The Craftsman’s Pact of Qin Yue

When a master goldsmith's measuring tool is stained with a shamaness's blood, Qin civilization and the ley lines of Baiyue fracture and merge amid rammed earth and curse marks

Wang Ke, deputy director of the Xianyang Artisans' Office, has the entire Treatise on Crafts inscribed on his left hand. He measures the world with Qin-standard construction techniques, convinced that “standardizing the tracks of carts means standardizing civilization.” Zhao Hua, queen of the Baiyue Juting people, wears a ley-line necklace strung with the teeth of twelve people. She paints totems in blood to command plants to build cities, and sees Qin rule as “a gallows strangling the dragon veins.”

At the Lingqu canal construction site, his bronze measuring tool first detects a blood-colored technique for diverting witchcraft. At the foot of the Great Wall, her deer-head curse mark crashes against the mechanical rumble of rammed-earth walls. On the Qin Straight Road, the essence of human pillars resonates with the ley-line necklace, tearing the standardized highway into twin paths of yin and yang.

The System's “Artisan Soul backlash” is turning Wang Ke into a living weapon, while curse-mark scars from witchcraft are devouring Zhao Hua's flesh. As the First Emperor prepares to use the fruits of the people's labor to build an iron city for the ages, and the Baiyue ley lines are about to snap under the crushing force of Qin rule, these sworn enemies, bound by the same blood yet on opposing sides, have no choice but to seal a world-shaking pact with measuring tools and bone knives.