Chapter 464: The Grand Victory Banquet & The Unveiling Trap

The sheer violet mist-silk slip drifted softly to the thick woolen carpet beside the roaring bronze brazier, leaving Noble Consort Cui Yulan kneeling bare and radiant between Archmage Alaric Steele’s muscular legs.

Outside the warded stone walls of the private estate, the night blizzard howled across the frozen roofs of Azure Fall City. Inside the spacious bedchamber, the air remained hot and fragrant with the slow-burning resin of aged spirit-sandalwood.

Alaric leaned back against the carved mahogany chair, resting his broad shoulders against the dark wood while his ruby eyes gazed down at the proud commander of the Violet Thunder Pavilion.

Cui Yulan did not hesitate or cover her chest. With her long dark hair spilling over her toned shoulders and her massive, heavy breasts swaying gently as she breathed, she reached up with both hands and unfastened the silk ties of Alaric’s black trousers. Freeing his thick, scorching-hot shaft into the warm firelight, she leaned forward, pressed her soft, full globes together around the base of his length, and lowered her warm, parted lips over the swollen tip.

“Mmph…”

A quiet, contented hum vibrated in Cui Yulan’s throat as she tasted his skin, her silver eyes lifting through her dark lashes to watch his face with deep, unmistakable devotion.

Behind Alaric’s chair, Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue leaned down in her sheer crimson slip, her large breasts pressing warmly against the back of his neck while her manicured fingers massaged his broad shoulders. To his left, Imperial Consort Shu Su Xianye knelt on the velvet cushions, pouring a fresh cup of warmed spirit-wine and holding the porcelain rim to his lips so he did not even have to lift a finger while Cui Yulan serviced him.

Across the room, resting near the secondary hearth after completing their evening reports, Grand Elder Yun Lan of the Frozen Cloud Asgard, Saintess Ceanna Paxton, Queen Cai Wei, Archmage Lilliana Valtor, Princess Hai Lan, and Fallen Fairy Mu Qing watched their Master with warm, reverent gazes.

Near the side table, where a stack of encrypted emerald ledgers lay open, Guildmaster Lin Ruoli of the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization and Chief Auctioneer Ya Su of the Gilded Lotus Auction House knelt on plush silk mats, dressed only in delicate gold waist-chains that accentuated their narrow waists, wide hips, and round buttocks.

Alaric took a slow sip of wine from the cup held by Su Xianye, resting his right hand atop Cui Yulan’s dark hair to guide the slow, deep bobbing of her head in his lap.

‘Three weeks ago, she was ready to draw her lance if a man stood within five paces of her armor,’ Alaric mused, feeling the tight, silky heat of Cui Yulan’s throat wrapping around his length while her calloused warrior’s hands stroked his thighs. ‘Now she competes with Zhao Mengxue and Su Xianye just to be the first on her knees when the doors close.’

He turned his gaze toward the side table where Lin Ruoli and Ya Su were sorting the evening’s intelligence tallies.

“Ruoli, Ya Su,” Alaric spoke, his calm baritone blending with the soft crackle of the brazier and the wet, rhythmic sounds of Cui Yulan’s mouth working between his thighs. “Now that Chief Auditor Sima and his capital censors have finished barking outside our counting houses for ten days, First Prince Huang Wei has scheduled the official Imperial Victory Banquet to begin in four days’ time. What did Mu Qing’s shadow-wards catch inside the central registry office over the past week?”

Guildmaster Lin Ruoli lifted her head, her emerald eyes gleaming with sharp amusement as her heavy breasts shifted against her folded arms.

“Master, someone in the southern auxiliary barracks has been very busy in the dark,” Lin Ruoli replied smoothly. “For nine straight nights during the blizzard, a lone infiltrator wearing a mercenary cloak slipped through the high ventilation shaft of the central registry office. Because you instructed Mu Qing not to alert the guards, she merely observed him from the ceiling beams.”

Up in the shadowed rafters above the bed, Fallen Fairy Mu Qing spoke in her quiet, clear voice. “His physical movement techniques belong to the Martial King tier, Master, though he masked his face behind a bamboo hat and suppressed his Battle Aura to leave no elemental trace. He used scavenged Rising Sun shinobi ink to alter the destination codes on nineteen auxiliary grain and Deep-Sea Profound Steel manifests.”

Chief Auctioneer Ya Su giggled softly, picking up a thin green jade slip from the table and twirling it between her fingers. “And our little nocturnal rat is not working alone. My informants in the lower taverns tracked the specific batch numbers of the manifests he altered. Every single one of those nineteen ledgers corresponds to the exact supply grievances raised in private by five disgruntled battalion captains from the outer camp—Captain Lin of the heavy infantry, along with Captain Wang, Captain Zhou, Captain Ma, and Captain Deng.”

Alaric’s eyebrows rose slightly as he stroked Cui Yulan’s flushed cheek while she slid her lips up and down his glistening shaft. “So the passed-over captains think they can use Chief Auditor Sima as a borrowed knife at the victory banquet to accuse your merchant guilds of hoarding imperial war supplies?”

“That appears to be their grand strategy, Master,” Ya Su purred, her golden eyes dancing with wicked delight. “They intend to wait until the fourth night—when First Prince Huang Wei and Chief Auditor Sima are toasting the Dragon Throne in the Grand Garrison Hall—and then march out to demand that the Censorate unseal the central registry trunks in front of the entire army.”

Around the base of Alaric’s shaft, Cui Yulan paused for a moment, lifting her head with a wet pop of her lips. A strand of glistening saliva connected her chin to the tip of his cock as her silver eyes narrowed with cold martial sharpness.

“Captain Lin and Captain Wang?” Cui Yulan said, her voice husky from servicing him as she wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her thumb. “Those five captains were reprimanded by my brother General Cui Hao during the river siege for slackness on the night watch. Do you want me to take a squad of my Violet Thunder guards down to the southern barracks at dawn and take their heads before the banquet starts, Master?”

“Cutting off five heads in the dark is too merciful, and it leaves the rat hiding behind them warned that we noticed his ink,” Alaric said with a lazy chuckle, tangling his fingers in Cui Yulan’s hair and guiding her mouth right back down over his throbbing length until her nose pressed against his groin.

“Mmph—!” Cui Yulan moaned around his thickness, her throat flexing as she swallowed him to the root again.

“Leave the doctored ledgers sitting in the registry office for the next three days so their spy checks the shelves and stays confident,” Alaric instructed, looking at Lin Ruoli and Ya Su. “On the third night, right before Chief Auditor Sima’s men lock the registry trunks to carry them into the banquet hall, swap those nineteen scrolls out. Replace them with a fresh set of manifests bearing the original watermarks of the Imperial Quartermaster—and attach the personal blood-thumbprints that Captain Lin and his four friends left on your Gilded Lotus loan vouchers last month.”

Lin Ruoli’s red lips curved into a breathtaking, predatory smile. “Instead of the ledgers showing that the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization hoarded five hundred thousand tons of grain and profound-steel, the Censorate’s truth-mirrors will reveal that Captain Lin and his four co-conspirators siphoned their own men’s winter rations and sold them to Rising Sun smugglers along the river.”

“And to make sure Chief Auditor Sima cannot question the purity of our own stockpiles,” Zhao Mengxue added from behind Alaric’s chair, her hands sliding down over his broad chest to tease his nipples while she kissed his ear, “Xianye, Yulan, and I will countersign the retroactive donation seals from our three palace estates. When Sima opens those trunks at the banquet, our merchant guilds will look like saintly benefactors who fed the army out of our own pockets.”

“See to it over the next three days,” Alaric commanded, his breath growing heavier as Cui Yulan increased the speed of her head between his legs, her massive breasts bouncing against his shins with every vigorous stroke of her mouth and tongue. “For tonight, however, stop talking about paperwork and get on the bed.”

“Yes, Master,” Lin Ruoli and Ya Su chimed in unison, rising gracefully from their cushions as Alaric lifted a breathless, blushing Cui Yulan onto the furs to spend the rest of the winter night claiming his devoted women.

Morning broke crisp and pale over the snow-covered ramparts of Azure Fall City, ushering in three frantic days of preparations across the border garrison.

With the fighting in the Kurogane Mountain Range finished and the Capital Audit Delegation preparing to wrap up its ten-day inspection before the deep mid-winter blizzards sealed the western passes for good, First Prince Huang Wei spared no expense in turning the scarred fortress city into a theater for his personal triumph.

From dawn on the first day through dusk on the third day, ten thousand soldiers of the Fierce Tiger Unit and the Black Tortoise Shield Corps were pulled off wall duty and ordered to shovel every inch of snow and frozen mud off the main avenues leading to the Grand Garrison Hall.

Carpenters and array smiths dangled from bamboo scaffolding along the sixty-foot pillars of the hall, hanging three-hundred-foot banners of imperial yellow dragon-silk and stringing hundreds of glowing “Ever-Warm Flame-Pearl Lanterns” across the vaulted ceilings to turn the drafty stone citadel into a spring palace.

Inside the requisitioned governor’s manor on the afternoon of the second day, First Prince Huang Wei stood before a full-length polished bronze mirror with his arms spread wide while four nervous tailors from the Jade Serpent guild pinned gold-thread cuffs onto a brand-new ceremonial robe woven from Golden-Scale Drake silk.

Quartermaster General Luo Feng and General Sun Ba stood near the doorway with their heads bowed, watching the prince strike three different heroic poses in front of the glass.

“Look at the angle of this dragon collar, General Sun,” First Prince Huang Wei said, turning his chin forty-five degrees to the left and squinting fiercely at his own reflection. “When I step onto the high dais at the banquet on the fourth night and raise my goblet toward Chief Auditor Sima, does this posture convey ‘Benevolent Conqueror of the Eastern Seas’ or ‘Peerless Martial God Descending from the Nine Heavens’?”

General Sun Ba rubbed his stiff iron-wire beard, coughing into his fist to hide the twitch of his cheeks. “Both at once, Your Royal Highness! When the Censorate envoys see Your Royal Highness standing under the flame-pearls in that drake-silk robe, they will think the Founding Emperor himself has stepped out of his portrait!”

First Prince Huang Wei laughed aloud, lowering his arms and patting his stomach with immense satisfaction. “That old stick-in-the-mud Chief Auditor Sima has been sniffing around the storehouses for ten days trying to find a single rusty nail out of place, only for Mother, Imperial Consort Shu, and Noble Consort Cui to slam the doors in his face at every turn! By the fifth day, once the banquet concludes, Sima will have no choice but to carry my victory memorials back to my father Emperor Huang Long!”

“Your Royal Highness has already written the final battle summary for the Censorate chroniclers?” Quartermaster General Luo Feng asked cautiously, holding a lacquered tray of inkstones.

“Of course I wrote it myself!” First Prince Huang Wei snorted, picking up a thick roll of gold-flecked parchment from his desk and slapping it against his palm. “Listen to the opening paragraph: ‘When General Tokugawa Ieyasu unleashed his hundred-thousand-man army and his sinister mountain formations, the eastern border trembled in despair until First Prince Huang Wei rode alone to the front of the battle line, pointed his royal blade at the sky, and shattered the enemy’s morale with a single shout!'”

Quartermaster General Luo Feng stared at the floor tiles as if counting the cracks. ‘Pointed his royal blade at the sky? During the ambush at Dragon’s Spine Gorge, Your Royal Highness was hiding under a tea table screaming for four Peak Martial Kings to hold their shields over your head!’

Outwardly, however, Quartermaster General Luo Feng bowed until his nose nearly touched his knees. “Pure poetry, Your Royal Highness. The historians in the Imperial Capital will weep when they read of your valor.”

While First Prince Huang Wei rehearsed his heroic postures in front of the bronze mirror during those three days, down in the freezing, mud-caked southern auxiliary barracks, Corbin spent the first, second, and third days finalizing the trigger of his conspiracy.

Because Corbin knew that Chief Auditor Sima had been blocked from physically breaking into the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization’s private vaults by the unified political wall of the three imperial consorts, Corbin knew that the only venue where the consorts could not quietly sweep an accusation under the carpet was the floor of the Grand Garrison Hall during the Imperial Victory Banquet.

At the banquet, two hundred Imperial Censors, fifty court chroniclers with recording crystals, and every commander of the eastern army would be watching from the tables.

On the evening of the third day, as smells of roasting spiritual venison and spiced wine drifted down from the upper city kitchens toward the hungry southern barracks, Corbin met one last time with Captain Lin, Captain Wang, Captain Zhou, Captain Ma, and Captain Deng behind the frozen horse stables of the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit.

Corbin kept his face shaded beneath his battered iron half-helm, speaking in the rough, gravel-edged voice of Lieutenant Mo Chen.

“Tomorrow evening is the fourth day,” Corbin said quietly, glancing toward the high stone walls of the central citadel where red lanterns were already being lit along the eaves. “Chief Auditor Sima’s clerks will bring the sealed iron trunks containing the central registry manifests directly into the side chamber of the Grand Garrison Hall for the formal campaign sign-off before the main toast.”

Captain Lin, a burly Early-Stage Grand Martialist with a jagged scar across his chin, tapped the bronze officer’s tally hanging at his waist. “The five of us received our seating assignments an hour ago, Lieutenant Mo. As battalion captains of the outer vanguard, we are seated at the lower tables near the main stone archway. Did your man inside the registry office check the nineteen shelf slots this afternoon?”

“I checked the window grating myself at noon,” Corbin replied, a cold, confident smile curving his lips as he remembered seeing the nineteen marked bamboo-and-parchment scrolls sitting untouched in the third archive rack. “Chief Auditor Sima’s guards have had the outer doors of the registry office under double lock for four days. The nineteen altered manifests showing five hundred thousand tons of missing grain, Deep-Sea Profound Steel, and Void-Crystal Sand sitting in the Jade Serpent’s unlisted eastern warehouses are still right where I placed them.”

Captain Wang rubbed his calloused hands together, his eyes gleaming with fierce vindication. “The moment First Prince Huang Wei finishes his opening boast and Chief Auditor Sima calls for the final certification of the campaign accounts, the five of us will step into the center of the hall together. With fifty royal chroniclers recording every word on Void-Echo stones, not even Noble Consort Cui Yulan or Imperial Consort Xian can stop Chief Auditor Sima from opening Registry Trunk Seven and projecting those nineteen manifests onto the ‘Clear-Sky Truth-Mirror Array’!”

“And remember our agreement,” Corbin warned, his pale blue eyes narrowing beneath his visor. “Keep my name—and the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit—out of your mouths. I am just a lowly scouting lieutenant. Once the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization is exposed for treasonous hoarding and the Censorate locks down the inner command pavilion to investigate who was profiting from the theft, I will step in with the secondary evidence I gathered on the mountain defile.”

‘Once the Censorate strips away the political shield around that merchant guild,’ Corbin thought, his fingers brushing the spatial pouch at his belt where he had stored the Ancient Bloodline-Mirroring Soul Stone purchased with his remaining system points, ‘that bastard Alaric will be forced out into the open under the Censorate’s anti-magic wards. Then I will activate the Soul Stone and show Noble Consort Cui Yulan and the entire army whose chest is carrying her stolen Suanni bloodline!’

“Rest easy, Brother Mo,” Captain Lin said, clapping a heavy hand onto his own breastplate. “Tomorrow night, we tear down those greedy merchant leeches and get our brothers the rewards they bled for!”

The five captains slipped back toward their barracks through the falling snow.

Yet less than four hours later—at midnight on that third day, while Corbin slept in his drafty bunk dreaming of Alaric Steele’s public ruin—a silent shadow glided through the snowdrifts outside the central registry office.

The two Imperial Censors guarding the heavy iron doors of the registry office did not even blink as a microscopic ripple of “Fantasy Weaver” and “Sound-Severed Void Ward” energy washed over their helmets, locking their senses in a waking daydream where the snowy street remained empty and still.

Guildmaster Lin Ruoli and Chief Auctioneer Ya Su stepped calmly past the frozen guards, accompanied by Fallen Fairy Mu Qing.

Using the official duplicate master-keys provided by Quartermaster General Luo Feng and the imperial seal of Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue, Lin Ruoli unlocked the inner archive vault without triggering a single Censorate alarm rune.

Moving with practiced grace, Ya Su walked straight to the third archive rack, pulled out the nineteen manifests Corbin had spent nine freezing nights doctoring with scavenged shinobi ink, and tossed them into a small spatial brazier where they turned to odorless gray ash in two seconds.

In their exact slots inside Registry Trunk Seven, Lin Ruoli slid nineteen pristine, authentic-looking parchment and bamboo ledgers written on genuine Imperial Quartermaster paper—each scroll bearing the verified spiritual watermarks of the supply depot and stamped at the bottom with the real blood-qi thumbprints that Captain Lin, Captain Wang, Captain Zhou, Captain Ma, and Captain Deng had pressed onto their private loan and ration-advance slips at the Gilded Lotus counting house three weeks earlier!

“Even the ink age has been weathered with Professor Lilliana’s temporal-drying fire,” Ya Su whispered with a soft giggle as she locked Registry Trunk Seven and reset the Censorate’s lead wax seal without a scratch. “When Chief Auditor Sima shines his precious truth-mirror on these scrolls tomorrow night, our five righteous watchdog captains are going to have a very exciting banquet.”

By dusk on the fourth day, the Grand Garrison Hall of Azure Fall City blazed like a palace of molten gold against the dark winter night.

Two hundred massive stone pillars carved with coiling dragons supported a vaulted timber roof sixty feet overhead, where hundreds of “Ever-Warm Flame-Pearl Lanterns” floated in neat geometric rows, casting a warm, spring-like radiance down over three hundred lacquered banquet tables.

The aroma of roasted Snow-Peak Spirit Venison, braised Golden-Carp, steamed jade-rice, and hundred-year-old Amber Plum Wine filled the vast hall, accompanied by the lively plucking of silver zithers and jade flutes played by a troupe of musicians near the eastern gallery.

At the highest level of the northern dais, seated upon a wide throne-chair draped in white tiger pelts and yellow dragon-silk, sat First Prince Huang Wei.

To his left sat Chief Auditor Sima and the twelve senior inspectors of the Capital Audit Delegation, dressed in their austere black-and-silver Censorate robes with stacks of sealed iron ledger trunks resting behind their chairs. To the prince’s right sat the top military brass of the campaign: General Cui Hao of the Thunder-Spear Relief Force, General Sun Ba of the Fierce Tiger Unit, and Quartermaster General Luo Feng.

Slightly above and to the right of the main dais, separated from the noisy lower floor by a carved white-jade balustrade and guarded by Half-Step Martial Emperor Commander Jin alongside twelve Peak Martial King royal guards, was the elevated Phoenix Viewing Gallery.

Seated behind the low rosewood tables of the Phoenix Gallery were the three peerless flowers of the Imperial House: Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue in regal crimson-and-gold court phoenix robes, Imperial Consort Shu Su Xianye in deep sapphire-blue silk embroidered with silver cranes, and Noble Consort Cui Yulan in a majestic, high-collared gown of dark violet brocade trimmed with silver thunder- patterns.

To the hundreds of generals, battalion captains, and capital envoys glancing up respectfully at the Phoenix Gallery, the three consorts looked like untouchable, icy goddesses resting high above mortal reach.

None of the men in the hall could see beneath the silk-draped rosewood table of the Phoenix Gallery.

Underneath that table cover, Cui Yulan’s hand rested warmly on Su Xianye’s thigh, while Zhao Mengxue held a sleek black Phone Artifact concealed inside her wide crimson sleeve.

On the glowing glass screen of the Phone Artifact—shielded from outside eyes by a localized refraction rune—scrolled a silent group message from the man sitting quietly two hundred feet away at a modest, unremarkable auxiliary medical table in the rear corner of the hall.

Dressed in his plain gray linen healer’s robes, with his aura suppressed under his Absolute Concealment Protocol to that of an ordinary Master Mage physician, Archmage Alaric Steele leaned back on his wooden bench, sipping a cup of warm tea beside Guildmaster Lin Ruoli and Chief Auctioneer Ya Su.

‘Yulan,’ Alaric’s mental voice echoed clearly through the Sovereign Soul Bond directly into Cui Yulan’s mind as she sat in the elevated Phoenix Gallery, ‘you are looking far too stern up there. Someone might think the commander of the Violet Thunder Pavilion did not enjoy having her backside spanked red before getting dressed tonight.’

Up in the Phoenix Gallery, Cui Yulan nearly choked on her sip of lotus wine.

Beneath her high-collared violet court brocade, her bare skin was indeed still warm and tingling from the hour she had spent bent over the fur couch in Alaric’s dressing room right before the banquet, taking his thick shaft from behind while Zhao Mengxue and Su Xianye helped pin her shoulders down and dress her hair afterward.

Cui Yulan shifted her round buttocks slightly on the silk cushion, feeling the tender, delicious ache between her thighs, and shot a fleeting,heated silver glance across the crowded hall toward the quiet physician in gray robes.

‘Wait until this noisy banquet is over, you shameless rascal,’ Cui Yulan transmitted back through her mental bond, a faint pink flush coloring her fair cheekbones while her outward expression remained cool and regal for the officers below. ‘If you keep teasing my mind while Chief Auditor Sima is staring at our gallery, I will bite you tonight.’

Next to her, Su Xianye hid a soft laugh behind her sapphire silk fan, whispering under her breath so only Zhao Mengxue and Cui Yulan could hear, “Look at Sister Yulan’s ears turning red. Anyone who did not know better would think the wine in Azure Fall City was brewed from dragon-fire.”

“Behave yourselves, both of you,” Zhao Mengxue murmured with an amused curve of her red lips, tapping a quick reply on her Phone Artifact before setting her cup down as the music in the hall stopped.

At the center of the northern dais, First Prince Huang Wei stood up from his tiger-pelt throne, holding a tall golden goblet aloft.

Two heralds struck a pair of bronze gongs, bringing the three hundred tables of feasting officers to immediate silence.

“Generals, soldiers of the eastern border, and esteemed envoys of the Imperial Censorate!” First Prince Huang Wei’s voice boomed across the hall, amplified by a simple sound-projecting jade embedded in the dais floor. “Two months ago, the cowardly wolf of the Rising Sun Empire, General Tokugawa Ieyasu, crept across the sea in the dark and seized Azure Fall City while this prince had not yet arrived at the front!”

At the general’s table below the dais, General Cui Hao’s jaw twitched slightly, though he kept his eyes fixed politely on his plate.

“Many in the provinces despaired!” First Prince Huang Wei continued, puffing out his gold-inlaid chest and sweeping his free arm across the air in the exact pose he had practiced in front of his mirror for three days. “They said the ‘Seven-Star Sky-Locking & Earth-Severing Array’ could not be broken! They said the ‘Eight-Trigram Iron-Fortress Barrier’ was an uncrackable turtle shell! Yet the moment this prince took personal command of the army, I looked upon General Tokugawa’s arrays and laughed! At Shattered Pass, I inverted his river formation with a flick of my wrist! At the Sunken Fortress, I saw through his underground magma trap and shielded my commanders with the grace of the Dragon Throne! And in the White-Pine Mountain Defile, when General Tokugawa tried one final desperate gamble, my pre-arranged tactical traps took his head before he could take three steps!”

Down at the rear auxiliary tables near the stone archway, standing among the junior officers of the scouting companies, Corbin kept his head lowered under the shadow of a dragon pillar, his fists clenched tight inside his coarse wool sleeves.

‘Inverted the river formation with a flick of your wrist? Shielded the commanders at the Sunken Fortress?’ Corbin thought, his teeth grinding together as he watched First Prince Huang Wei preen under the flame-pearl lanterns. ‘You useless royal parasite! You hid in your carriage drinking plum wine while that monster sitting at the medical table in the corner manipulated the entire war and stole everything that should have been mine!’

Corbin shifted his gaze twenty yards to the left, where Captain Lin, Captain Wang, Captain Zhou, Captain Ma, and Captain Deng sat at the fourth infantry table.

Captain Lin caught Corbin’s eye from across the aisle and gave a tiny, resolute nod, his hand resting on the folds of his tunic where he had written down the exact shelf numbers and serial codes of the nineteen manifests in Registry Trunk Seven.

Up on the dais, First Prince Huang Wei raised his golden goblet high. “Now, the eastern passes are ours, the Iron-Cloud Citadel flies the banner of the Celestial Dragon Empire, and our storehouses are overflowing! Chief Auditor Sima—after ten days of counting every grain of rice and every bar of iron in my city, raise your cup and join this prince in a toast to His Imperial Majesty!”

Across the hall, hundreds of officers raised their wine cups, preparing to shout the royal toast.

Chief Auditor Sima, however, did not touch his wine cup.

Slowly, the skeletal Chief Auditor rose from his seat at the left of the dais, his stark black-and-silver Censorate robes rustling in the sudden hush that fell over the front tables.

First Prince Huang Wei’s raised arm froze halfway in the air, his smile tightening at the corners. “Chief Auditor Sima? Why is your cup still on the table? Is the Amber Plum Wine of Azure Fall City not to the Censorate’s taste?”

“The wine is fine, First Prince Huang Wei,” Chief Auditor Sima replied in his dry, rasping monotone, pulling a crisp white memorial tablet from his wide sleeve. “However, by the ancient code of the Imperial Censorate, no final toast of victory may be recorded in the court annals until every discrepancy in the campaign treasury is resolved before the eyes of the army.”

The music in the eastern gallery died out completely.

First Prince Huang Wei’s face darkened. “Discrepancy? For ten days, Quartermaster General Luo Feng and the three Imperial Consorts have shown your scholars every granary and armory ledger in the province! Every single ingot of iron and sack of wheat is balanced to the last decimal!”

“The summary ledgers presented at the counting houses appeared balanced on the surface, First Prince Huang Wei,” Chief Auditor Sima said, turning his sharp, hawk-like gaze down toward the lower banquet tables. “Yet earlier this evening, an anonymous military petition was slipped into the Censorate’s iron grievance box—alleging that nineteen primary transfer manifests inside Registry Trunk Seven contain proof of a five-hundred-thousand-ton black-market embezzlement scheme operating right inside this camp!”

A loud murmur of shock rippled across the three hundred tables.

Down by the rear pillar, Corbin’s pulse leaped with fierce, triumphant excitement. ‘He got the anonymous tip! Here it comes!’

Right on cue, Captain Lin stood up from the fourth infantry table, kicking his wooden bench back and marching straight out into the wide red-carpeted aisle in the center of the hall, followed immediately by Captain Wang, Captain Zhou, Captain Ma, and Captain Deng!

All five scarred battalion captains dropped to one knee on the carpet before the dais, clasping their gauntleted fists high above their heads.

“Chief Auditor Sima! Envoys of the Imperial Censorate!” Captain Lin’s booming voice echoed off the sixty-foot rafters. “You do not need an anonymous note! I, Captain Lin of the Third Heavy Infantry Battalion, along with these four veteran captains who bled at Shattered Pass and the Sunken Fortress, stand forward to bear witness with our lives!”

First Prince Huang Wei slammed his golden goblet down onto the dais table, splashing wine across his new drake-silk sleeve. “Captain Lin?! What is the meaning of this uproar during my victory banquet?! Who gave you permission to step out of ranks?!”

“Your Royal Highness, we speak out of loyalty to the empire and to the thousands of common soldiers shivering in the southern auxiliary barracks!” Captain Lin shouted, raising his head and pointing an accusing finger straight across the hall toward the merchant tables where Guildmaster Lin Ruoli and Chief Auctioneer Ya Su sat peacefully beside Alaric! “While our men wrapped their frostbitten feet in burlap and ate watery gruel, the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization and the Gilded Lotus supply directors hijacked the camp’s logistics! They falsified the frontline casualty losses and hoarded five hundred thousand tons of imperial grain, Deep-Sea Profound Steel, and thirty crates of Void-Crystal Sand in unlisted black-market warehouses!”

“What?!” General Sun Ba stood up from the generals’ table, his eyes wide.

Captain Wang raised his voice beside Captain Lin, reading off the exact numbers Corbin had given him: “Chief Auditor Sima! If you think we speak without proof, open Registry Trunk Seven right behind your chair! Inspect Serial Scrolls Nine through Twenty-Seven from the Eastern Depot! Those nineteen manifests record the direct transfer of the missing imperial war materials into the private holding accounts of Guildmaster Lin Ruoli and Chief Auctioneer Ya Su!”

The entire Grand Garrison Hall erupted into a storm of gasps and whispered commotion.

Up on the dais, First Prince Huang Wei stared in stunned confusion between the five kneeling captains and Quartermaster General Luo Feng. If five hundred thousand tons of war supplies had been stolen under his nose while he was signing off on the ledgers, his grand victory report to Emperor Huang Long would turn into an indictment for gross negligence!

Chief Auditor Sima’s skeletal face tightened with grim vindication. He turned to the four senior Censorate scholars standing behind him.

“Bring Registry Trunk Seven to the center of the dais,” Chief Auditor Sima commanded sharply. “Activate the ‘Clear-Sky Truth-Mirror Array’ and project Serial Scrolls Nine through Twenty-Seven above the hall so every general, consort, and chronicler may witness the truth without obstruction!”

Down in the shadows of the rear pillar, Corbin watched the four Censorate scholars haul the heavy iron-bound trunk forward and break the lead seal.

‘Let’s see how your merchant whores and your consorts talk their way out of nineteen official manifests projected twenty feet high in front of the entire army, Alaric!’ Corbin thought, his hand sliding into his belt pouch to grip the cold surface of his Ancient Bloodline-Mirroring Soul Stone, preparing to move forward the moment the hall descended into chaos.

Up in the elevated Phoenix Gallery, however, Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue, Imperial Consort Shu Su Xianye, and Noble Consort Cui Yulan did not show a single flicker of alarm.

Cui Yulan calmly picked up a peeled crystal-grape from her silver dish and placed it between her lips, her cold silver eyes looking down at Captain Lin and the four kneeling captains as if she were looking at five dead men.

At the rear auxiliary table, Alaric did not even set down his teacup. Next to him, Guildmaster Lin Ruoli and Chief Auctioneer Ya Su rose smoothly from their seats, smoothing down their emerald and gold silk gowns as they walked calmly toward the center aisle without waiting to be summoned.

On the dais, the lead Censorate scholar placed a six-sided prism of clear spirit-quartz atop Registry Trunk Seven and channeled his spiritual Qi into the stone.

“Clear-Sky Truth-Mirror Array—Illuminate!”

A shimmering, thirty-foot-wide projection of golden runic light unfurled in mid-air below the ceiling lanterns, magnifying the exact contents, spiritual watermarks, and blood-qi thumbprints of Serial Scrolls Nine through Twenty-Seven so clearly that even the scouts at the back doors could read every single character!

Captain Lin puffed out his chest on the carpet, pointing upward without even looking closely at the text first. “Look upon the projection, Generals! Look at the destination codes and the signatures at the bottom of those nineteen scrolls—”

Captain Lin’s voice died in his throat as if an invisible iron hand had clamped around his windpipe.

Beside him, Captain Wang, Captain Zhou, Captain Ma, and Captain Deng stared up at the thirty-foot golden projection with their jaws dropping open and every drop of blood draining from their scarred faces.

Because the nineteen scrolls projected across the ceiling of the Grand Garrison Hall were NOT the shinobi-ink altered manifests pointing to the Jade Serpent warehouses!

Instead, illuminated in blazing, unmistakable Censorate golden light—verified as 100% authentic by the green truth-halo of the “Clear-Sky Truth-Mirror Array”—were nineteen original Imperial Quartermaster transfer vouchers paired with nineteen secret black-market bills of sale from the border smuggling town of Black-Water Ford!

And stamped at the bottom of every single one of those nineteen bills of sale—glowing with their unique, undeniable personal Battle Aura signatures and blood-thumbprints—were the names and seals of Captain Lin, Captain Wang, Captain Zhou, Captain Ma, and Captain Deng!

Even Chief Auditor Sima leaned forward on the dais, his gray eyebrows shooting up toward his hairline as he read the projected columns aloud in stunned silence:

“Serial Scrolls Nine through Twenty-Seven… record the systematic diversion of three hundred thousand catties of winter grain, eight hundred ingots of Deep-Sea Profound Steel, and twelve crates of military healing salve from the Southern Auxiliary Barracks rations… signed out under the joint authority and blood-thumbprints of Battalion Captains Lin, Wang, Zhou, Ma, and Deng, and sold for seventy thousand taels of Rising Sun silver through Black-Water Ford smugglers prior to the siege!”

“What?!” Captain Lin shrieked, scrambling to his feet on the red carpet as his eyes bulged at his own glowing blood-thumbprint floating twenty feet wide in the air above him. “No! That’s impossible! Those thumbprints are from our pay vouchers! Those aren’t the scrolls that were in Trunk Seven!”

Before Captain Lin could take another breath, Guildmaster Lin Ruoli stepped gracefully to the foot of the dais and bowed toward Chief Auditor Sima and the Phoenix Gallery, holding up a pristine jade box sealed with the triple crest of the three Imperial Consorts.

“Chief Auditor Sima, Your Royal Highness,” Guildmaster Lin Ruoli said, her clear, melodic voice carrying across the stunned hall. “Ten days ago, when Chief Auditor Sima first arrived and questioned the missing winter reserves in the southern auxiliary barracks, the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization and the Gilded Lotus Auction House discovered that these five battalion captains had been stealing their own soldiers’ winter rations and blaming the shortage on the quartermasters.”

Chief Auctioneer Ya Su stepped up beside Lin Ruoli, opening the jade box and floating three imperial-stamped audit scrolls up into the light of the “Clear-Sky Truth-Mirror Array”.

“Out of compassion for the common soldiers suffering under these five corrupt officers, and wishing to preserve the morale of the army before the victory banquet,” Ya Su explained smoothly, gesturing toward the elevated Phoenix Gallery where Zhao Mengxue, Su Xianye, and Cui Yulan sat in serene majesty, “Imperial Consort Xian, Imperial Consort Shu, and Noble Consort Cui ordered our guilds to quietly replace every grain of stolen wheat and every bar of embezzled iron out of their own private palace dowries, while locking the proof of these five captains’ treason inside Registry Trunk Seven until the Censorate’s final review tonight!”

Up in the Phoenix Gallery, Noble Consort Cui Yulan rose slowly to her feet behind the white-jade balustrade.

The temperature in the Grand Garrison Hall plummeted twenty degrees as a faint, terrifying crackle of Nine-Heavens Violet-Gold Suanni lightning danced across her dark violet brocade shoulders.

“My brother General Cui Hao and I wondered why the soldiers of the southern auxiliary barracks were complaining of watery gruel when full rations were issued every week,” Cui Yulan’s cold, commanding voice rang out across the hall. “Not only did the five of you steal the food from your own brothers-in-arms during a border war and sell imperial iron to Rising Sun smugglers—you actually had the audacity to march into this hall tonight and try to frame the very merchant guilds and imperial consorts who paid to cover your crimes before the Censorate discovered them!”

At the northern dais, First Prince Huang Wei’s initial shock transformed instantly into righteous, theatrical fury as he realized the consorts had just handed him a spotless scapegoat on a silver platter!

“Treason! Rank, unforgivable treason!” First Prince Huang Wei roared, kicking his footstool over and pointing a trembling, jewel-ringed finger down at the five pale captains. “No wonder Chief Auditor Sima found discrepancies in the preliminary logs! While this prince was shedding blood and sweat at the front lines to save the empire, you five ungrateful worms were eating your soldiers’ rations and trying to slander my mother’s merchant envoys! Guards! Royal Guards!”

Down near the rear stone pillar, Corbin stood frozen as if his boots had been welded to the flagstones.

Cold sweat broke out across his forehead beneath his iron half-helm, running down his spine like ice water.

In front of his eyes, his system interface flashed a frantic warning:

[System Alert: Host’s Proxy Conspirators Compromised! Counter-Forgery Detected in Registry Trunk Seven (Craftsmanship Tier: Arch-Level Temporal & Alchemical Authenticity).]

‘They knew…’ Corbin’s mind reeled, a wave of suffocating dread tightening around his chest as he looked across the crowded tables at the calm, gray-robed back of Alaric Steele, who was still peacefully sipping his tea beside the medical bench without even turning around to watch the spectacle. ‘He knew I was sneaking into the registry office! His women watched me alter those nineteen scrolls for nine nights, waited until the night before the banquet, and swapped them with a trap forged from the captains’ own blood-prints!’

Out on the red carpet in the center of the hall, twelve Peak Martial King Royal Guards dropped down from the dais railings, their heavy golden halberds slamming against the stone floor as they surrounded Captain Lin and his four terrified comrades.

“Wait! Chief Auditor Sima! Listen to me!” Captain Lin screamed in sheer panic as two Royal Guards twisted his arms behind his back and forced him to his knees. His desperate, bloodshot eyes whipped around toward the rear archway where the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit was standing! “We didn’t forge those manifests! It was Lieutenant Mo! A scouting lieutenant named Mo Chen came to us in the southern barracks and told us the nineteen scrolls in Trunk Seven proved the merchants were hoarding! He is standing right back there by the—”

Captain Lin raised his chin, about to point his bound hands straight at Corbin!

Standing in the shadow of the dragon pillar thirty yards away, Corbin’s eyes flashed with desperate, ruthless survival instinct.

If Captain Lin pointed him out right now in front of Chief Auditor Sima, Noble Consort Cui Yulan, and twelve Peak Martial Kings, they would strip off his helmet, run a Censorate bone-check on his body, and discover that “Lieutenant Mo Chen” was the ten-million-spirit-stone fugitive Corbin!

Before the words “dragon pillar” could leave Captain Lin’s lips, Corbin flexed two fingers inside his wool sleeve and fired a microscopic, soundless needle of compressed “Aura-Piercing Needle Puncture” mixed with dark, corrosive blood-qi straight through the gaps between the banquet tables!

Pfft!

The invisible needle of compressed Qi struck the exact mute-acupoint and carotid vessel at the base of Captain Lin’s throat—and simultaneously triggered a chain-reaction burst across the linked Battle Auras of the four captains kneeling shoulder-to-shoulder beside him!

“Gck—!”

Captain Lin’s eyes bulged wide as black, clotted blood spurted from his mouth and nose, his vocal cords rupturing instantly into shredded meat before he could utter another syllable! Beside him, Captain Wang, Captain Zhou, Captain Ma, and Captain Deng all convulsed violently on the carpet, coughing up dark purple blood as their tongues went numb and their Dantians suffered a sudden, crippling “Qi Deviation Reversal” before they fell unconscious onto the flagstones!

A collective gasp echoed through the hall as the five captains collapsed in pools of dark blood.

Chief Auditor Sima stepped quickly to the edge of the dais, sweeping his spiritual sense over the five convulsing officers on the carpet. His severe face turned dark as iron.

“A synchronized ‘Blood-Silence Handler’s Curse’!” Chief Auditor Sima declared loudly, his voice ringing with absolute certainty as he misattributed Corbin’s concealed needle-strike to a foreign spymaster’s failsafe seal. “The moment Captain Lin tried to reveal the name of the Rising Sun intelligence handler who paid them to sabotage this audit, the hidden curse in their blood vessels ruptured their throats and crippled their Dantians to silence them!”

“Rising Sun spies!” General Sun Ba bellowed, slamming his fist onto his table. “Those five bastards really were bought by General Tokugawa’s remnants to stir up mutiny at the victory banquet!”

“Drag those five traitorous dogs out to the southern dungeon cages and lock them in profound-iron chains!” First Prince Huang Wei shouted triumphantly, seizing the moment with both hands as he puffed out his chest toward Chief Auditor Sima. “Did you see that with your own eyes, Chief Auditor Sima?! My mother, Imperial Consort Shu, Noble Consort Cui, and the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization were protecting this army from foreign saboteurs all along! Have your Censorate chroniclers write every detail of this down in the imperial records!”

Chief Auditor Sima looked at the undeniable projection of the “Clear-Sky Truth-Mirror Array” above the hall, looked at the five silenced, bleeding captains being dragged out by the heels, and finally turned toward the elevated Phoenix Gallery and First Prince Huang Wei, offering a deep, formal bow from the waist.

“The Imperial Censorate has witnessed the truth, First Prince Huang Wei, Your Highnesses,” Chief Auditor Sima stated, taking a heavy silver seal from his belt and stamping it firmly onto the master clearance scroll on his table. “All campaign expenditures, private merchant contributions, and armory tallies of the Azure Fall City campaign are hereby certified as spotless and exemplary. The Censorate begs forgiveness for doubting the integrity of the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization and the three Imperial Consorts.”

Thunderous cheers and applause erupted across the three hundred tables as the officers raised their goblets in relief and celebration.

Back in the shadows near the stone archway, Corbin slowly pulled his hand back inside his cloak, his knuckles white and his breathing shallow as he watched the guards drag the unconscious, mute bodies of Captain Lin and the others out into the freezing snow.

Every single man he had spent weeks recruiting had just been framed as a Rising Sun traitor and thrown into iron cages in less than five minutes—and Corbin himself had been forced to cripple his own allies’ throats just to keep from being executed alongside them!

Corbin looked across the sea of cheering, toasting soldiers toward the quiet corner table.

Just as the musicians struck up a triumphant war ballad, Archmage Alaric Steele lifted his plain porcelain teacup—and for one brief, terrifying second, Alaric turned his head slightly and looked straight across the two hundred feet of crowded tables toward the exact shadow behind the rear dragon pillar where Corbin stood.

A calm, knowing, faintly amused smile curved Alaric’s lips before he turned back to pour a cup of tea for Guildmaster Lin Ruoli.

Corbin felt as though a mountain of glacier ice had crashed down onto his skull.

‘He didn’t just anticipate the ledgers…’ Corbin realized, stepping backward into the dark corridor outside the hall as a cold tremor ran down his legs. ‘He knows someone in the scouting ranks is hunting him… He let me waste two weeks on those manifests just to sweep my pieces off the board in front of the Censorate! If I stay in this camp another week without a stronger backing, I won’t even know how I died!’

By the afternoon of the fifth day, the storm of the audit had passed, leaving Alaric’s shadow coalition holding undisputed legal and financial mastery over the entire eastern border.

Equipped with Chief Auditor Sima’s official silver clearance seal, Guildmaster Lin Ruoli and Chief Auctioneer Ya Su watched from the city gates as the Capital Audit Delegation’s carriages rolled out onto the western highway, carrying glowing official memorials back to the Imperial Capital that praised First Prince Huang Wei’s “victory” while legally cementing the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization as the permanent, exclusive quartermaster supplier for the northeastern provinces.

That night on the fifth day, once the carriages of the capital envoys were miles beyond the mountain passes and First Prince Huang Wei had passed out drunk in his governor’s manor surrounded by dancing girls, the lanterns inside Alaric’s private estate burned warm and bright.

Inside the sandalwood-scented inner chamber, sealed behind the “Sound-Severed Void Ward”, Alaric sat barefoot on the edge of the wide snow-fox fur couch, dressed only in a loose, unfastened robe of dark silk.

The heavy wooden door of the inner chamber swung open, and Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue, Imperial Consort Shu Su Xianye, and Noble Consort Cui Yulan stepped inside together.

They had already unpinned their heavy golden phoenix hairpieces in the outer foyer, letting their long, glossy dark hair fall loose over their shoulders. As the door clicked shut behind them, the three highest-ranking women of the Celestial Dragon Empire unfastened the silk sashes of their court gowns in unison, letting the crimson, sapphire, and dark violet brocades slide down over their wide hips and round buttocks to pool on the carpet at their feet.

Left bare in the warm amber glow of the sandalwood braziers, their lush, voluptuous bodies—their massive, heavy breasts tipped with stiff rosy peaks, their narrow waists, and their long, shapely thighs—walked gracefully across the carpet toward their Master.

Cui Yulan reached the couch first, sinking to her knees between Alaric’s legs and resting her cheek affectionately against his bare thigh while looking up at him with shining silver eyes, while Zhao Mengxue and Su Xianye sat on either side of him, pressing their soft, heavy breasts against his muscular arms.

“Chief Auditor Sima’s convoy has crossed the third mountain ridge, Master,” Cui Yulan murmured softly, her fingers tracing the firm muscles of Alaric’s stomach down toward his groin. “The Censorate is gone, the city is quiet, and the three of us belong only to you until dawn.”

Alaric reached down, sliding one hand under Cui Yulan’s chin to tilt her beautiful face up while his other hand cupped the heavy, warm globe of her right breast.

“Since the three of you performed your parts so well at the banquet,” Alaric said, his ruby eyes gleaming warmly in the firelight as he pulled Cui Yulan up onto his lap between Zhao Mengxue and Su Xianye, “tonight, let us celebrate the real victory of Azure Fall City.”