Chapter 665: The Mark Beneath the Cut
They met in a private chamber under Ji's own peak rather than any hall with a door onto a corridor, and Leon understood the significance of that before anyone spoke.
Ji Liansu. Elder Ruan, back from the basin with ink on four fingers now instead of three. Han Suwen with a case of records. Nobody else.
"Sit," said Ji. "Elder Ruan, show him."
Ruan put a viewing plate on the table and brought up an image magnified past anything Leon's eyes could have managed.
"That's the interior of the second spike," she said. "I took it apart in eleven layers. This is between the sixth and the seventh, underneath the third carved character."
There was a mark in the metal. It was tiny — smaller than a grain of rice at true scale — and it was not a signature. It was four strokes and a number.
