12-volt pulse cascaded through his conductive iron armor in less than two milliseconds. His Golden Core qi instantly short-circuited into chaotic static; his massive leg muscles locked into rigid, vibrating cramps; and his arms shot out in a frozen, spasming starburst.
Deprived of forward momentum, Zhao Ba plummeted straight down, crashing face-first onto the obsidian flagstones with a deafening metallic clatter:
*CLANG-RATTLE-SCRAPE-THUD!*
Zhao Ba lay twitching on the pavement like an overturned beetle, his iron helmet smoking faintly with the pungent scent of singed wool padding, his fingers spasming rhythmically against the stone.
The holy crusade erupted into hysterical, weapon-drawing panic:
"Brother Zhao has been struck down!"
"An invisible barrier of celestial lightning! A Ninth-Rank Void-Slaying Formation!"
"Hold your ranks! Protect Patriarch Guang Ming!"
"Draw swords! Form the Heavenly Diamond Phalanx!"
Before the thousand panicked warriors could unleash a storm of flying swords into the entrance archway, heavy, rhythmic footsteps echoed across the silent plaza.
*Clump. Clump. Clump.*
The crowd parted in instinctive, shivering dread.
Walking slowly through the velvet rope switchbacks was Austin.
He wore his midnight-blue Sovereign Hard Hat pulled low over his brow, its tinted polycarbonate face-shield pushed up just far enough to reveal his thoroughly unimpressed, deadpan eyes. Over his right shoulder rested his five-foot, forty-pound Stellar-Steel pipe wrench, its heavy jaw glinting with dull, terrifying density.
Austin stopped directly beside the smoking, twitching form of Zhao Ba. He looked down at the fallen paladin, tapped the toe of his steel-toed work boot against the flagstone, and let out a long, bone-weary contractor sigh.
"Turnstile vaulting," Austin said. His voice was completely flat, devoid of emotion, yet carried with absolute acoustic clarity across the quiet concourse. "Section Two, Subsection B of the Municipal Facility Code clearly states: *No jumping the turnstiles*. It is posted on the wooden board right beside the queue. Do you know how much a replacement optical trip-switch costs to mill on a lathe?"
Patriarch Guang Ming and Grand Abbot Wu Nian stared at him, their breaths caught in their throats.
"Forty-five minutes," Austin continued, holding up four fingers, then five. "Forty-five minutes of spindle time on my heavy-duty bench lathe to turn a brass collar, cut the threads, and solder the photo-diode leads. Do you think I have forty-five minutes to waste replacing trip-switches because an armored ape decided he was too majestic to use a card reader?"
Austin turned his gaze upon Patriarch Guang Ming, pointing the five-foot pipe wrench directly at the brass pedestal:
"You people claim to be ancient masters of celestial enlightenment. You possess five-hundred-year lifespans and manipulate the fundamental elements of the earth. Can none of you comprehend basic directional arrows?"
The thousand crusaders froze. Holy Patriarch Guang Ming felt the localized 30G gravitational field radiating from Austin’s shins, his own knees trembling under the terrifying, steady gravitational weight of the Level 55 Solar Core. The sheer density of the contractor standing before them made the air feel like liquid mercury.
"Demon... Sovereign..." Guang Ming rasped, struggling to maintain his footing under the gravitational pressure. "What sacred test of the Dao is this threshold?"
"It’s not a test of the Dao. It’s an optical turnstile," Austin said dryly.
Austin leaned down, picked up Zhao Ba’s dropped manila ticket from the pavement, and blew a speck of dust off the surface. He turned the cardstock around so the purple hexagonal stamp faced right-side-up.
"Observe," Austin instructed, his tone shifting into the flat, rehearsed cadence of a public transit safety inspector. "Step one: Orient the ticket so the purple hexagon is facing up and the arrow points into the feed slot. Step two: Insert the ticket smoothly into the brass guide track until the optical sensor registers the code."
Austin slid the ticket into the brass aperture.
*BEEP.*
The indicator lamp snapped instantly from crimson to a warm, inviting emerald green. Deep inside the brass housing, a smooth, electromagnetic solenoid disengaged the locking pawl with a crisp, clean mechanical note:
*CLICK.*
"Step three," Austin said, gently nudging one of the three brass arms forward with the toe of his boot.
The rotor spun smoothly on its sealed ceramic ball bearings through a precise one-hundred-and-twenty-degree arc.
*CLACK.*
The arm locked firmly behind him, and the indicator lamp snapped back to crimson.
"One person per rotation," Austin said, looking back across the stunned crusader ranks. "Do not push. Do not rush. Do not attempt to wedge two Golden Core elders into a thirty-inch clearance space. If you try to double up in the slot, the internal ratchet jams, and I will personally levy a twelve-hundred-spirit-stone emergency service callout fee against your sect. Now, pick up your vanguard by his shoulder pauldrons, get back in line, and scan your tickets properly."
Austin turned on his heel, adjusted his pipe wrench across his shoulder, and walked back toward the Timber Lodge porch with slow, unhurried strides.
Grand Abbot Wu Nian stood frozen, staring at the brass pedestal in total, stunned awe. Tears of profound spiritual enlightenment welled up in his aged bronze eyes.
"Heavens above..." Wu Nian whispered, his voice trembling with holy reverence. "Did you hear the rhythm of that sacred lock? *Beep... click... clack.* It is... it is the Dao of Universal Order!"
Patriarch Guang Ming blinked, his breath hitching: "Brother Wu Nian? What do you perceive?"
"The Sovereign does not bar our passage with malice or bloodlust!" Wu Nian proclaimed, his wrinkled face shining with religious ecstasy. "He demands that we abandon our chaotic, unbridled arrogance! He requires that we align our spiritual breath to the precise, mathematical harmony of the cosmos! *Beep* is the acknowledgment of existence! *Click* is the opening of the celestial gate! *Clack* is the closing of karmic destiny! It is a sacred tripartite mantra of municipal enlightenment!"
Patriarch Guang Ming’s eyes widened with thunderous understanding:
"The Sovereign speaks the truth! We acted like uncultured barbarians, attempting to batter our way through the gates of heaven with brute force! Disciples! Straighten your celestial robes! Tuck your beards into your armor! Align your purple hexagons!"
Guang Ming turned toward the ranks with burning fervor:
"We shall enter the Labyrinth with dignity! Vanguard Zhao Ba, rise and join the queue!"
Two paladins hoisted the groaning, still-twitching Zhao Ba to his feet, tucking his singed beard into his collar and handing him a fresh ticket.
One by one, the proudest warriors of the Central Continent approached the gleaming brass pedestals in single file, holding their tickets with reverent hands.
*BEEP. CLICK. CLACK.*
*BEEP. CLICK. CLACK.*
*BEEP. CLICK. CLACK.*
The crisp, rhythmic rumble of orderly municipal transit echoed across the Obsidian Plaza as the Grand Crusader Alliance filed peacefully, reverently, and safely into Floor 1.