The Spirit Temple was no exception. In fact, it seemed rules were more strictly followed there than anywhere else. People kept their distance from one another as they waited for a number in the large square before the temple. Inferiors bowed and scraped when required, and everyone there acted extremely politely, especially in the presence of priests; offending the wrong person at the temple could cost you your life, or worse yet, your soul. Despite the risks, however, tens of thousands frequented the temple grounds every day. They had little choice, as the Spirit Temple was the biggest issuer and guarantor of contracts.
Unlike the Spirit Temple, the Blood Master Monastery was chaotic and unruly. No outsiders loafed within its spartan grounds, where its members brutally trained with their lives on the line. Its buildings also let off a hostile aura. Despite the chaos, no beggars could be seen anywhere near the complex. It was said that the monastery occasionally purged the city’s undesirables. As a result, most of them left the city voluntarily, even selling themselves into serfdom for fear of getting caught up in a potential sweep.
After much walking, Cha Ming finally arrived on the seventh floor. He passed several wooden doors before arriving at a small waiting area near Tian Zhi’s office, where he sat and waited. Five minutes passed, then another five. Whoever Tian Zhi was meeting with, they were running late, an unusual occurrence in Bastion. The door opened after two minutes.
“I’ll be sure to get someone working on it,” Tian Zhi assured two men, leading them toward the stairwell and passing Cha Ming. The men wore bloodred combat robes, and each one wore a weapon out in the open. There was no need to wonder about their identity; their bald heads, aggressive stares, and bloodred tattoos that crept up from beneath their robes marked them as blood masters.
“Be sure you do,” one of the men said before proceeding down the stairs.
“Come,” Tian Zhi said, waving Cha Ming inside. “I don’t have much time anymore. For all their talk of being disciplined monks, they have no concept of timeliness.”
“I think they focus their attention on violence and training,” Cha Ming said. “Everything and everyone around them are there to support them and their desires.” He took a seat in Tian Zhi’s well-furnished office as the man poured them both a quick cup of tea.
“What can I help you with today?” Tian Zhi said. It had been two months since Cha Ming had started working on the Breaker, and he’d made many significant improvements to his design. Slowly but surely, the artifact was pushing itself past the boundaries of a late-grade weapon of structural destruction.
“I’m at a bottleneck in my studies,” Cha Ming said, taking a sip of tea. “Unfortunately, focusing on the project doesn’t seem to be sufficient. I need to work on something else. Something to take my mind off of things.”
“Hmm,” Tian Zhi said. He tapped his fingers on his desk, thinking. “I have a few projects you could work on. The first one is a request from a coastal kingdom. Something about redesigning certain ship components since a good portion of their naval fleet was wiped out in a storm.”
“A storm?” Cha Ming asked, raising an eyebrow. “A single storm wiped out a naval fleet?”
“I didn’t say I believed them,” Tian Zhi said. “They’ll only share what happened if we take on the job. Are you interested?”
“That seems outside my field of expertise,” Cha Ming said. “I’m not very good with water-aligned construction methods.”
“Fair enough,” Tian Zhi said. “The second one is a request to develop larger flight treasures for more efficient transportation. With the war preparations going on across the South, they’ve finally realized the logistics of the battle are going to be a deciding factor. They need us to think up something—anything—to make transportation cheaper.”
“All right,” Cha Ming said. It wasn’t a bad project for Pai Xiao. Incorporating key weaknesses in the design would be easy, and that could provide the North with significant advantages. “I’ll think about it. Anything else?”
Tian Zhi tapped his chin and looked at Cha Ming. “You made a spear for the blood master abbot in Ashes, am I right?”
“Does the abbot here need a weapon as well?” Cha Ming asked.
“Nothing like that,” Tian Zhi said. “But we need someone with experience crafting compatible weapons. You know how they are—they focus on offense, offense, offense at all costs. They want a new line of stronger weapons. Their standard-issue weapons—the ones they had designed thirty years ago—are archaic. They want to completely replace the entire lot.
“I’d normally be very agreeable to all this, and so would Director Yong, but our research and development group is already flooded with work. Blood masters are very picky, you see, so we can’t just put anyone on the project. It would need to be a core member. But I can’t afford to dedicate too much of our time on it. We have a deadline looming for the project. If we don’t meet it, the most powerful man in the South will have our hides.”
“I’m no expert on blood-master weapons, but I’d be willing to give it a try,” Cha Ming said. “Do you have designs for the weapons they currently use?”
“I do,” Tian Zhi said, taking a bloodred jade from his desk and handing it to him. “Though I don’t want you spending too much time on this. A week at most. If you don’t have any ideas, we’re going to pretend you didn’t look at it. Though I don’t want to upset the blood masters, I’d rather upset a hundred abbots than a grand vizier of the Southern Alliance.”
“All right,” Cha Ming said. “I’ll see what I can do.” He pocketed the red jade and stood up. “I won’t stay for another cup. It’s time for your next appointment.” The long hand on the man’s clock had almost
