High above the five-hundred-meter combat crater, atop the Central Jade Dais of the Grand Arena, ninety-nine imperial swallowtail banners snapped in the dry afternoon draft.
Two hundred thousand spectators rose from the stone terraces in a rolling roar that bounced off the volcanic cliffs. Down in the concourses, vendors were hawking skewers of roasted mutton and charred scallion cakes, the rich smells of frying fat and burnt chili mingling with the sharp ozone tang left over from the morning’s lightning duels. Cultivators stamped their leather boots in unison, blared six-foot bronze trumpets, and flung dried red spirit blossoms into the air until the breeze looked like a confetti blizzard.
Austin stood on the dais with one boot planted across an uneven jade flagstone, testing the floor's deflection with his heel.
To him, the whole ceremony had the dragged-out misery of an unskippable cutscene at the end of an eight-hour weekend raid. While the crowd cheered, his eyes tracked the timber framing overhead. The Central Dais was an engineering disaster. The cantilevered balconies had zero cross-bracing. White jade pavers were jammed together butt-tight without an inch to spare for thermal expansion. Worst of all, four granite columns carrying the ceremonial awning bowed visibly under three hundred cast-bronze decorative wyrms.
*If this crowd starts jumping in cadence,* Austin thought, thumbing the edge of his steel tape measure, *the harmonic vibration will snap those corbels right off the load-bearing pilasters. Pure architectural malpractice. Complete death trap.*
Austin wore his standard Master Contractor field kit: faded denim dungarees stiff with hydraulic oil and sawdust, a four-pouch leather tool belt jingling with brass hose fittings and feeler gauges, scuffed Vibram-soled work boots, and his dark-blue hard hat. Over his right shoulder hung his five-foot, iridescent blue Stellar-Steel pipe wrench. Down around his ankles, twelve river pebbles and thirty dry pine needles circled in neat, counter-rotating orbits, maintaining a quiet, gyroscopic hum against the arena wind.
Beside him, Li Xiaoyao stood at rigid parade rest. The apprentice had tucked his gray tunic neatly into his cloth sash, hugging Austin’s birch clipboard to his ribs like a family heirloom.
Down on the royal runner, Cerberus Pug lay flat on his belly. The eight-hundred-pound three-headed hound was working through a roasted spiritual ox femur the thickness of a bridge timber. His left jaws cracked through the knuckle joint, the center head drooled thick strings of saliva across the embroidered gold dragons, and the right head let out low, rhythmic snorts of canine bliss.
Provincial Governor Zhao stepped out from the shade of the royal pavilion. The old official wore layered vermilion silks embroidered with cloud patterns, though his knees wobbled so hard the heavy jade belt pendants jingled like sheep bells. Two imperial marshals marched at his heels, carrying a heavy gold-fringed velvet cushion.
"By solemn decree of the Imperial Ministry of Works, and through the unanimous judgment of the Grand Artisan Guild of the Great Yan Dynasty," Zhao shouted into a brass resonance horn, his voice echoing over the caldera, "we officially confer the **Grand Champion Gold Medallion** upon Master Austin of Sunset Peak!"
Zhao dropped into a deep ninety-degree bow, presenting the cushion.
Resting on the velvet was a three-inch-thick disk of pure Nine-Yang Spirit Gold, heavily stamped with the imperial dragon coiled around an anvil.
Austin reached out with a leather-gloved hand, picking the medal up by its red silk cord.
*Thump.*
Solid heft. Austin flicked the rim with his thumbnail, holding it near his ear to catch the ring:
*Tiiiiiing.*
Clean, dense pitch. *High-purity ingot. Scrap recovery value is solid, though thermal conductivity is too high for forge linings.*
A blue chime chimed across the upper edge of his vision:
Austin slipped the heavy gold plate into the side cargo pocket of his denim overalls, jamming it right down next to an extra roll of white Teflon thread tape.
"Decent passive durability buff," Austin muttered, giving his hard hat a satisfied tug. "Fifteen percent less tool depreciation saves a fortune on replacement carbide inserts and diamond grinding wheels. Ought to extend my end-mill lifespan by another twenty hours of continuous milling."
Governor Zhao raised both hands, signaling the honor guard waiting at the southern stone steps.
"Bring forth the Grand Treasure!" Zhao commanded, his voice tightening with theatrical solemnity. "Bring forth the Divine Secret of the Northern Deep!"
Four Golden Core commanders in black-iron scale armor climbed the stairs in rigid formation. Their faces were pale and beaded with sweat, visibly straining against the freezing spiritual draft pouring off their cargo. Slung between them on two carrying poles was a three-foot chest carved from a solid block of **Ten-Thousand-Year Glacial Spirit Jade**.
Heavy Nine-Yang gold chains bound the box shut, every link stamped with suppression seals. Across the seams hung nine purple alchemical paper talismans that hissed with cold, lilac fire. Thick rolls of arctic vapor spilled over the sides of the chest, instantly coating the jade dais in jagged ferns of white frost.
Austin squinted through his spectacles, his contractor instincts bristling.
*Paper adhesive strips on a cryogenic containment vessel,* he noted sourly. *Zero vapor barrier. Those glue seals will suffer condensation failure inside forty-eight hours. Whoever approved this hazardous materials handling protocol needs their union card pulled.*
Zhao approached the chest with trembling hands. He traced three quick hand seals across the top latch, grounding out the wards. One after another, the purple talismans curled into ash, and the heavy gold links clattered against the frosted floor.
"And now..." Zhao whispered, his voice catching in his throat. "...the pinnacle reward of the Centennial Jubilee. A relic recovered three thousand years ago from the deepest Ancient Abyss of the Northern Waste. A pristine artifact left behind by the vanished First Epoch!"
Zhao caught the jade handles and threw back the heavy lid.
Resting on a nest of quilted black velvet sat a twelve-inch, perfectly square cube of matte-black, non-reflective alloy.
The entire arena went dead quiet.
For three thousand years, the greatest array masters, alchemists, and sect patriarchs of the Great Yan Dynasty had puzzled over that black cube. They had pushed spiritual senses into its casing, meeting an impenetrable void. They had struck it with heaven-grade broadswords, failing to raise a single burr. They had bathed it in true alchemical fire, and it had stayed room temperature. The cube possessed no dantian, no meridian conduits, and zero circulating spiritual qi. It was an object that mocked every basic premise of immortal cultivation.
On its northern face, set flush into the seamless casing, was a recessed rectangular socket. Inside the socket, aligned with microscopic regularity, sat **six gold-plated copper pins**.
Hair-thin laser-etched traces branched across all six faces of the housing, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic cyan glow.
Zhao dropped to one knee, offering the open casket with outstretched arms:
"Patriarch Austin! This divine, unreadable relic of the Ancient Gods belongs to you! May its cosmic secrets illuminate your path to the Heavenly Immortals!"
Austin stepped forward.
The cold vapor rolled over his boot toes. He adjusted his glasses, peering down into the open velvet nest. The cyan pulse reflected off the glass lenses.
The moment his gaze locked onto that rectangular port, his interface erupted into an electric-blue cascade of diagnostic data:
Austin stared. A slow, genuine grin spread across his face.
"A pre-collapse biosphere server terminal..." Austin whispered, his pulse quickening. "With a standard six-pin serial bus port? And it runs on four hundred and eighty volts DC?!"
He bent down, leaning within inches of the socket, ignoring the shivering governor entirely.
"Two-millimeter pin spacing," Austin muttered in pure trade delight. "Gold-plated copper pins for zero oxidation and clean data throughput. No spirit chants. No blood sacrifices. No chanting verses to the moon. The ancient civilization in this realm wasn't cultivating immortality at all—they were laying conduit, running 480-volt direct current, and racking server banks! Beautiful. Just absolute craftsmanship."
Without touching the velvet lining, Austin reached down with a bare hand.
He didn't bother with ceremonial tongs or silk gloves. He grabbed the ancient god-relic by two opposing corners and hauled all forty pounds of matte-black alloy out of the glacial jade chest as casually as pulling a six-pack of oil filters off an auto parts shelf.
He hoisted the First Epoch server node up, wedging it securely under his left armpit against his denim dungarees.
With his right hand, he pulled the yellow grease pencil from behind his ear and tapped the top casing:
*Tink.*
The acoustic ring was crisp, dense, and completely free of internal slack.
"Machining tolerances are sub-micron," Austin said, giving Zhao an approving nod. "Seamless blind casing. Zero fastener rattle. High thermal mass. This will make a fantastic programmable logic controller for my Floor Two smelting furnaces. Saves me wiring twenty mechanical relays to regulate the induction coils. Thanks, Governor. Appreciate the hardware."
Zhao’s jaw dropped. His mouth worked silently, resembling a carp tossed onto dry boards. His thoughts seized up entirely as he watched the holiest heirloom of antiquity clamped under an apprentice contractor’s arm like a loaf of day-old sourdough.
"Y-You are... welcome, Patriarch..." Zhao stammered, clutching his chest. "You intend to use... the Ancient Core... to regulate... smelting furnaces?"
"Automated PID temperature loops," Austin replied flatly. "Can't let the melt pool drift more than two degrees during a pour. Uneven thermal gradients ruin the crystal grain boundary."
Before Austin could take another step toward the staircase, the bright daylight over the arena abruptly vanished.
*WHOOOOOOOOOOSH!*
The temperature across the entire amphitheater crashed thirty degrees in the span of a single breath.
The warm afternoon updraft was snuffed out by a screaming, sub-zero gale howling straight down from the upper atmosphere. The ninety-nine silk banners froze stiff within seconds, rattling like tin sheets before snapping into brittle shards. Frost raced across the white jade pavers, spreading from the arena rim inward like a web of silver needles.
Directly overhead, the blue sky split apart under a ten-mile vortex of blinding, razor-sharp spiritual sword light!
The clouds whipped into an arctic cyclone, grinding together with the shriek of broken glass. An overwhelming, suffocating spiritual pressure dropped onto the caldera floor, pinning two hundred thousand people to their stone seats. Mortals gasped for air, Foundation Realm disciples dropped to their hands and knees heaving bile, and seasoned Golden Core elders clutched their ribs in genuine terror.
A voice like frozen iron scraping over granite boomed down from the eye of the vortex:
*"IGNORANT MORTAL INSECT!"*
The roar shattered decorative clay ridge-tiles along the arena rim.
*"YOU DARE LAY YOUR FILTHY, GREASE-STAINED CARPENTER HANDS UPON THE SACRED RELIC OF THE FIRST EPOCH?!"*
*"HAND OVER THE BLACK CUBE! THAT ANCIENT HEAVENLY CORE BELONGS TO THE SOVEREIGN OF THE SOUTHERN SKIES!"*
The storm clouds peeled back like heavy stage curtains.
Floating downward on a sea of ten thousand whistling silver blades was a figure out of living legend. Long white hair whipped like silk streamers in the gale, pristine white daoist robes billowed with imperial majesty, and silver eyes blazed with the cold glare of an icy star.
The living terror of the southern provinces.
**The Southern Sword Saint, Jiang Taixu!**
Austin stood on the frosted dais, his blue hard hat pulled down tight against the biting wind, looking up into the freezing sky with profound, unadulterated annoyance.
"Terrific," Austin sighed, hiking the forty-pound server node higher under his arm. "An unannounced aerial drop-in without a flight clearance. And ten thousand unsecured flying projectiles inside municipal airspace. The safety citations are just writing themselves today."