At thirty thousand feet above the mortal continents, the sky was not blue.
It was the black-violet of deep space, dusted with sharp, unblinking stars that shone with cold, diamond clarity even in the midday glare. Below lay the troposphere, a boundless sea of blinding white cumulus clouds stretching to the horizon like a frozen polar icecap.
Floating silently upon this boundary between mortal air and cosmic void were three celestial vessels.
Crafted from solid Moon-Vein Mother-of-Pearl and bound with cold-forged Astral Silver filigree, the three spirit-dories resembled slender crescent moons. They rode the solar wind with zero wake, held aloft by anti-gravity arrays powered by refined Nine-Heaven Stellar Cores.
Standing at the prow of the flagship dory was Junior Inquisitor Bai Ze.
Bai Ze was eighty-two hundred years old, possessed a seventh-stage Void Refinement cultivation base, and wore the midnight-blue silk robes of the High Inquisitorial Tribunal of the Upper Firmament. A golden breastplate etched with the all-seeing Eye of Heaven guarded his chest, and in his left hand he held an astrological ivory sextant inlaid with polished void-jade.
For the past seven days, the astrological sensors of the Upper Realm had been screeching like scalded cats.
Every star chart in the Imperial Observatory had warped out of true. Planetary ephemerides had slipped by several arcminutes. And from the lower mortal plane—a region traditionally reserved for illiterate dirt farmers, third-rate sword sects, and primitive coal fires—an unholy, blinding beacon of twin-star radiation had burst into the heavens like a punch to the jaw.
"Junior Inquisitor," whispered Acolyte Chen, his hands shaking as he adjusted the brass focusing dials on the dory’s scrying mirror. "The... the star readings have stabilized. But the numbers... the numbers make no spiritual sense!"
"Speak, Chen," Bai Ze said coldly, adjusting his silk hood. "Does the mortal realm harbor an ancient demonic sun-beast? Has the Ancient Golden Crow broken its seal in the southern abyss?"
"No, my Lord!" Chen gasped, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. "It is not a beast! It is... an engine! Look down through the cloud break!"
Bai Ze took the ivory sextant and leaned over the silver railing.
Through the ragged opening in the cloud deck, thirty thousand feet below, the peak of Sunset Peak was visible.
Or rather, the space where Sunset Peak used to be.
Revolving in a tight, furious figure-eight orbit above the mountain plateau were two blinding, miniature suns. Sol-Alpha and Sol-Beta, locked in a seven-hundred-and-fourteen-RPM binary dance, were actively siphoning white-hot hydrogen fire between themselves across a brilliant glowing bridge.
Seven point five exawatts of pure, unadulterated thermonuclear energy flooded the surrounding airspace.
Bai Ze’s spiritual divine sense reached toward the twin stars—and was instantly incinerated before it could get within fifty miles of the center of the twin stars. He recoiled violently, his pupils contracting into pinpricks, his breath hitching in his chest.
"Eighteen... eighteen million Kelvin?" Bai Ze choked out, his aristocratic face draining of color until it matched the silver deck plating. "Total binary mass exceeding one point five times ten to the twenty-second kilograms?! That... that is a fifth of a planetary moon! How can a mortal vessel contain such celestial gravity without collapsing the continental tectonic plate?!"
"Look closer at the mountain, My Lord!" cried the second acolyte, pointing a trembling finger downward. "Rising from the earth... beneath the twin suns!"
Bai Ze squinted through his focusing lenses.
Climbing vertically from the cloud deck was a colossal, square lattice tower.
Forged from shining titanium struts and braced with rigid triangular cross-members, the four-legged derrick stood twenty thousand feet tall, rising through the cloud layer like a colossal silver ladder aimed directly at the throat of the Upper Void Realm.
Around its four outer pillars, giant helical fins wound upward like coiled metallic dragons, completely ignoring the ninety-mile-per-hour jet-stream winds. And seated within the staging collars every few thousand feet were massive rectangular masses suspended on suspension springs, absorbing the violent vibrations of the firmament with eerie, mocking stillness.
Bai Ze gripped his ivory sextant so hard the delicate jade inlays cracked.
"The Babel Tower..." Bai Ze whispered, horror turning his voice into a gravelly rasp. "The ancient forbidden heresy of the First Epoch! The Nether-Titans have reincarnated! They are forging an iron ladder to assault the Heavenly Palace, steal the celestial fire, and unseat the Void Sovereigns!"
"They... they have already reached twenty thousand feet, My Lord!" Acolyte Chen whimpered. "Look at the insects crawling upon its flanks! They wear neon-yellow vestments of blasphemy and yellow helm-domes of hardened jade! They are fastening the iron bones with rotating pneumatic thunder-wrenches!"
"Blasphemy!" Bai Ze roared, his seven-thousand-year composure shattering into righteous fury. "Madness! Do these mortal worms not know that the Upper Firmament is forbidden to flesh and blood?! To pierce the cloud barrier without an Imperial Jade Pass is an offense punishable by the flaying of nine generations!"
He drew a nine-foot dragon-headed brass speaking horn from his spatial ring.
"Sound the Inquisitorial Mandate!" Bai Ze commanded, channeling his seventh-stage Void Refinement qi into the brass bell of the horn. "Order those ants to halt their unholy construction, strip their metal bones, and prostrate themselves before the Tribunal for immediate soul extraction!"
*HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK!*
The horn blast ripped across the upper atmosphere.
Infused with divine soul-crushing intent, the sound wave blasted through the jet stream, shaking the cirrus clouds and descending toward the twenty-thousand-foot staging collar like a sonic thunderclap.
"HEAR THE MANDATE OF THE UPPER FIRMAMENT!" Bai Ze’s amplified voice bellowed across the sky, rumbling with the terrifying weight of heaven’s law. "MORTAL WORMS OF THE LOWER PLANE! YOU HAVE ERECTED AN UNHOLY PILLAR OF BLASPHEMY! YOU HAVE HARNESSED THE FORBIDDEN CELESTIAL FIRE! BY ORDER OF THE HIGH TRIBUNAL, CEASE ALL DRILLING AND HOISTING FORTHWITH! DISMANTLE THIS IRON TOWER AND PRESENT YOUR SOULS FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT, LEST THE VOID DRAGONS DESCEND TO REND YOUR MOUNTAIN INTO ASH!"
The thunderous decree echoed across the titanium derrick, rattling the safety handrails and vibrating the perforated deck grating.
Down on the twenty-thousand-foot staging platform, Austin paused.
He had just finished checking the torque calibration on the north TMD spring retainer with an eight-foot breaker bar. He wiped a streak of bearing grease from his denim sleeve, set his torque wrench into a tool scabbard on his belt, and reached for his aluminum clipboard.
He looked up toward the three silver boats hovering two thousand feet above him in the clear sky.
Then he reached into his tool vest, pulled out a handheld yellow sound-level meter, and held it aloft.
The digital needle on the decibel meter spiked sharply.
`PEAK SOUND PRESSURE: 114.8 dBA` `CONTINUOUS NOISE EXPOSURE: HAZARDOUS (>85 dBA)` `OSHA STANDARD 1910.95 VIOLATION DETECTED`
Austin frowned, his jaw tightening beneath his five-o’clock shadow.
"Are you kidding me?" Austin muttered, shaking his head in sheer disbelief. "No muffler on the horn? Uncontrolled directional acoustics over a designated active crane-pick staging area? Do they have any idea what sudden 115-decibel impulse noise does to an apprentice rigger trying to align a forty-ton titanium splice plate?!"
Behind him, twelve hundred cultivators were prostrating themselves on the titanium grating, trembling with primeval terror.
"The Void Inquisitors..." Abbot Wu Nian whispered, pressing his yellow hard hat to the deck. "The divine heralds of the Sovereign Realm have descended! They have proclaimed our tower a pillar of blasphemy! We are doomed! The celestial lightning will atomize our bones!"
"Silence, Wu Nian!" hissed Patriarch Guang Ming, though his own hands were shaking as he gripped his yellow fiberglass push-broom. "Did you not hear the Great Contractor? We are within the Five-Thousand-Pound Covenant! The nylon webbing of the ANSI standard encompasses all things! Even if the sky falls, our dorsal D-rings are anchored to the True Foundation!"
Austin strolled to the edge of the staging deck. He stepped onto an aluminum cantilevered outrigger platform that hung directly over the thirty-thousand-foot drop, leaned one elbow casually against the 42-inch top rail, and looked up at the three hovering moon-boats.
He reached into his utility pocket, pulled out a pair of bright orange foam earplugs, rolled them between his thumb and forefinger, and shoved them securely into his ears.
Then he lifted his electric megaphone—the same 100-watt public address system he used to direct concrete transit mixers—and pressed the trigger.
*SKREEEEEEE-CLICK.*
"ATTENTION UNIDENTIFIED HOVERING CRAFT IN SECTOR THREE," Austin’s amplified voice boomed upward, completely flat, dry, and devoid of any spiritual fear. "YOU ARE CURRENTLY HOVERING WITHIN THE OPERATIONAL BOOM RADIUS OF TWO FIVE-HUNDRED-TON CRAWLER CRANES AND AN ACTIVE TOWER HOIST. YOUR VESSEL HAS NO VISIBLE REGISTRATION NUMBERS, NO ANTI-COLLISION STROBE BEACONS, AND YOU HAVE FAILED TO FILE A NOTICE TO AIR MISSIONS WITH LOCAL SITE OPERATIONS."
High above, Bai Ze nearly choked on his brass horn.
He lowered the horn, his mouth hanging open as he stared at the mortal figure standing nonchalantly on the edge of the abyss.
"What... what did that worm just say?!" Bai Ze sputtered, turning to his acolytes. "Anti-collision beacons? Notice to air missions?! He... he did not prostrate himself?! He did not beg for the mercy of the Nine Sovereigns?!"
Acolyte Chen frantically consulted his astrological scroll. "My Lord... he appears to be holding a white vellum parchment clamped in a light-metal frame... and he is pointing a yellow wax rod at our vessel!"
Austin’s voice crackled through the megaphone once more.
"FURTHERMORE, YOU ARE IN DIRECT VIOLATION OF MUNICIPAL NOISE ORDINANCE 402-B AND OSHA REGULATION 1910.95 REGARDING UNPERMITTED AUDITORY HAZARDS EXCEEDING EIGHTY-FIVE DECIBELS WITHOUT POSTED HEARING-PROTECTION SIGNAGE. YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS TO VACATE THE ACTIVE HOISTING CORRIDOR, POWER DOWN THAT BLOWHORN, AND LAND AT THE VISITOR CHECK-IN LOT ON CENTRAL PLAZA TO PAY YOUR FOUR-HUNDRED-AND-FIFTY-THOUSAND SPIRIT STONE ADMISSION FEE. FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN AIRSPACE CITATIONS AND IMMEDIATE MECHANICAL IMPOUNDMENT."
Bai Ze’s face flushed from pale white to a furious, venous crimson.
"IMPOUNDMENT?!" Bai Ze screeched, his voice cracking with sheer incredulity. "HE THREATENS TO IMPOUND A CELESTIAL PATROL DORY OF THE HIGH INQUISITORIAL TRIBUNAL?!"
He seized his spiked void-iron trident, channeling his seventh-stage cultivation into the three gleaming prongs until black spatial fissures crackled around the metal.
"BLASPHEMOUS APE!" Bai Ze bellowed, leaning over the bow. "I SHALL TEAR YOUR TONGUE FROM YOUR THROAT AND CAST YOUR TINY TOY TOWER INTO THE VOID OF NON-EXISTENCE! PREPARE TO TASTE THE WRATH OF HEAVEN!"
With a savage downward thrust, Bai Ze hurled the trident toward Austin's head.
The weapon shot through the thin air at Mach 12, trailing a howling vortex of shattered dimensional fabric that vaporized the surrounding clouds.
Austin didn't even flinch.
He didn't draw a sword. He didn't form an incantation. He didn't even adjust his footing.
Instead, he reached down to his tool belt, wrapped his right hand around the knurled rubber grip of his five-foot cast-titanium pipe wrench, and slowly hoisted it onto his shoulder.
Inside his core, the binary engine hummed.
`7.50 EXAWATTS ONLINE.` `ROCHE LOBE FLUID DYNAMICS: BALANCED.` `GRAVITATIONAL WELL: 42.0G.`
"Unauthorized delivery of dropped-object hazard from an unpermitted vehicle," Austin noted calmly, his eye tracking the Mach 12 trident through the shade-14 darkness of his goggles. "That's an automatic Class A safety violation."