The massive iron gates of Cinderholme slammed shut behind the two with a resounding thud that reverberated through the basalt foundation of the earth.

  Li Yu and Demon Lord Malos walked away from the fortress city and joined the steady stream of outbound caravans on the main thoroughfare. The sky above was a swirling canvas of ember lit ash. It was casting a permanent and oppressive twilight over the jagged landscape.

  Chief Inquisitor Morok was no longer hunting an unknown shadow; he was preparing a strike force to assist his Sovereign. Demon Lord Ignis was currently tearing through the realm to exact apocalyptic vengeance upon the branches of the Green Syndicate.

  "A very satisfying conclusion to our brief stay," Malos said cheerfully. He was adjusting the strap of his burlap sack over his shoulder.

  "We arrived, we deduced, we observed the terrifying wrath of a grieving Sovereign and we departed without a scratch. The road is endlessly bountiful and full of adventure."

  "We narrowly avoided being tortured by an Inquisitor and incinerated by an angry Demon Lord," Li Yu corrected him while keeping his voice low and steady. "But yes, I suppose it could have gone much worse. I just hope the rest of our journey through this territory is a bit more mundane."

  "Mundane is in the eye of the beholder, my friend," Malos chuckled. He was already looking out over the volcanic wastes.

  As they ventured deeper into the territory of the Sovereign of Flame, the fundamental differences between this domain and the House of Night became even more glaringly apparent.

  Queen Morrigan’s realm, even before it was shattered by the siege, had been a place of chaotic and predatory freedom. Warlords ruled their individual patches of dirt with whatever strength they could muster and the Queen only truly intervened when her direct authority was challenged or her tribute was light. It was a realm where the strong took what they wanted and the weak learned to hide.

  Ignis’s domain was the opposite to that. Ignis took a different approach.

  The thoroughfare they walked upon was a marvel of demonic engineering. It was a straight highway constructed from seamless obsidian blocks. Deep trenches ran along both sides of the road and were flowing with bright orange magma that provided endless illumination and deterred any wasteland beasts from ambushing the caravans.

  But the infrastructure was nothing compared to the populace.

  Every few miles, they encountered heavily fortified waystations manned by the crimson armored Ash Guards. There were no rogue cultivators flying recklessly overhead. The airspace was strictly prohibited which was quite strange. Everyone, regardless of their cultivation realm, walked or rode designated pack beasts on the ground.

  "Notice the lanes," Li Yu observed as he gestured to the wide road.

  The thoroughfare was divided by painted lines of white ash. Heavy merchant caravans occupied the right lane of the road. They were all moving at a steady and synchronized pace. Foot traffic occupied the left. There was no straggling, no passing without clear space and absolutely no stopping outside of the designated waystations.

  It was a machine and the gears were lubricated with absolute fear. Or perhaps discipline. Most likely a mixture of both.

  Just an hour out from the city, they witnessed the machine in motion. A group of heavily armed demonic mercenaries appeared. Their armor was scarred from obvious battles in the outer zones and had just crossed into Ignis’s territory. They were walking in the center of the road, laughing loudly and drinking from a massive jug of fermented wine.

  An Ash Guard patrol, consisting of only five men, approached them from the opposite direction.

  "Halt," the patrol leader commanded. His voice was like a mechanical bark echoing from behind his iron visor. "You are straddling the designated lanes. You are consuming intoxicants on a primary transit artery. Present your travel permits."

  The mercenary leader was a hulking demon with a jagged horn protruding from his forehead. The man quickly sneered at the guards. He was a late Core Formation cultivator and his men were heavily armed. He looked at the five guards and scoffed.

  "We just walked out of the Blood Wastes, iron head," the mercenary spat at the guards and tossed the empty wine jug onto the pristine obsidian road where it shattered. "We don't need permits to walk on rocks. Get out of our way before I break you open and see if you bleed fire."

  Li Yu stopped walking and was pulling Malos slightly toward the edge of the road to give the impending confrontation a wide berth. He expected the guards to draw their blades. Maybe call for backup or trigger a distress array.

  The Ash Guards did none of those things. They didn't speak a single word of warning. They didn't engage in a verbal back and forth about pride or face. They only quickly acted. With synchronized precision, the five guards stepped forward. They didn't use the blades of their halberds. They reversed their grips and swung.

  The mercenary leader didn't even have time to channel his Qi. The first strike shattered his left knee with a sickening crunch. As he fell forward with a roar of pain, a second strike caught him squarely in the jaw and unhinged it instantly.

  The other mercenaries roared and reached for their weapons but the Ash Guards were already moving through them like a crimson blur. It was a systematic and clinical dismantling of a threat. Joints were dislocated, ribs were fractured and wrists were shattered with heavy blows. They had clearly done this before. The entire brutal correction took less than twenty seconds.

  The five mercenaries were left writhing and groaning on the obsidian road while others watched on as they walked on the road. Their weapons were kicked casually into the magma trenches.

  The patrol leader stepped over the whimpering mercenary captain. "Public intoxication on the road. Littering. Threatening an enforcer of the Sovereign's law. You will be dragged to the nearest quarry and subjected to three years of hard labor to pay your fines. Bind them."

  The other guards produced heavy shackles and began binding the broken mercenaries.

  The surrounding caravans and foot travelers didn't stop to gawk. They didn't cheer, nor did they protest. They simply kept walking in their designated lanes while watching the scene. The violence was so commonplace, so normalized as a method of correction, that it didn't even disrupt the flow of traffic. Only attracting looks from others as they carried on.

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  "Incredible," Malos murmured as he was watching the guards drag the groaning men away. "It is a flawlessly executed symphony of oppression. No posturing. No dramatic boasts. Just immediate, overwhelming and somewhat non lethal violence to enforce compliance."

  "It's a different form of ruling entirely," Li Yu replied. His eyes tracked the patrol as they resumed their synchronized march.

  "Bureaucracy is the death of efficiency," Malos said happily.

  "Here, the rules are absolute," Li Yu continued and filed the observation away in his mind. "If you break them, you are beaten until you physically cannot break them again. It strips away having to think about it entirely. It's harsh but you can't deny the results. The people here rarely misbehave. The crime rate, outside of highly specialized organizations like the Green Syndicate, must be practically non-existent."

  "Order through the absolute certainty of pain," Malos smiled. "Ignis has always been a pragmatist. Fire consumes everything that is not contained. She contains her people within an iron furnace. It definitely works."

  They continued their walk and were adjusting easily to the strict but unspoken rhythm of the road. By midday, the terrain began to soften into something entirely unexpected. They entered a sprawling valley that had been completely terraformed.

  "The Ember Terraces." A nearby merchant whispered to his apprentice while pointing down into the valley.

  Li Yu and Malos stopped at the edge of the highway to observe.

  Demons were naturally catastrophic farmers. A fact Li Yu had seen proven in both the Night Queen's blasted tuber fields and the humiliated forces inside the Gore Forged ruins. Then what lay before him was that Sovereign Ignis had found a solution to the problem.

  The valley was carved into thousands of descending terraces. The soil was a rich, dark mixture of crushed basalt, bone meal and cooled volcanic ash. Massive, glowing glass domes covered specific sections and were regulating the heat for more delicate spiritual herbs.

  But it was the labor force that caught Li Yu's eye. Thousands of demons, lesser warlords who had likely broken the law and indentured servants were working the fields. And they looked utterly and thoroughly miserable.

  Walking among the rows of Smoldering Tubers and Ash Wheat were hundreds of specialized agricultural overseers. They wore lighter armor than the Ash Guards but they carried long, flexible canes woven from fire rattan.

  Down in the terrace closest to the road, a muscle bound demon with slate gray skin was hunched over a row of glowing red seedlings. He was sweating profusely and his face twisted in a scowl of absolute frustration.

  A spiritual ash locust, a pest common to the volcanic regions, had landed on one of the seedlings. The gray demon’s eyes flashed with rage. He raised a fist the size of a ham and demonic Qi swirled around his knuckles. He was fully intending to smash the insect into oblivion.

  Crack!

  Before his fist could descend, a fire rattan cane lashed out. It struck the demon sharply across the back of his massive hand.

  "No strikes near the seedlings, you brainless brute!" An overseer roared while stepping forward and brandishing the cane. "I've told you three times today! If you smash the soil, you compress the root system! Pick the locust off with your fingers! Do it carefully!"

  The massive demon winced and was rubbing his stinging hand. He looked at the tiny insect, then at his own massive and clumsy fingers. He let out a low, pathetic whine.

  "I can't!" The demon grunted. "My fingers are too big! Let me just burn it! I can use a very small fireball!"

  Crack! The cane struck his shoulder.

  "You will use your fingers!" The overseer barked and was completely unfazed by the fact that the worker could probably rip him in half if the rules allowed it. "If you bleed uncontrolled fire Qi into that soil, you will ruin the balance for the entire row! Do it properly or I will have you transferred to the magma dredging crews!"

  With a look of supreme agony, the hulking demon got down on his hands and knees. His tongue was sticking out in absolute concentration. He slowly and painstakingly pinched the locust between his massive fingers and pulled it off the leaf without damaging the plant.

  He looked up at the overseer and panting as if he had just fought a death duel.

  "Adequate," the overseer sniffed while lowering the cane. "Now water the next row. And if I see you pouring the water from higher than three inches above the soil, I will beat you until you can't stand. You will not disrupt the topsoil!"

  Li Yu watched the exchange with a wide and genuine grin spreading across his face. He actually had to cover his mouth to hide his laughter.

  "This is incredible," Li Yu breathed. "Ignis knows her people are fundamentally incapable of delicate agriculture so she has highly trained men behind them with sticks to beat them every time they try to use magic instead of a hoe."

  "Oh, the indignity! Look at that warlord over there! He is being forced to prune a Fire Lotus with tiny shears! He looks like he wants to die!" Malos said while chuckling himself.

  "It explains why her empire is so stable," Li Yu noted. "She doesn't try to change their nature. She just strictly manages their behavior through consequence. If you want to eat, you must farm. If you farm like a demon, you get beaten until you can farm correctly."

  "It is a triumph of sheer will over natural instinct," Malos agreed. "I must say, I am greatly enjoying the Sovereign of Flame's hospitality."

  They traveled along the designated path for several more hours and were observing what seemed like endless managed terraces. As evening approached, the sky shifted from a bright, ember orange to a deep, bruising crimson. The ambient heat of the day began to bleed away but the ground remained warm to the touch.

  "We need to find a place to rest," Li Yu said while glancing at the sky. "I noticed on the travel permits we bought at the gate that there is a strict curfew for the main roads. Anyone caught traveling outside a city or waystation after dark is treated as a bandit."

  "Then we shall find a suitable patch of dirt," Malos agreed.

  They stepped off the main road and made sure to avoid the restricted agricultural zones. They quickly found a small, rocky outcropping that offered a bit of shelter from the howling wind.

  It was a stark, lonely spot, but perfectly legal according to the strict territorial laws.

  The two quickly set up a small makeshift camp. Malos had some treasures that could set up a nicer place for them but both of them liked to make due.

  "A humble abode for humble travelers," Malos announced as they sat down around a camp fire.

  Li Yu had grown quite accustomed to setting up camp but doing so without constantly looking over his shoulder for an ambush was a refreshing change of pace in this world. The iron rule of Ignis meant that bandits were rare in the inner territories. The Ash Guards took care of most of them.

  Li Yu brought out some of the high tier beast meat he had saved. Along with that he also pulled a few of the incredibly spicy local vegetables they had purchased in Cinderholme.

  "I'm going to try and balance this spice," Li Yu muttered as he was carefully slicing a vibrant red pepper. "The tavern cooks used it as a blunt instrument. I think if I temper it with a bit of sweet spiritual sap, it might actually enhance the flavor rather than just burning the tongue."

  "A noble culinary pursuit," Malos praised as he was leaning back and watched Li Yu work. He too had grown accustomed to eating what Li Yu prepared.

  "You know, Li Yu, watching you observe this realm is almost as entertaining as observing it myself."

  "I am glad I can entertain you." Li Yu said dryly but he was growing accustomed to having Malos by his side as well. Li Yu tossed the meat into the sizzling pan. The rich, spicy aroma quickly filled the air. "I am but a weak kid in a world of dangerous people. If I don't understand how people think, how they rule and what they value, I won't survive."

  "Well, your observations are quite astute," Malos smiled. "Ignis is indeed a master of structure. But even the strongest iron cage can become a prison for the one holding the key."

  Li Yu nodded but didn’t quite understand what Malos was trying to say. He focused instead on stirring the pan. The meal was almost ready and the quiet night of the volcanic domain stretched out before them.

  It was peaceful. Too peaceful, Li Yu thought. In his experience, whenever he found a moment to truly relax and reflect, the realm had a habit of throwing a Sovereign directly into his lap.