The Royal Physician Hall was colder than a meat locker in the depths of a northern winter.
Icicles three feet long hung from the gold-trimmed dragon rafters, dripping frozen water drops onto the silk carpets. A howling, demonic draft whistled through the carved lattice windows, coating the jade floor tiles in a two-inch layer of slick, jet-black frozen ground.
In the center of the hall, resting upon a raised white-jade dais, was a ten-foot massive stone block of Nine-Abyss Nether Frost. Entombed within the pitch-black crystal lay the Dowager Empress Yan, her silver hair frozen stiff as wire. Her wrinkled face was pale as corpse animal fat.
Her pulse was down to a single, tiny flutter every sixty seconds.
Kneeling on the frozen floor around the dais were thirty senior royal physicians dressed in white mourning robes, their teeth chattering wildly as they cried into their trembling hands.
Pacing before the dais was Emperor Yan himself. The sovereign of the Great Da-Qi Empire had his royal dragon saber unsheathed. He dragged the glowing steel tip across the frost-crusted floor with a terrifying, screeching shriek: SKRRRRRRRRR.
“Thirty years!” Emperor Yan roared, his bloodshot eyes sweeping over the kneeling physicians with murderous frenzy. “For thirty years, you leeches took millions of spirit stones from the royal treasury! If my royal mother ceases breathing before sundown, every doctor in this room shall be decapitated and buried in her frozen crypt!”
At that moment, the heavy oak doors of the bedchamber swung open.
Frank walked in, his heavy rubber work boots crunching loudly over the frosted carpet. Over his denim overalls, he wore his bright yellow builder hard hat, his tool belt jingling with brass wrenches and rolls of heavy-duty friction tape.
Behind him marched Princess Jiang Ling’er in her safety goggles. She carried a coiled fifty-foot rubber extension cord. She was followed by Shen Shitou carrying a steel tripod stand and Niu Mang carrying a zinc-coated steel drain bucket.
At the side of the dais stood Imperial Physician Gu. The chief royal apothecary whose robes were stitched with nine golden needles. Beside Gu stood Consort Rong, peeking out from behind a silver-threaded privacy curtain with a cold, hungry smirk.
Physician Gu sneered in disgust as Frank approached the dais: “Who let these vulgar laborers into Her Majesty’s sacred bedchamber?! An royal prince is outside under guard, and you bring a wandering ditch-digger with a bucket?!”
Frank didn’t even look at him. He set his light metal clipboard on a frozen marble side table and walked straight to the black ice block.
Frank rested his bare knuckle against the surface and delivered a firm, clockwork tap ([Physical QA Scan]).
TINK.
A pulse of sharp-angled amber gridlines rippled across the black frost in Frank’s eyes, scanning the core heat and thickness gradients.
Frank turned around, shaking his head with deep skilled frustration.
“Who prescribed the medical treatment for this patient?” Frank asked flatly, pointing his red carpenter’s pencil at the ice block.
Physician Gu puffed out his chest with pompous pride: “I did! I’m Chief Court Physician Gu, Master of the Nine-Glacial Needle! For thirty years, we have preserved Her Majesty’s fading soul by administering our secret old family Nine-Glacial Soul Condensation Pills!”
“You’re a total idiot,” Frank said deadpan.
The bedchamber fell so quiet that the dripping icicles sounded like falling stones.
Emperor Yan’s saber stopped dragging across the floor. The Emperor turned his bloodshot eyes toward Frank, his voice trembling with deadly intensity: “Explain yourself, Master Lu.”
“Her core boiler is running at thirty-eight point five degrees,” Frank said. He tapped his pencil against the clipboard. “Her heart and lungs are cooking with a low-grade systemic fever caused by an untreated gallbladder inflammation thirty years ago. Her natural exhaust channels were slightly squeezed tight.”
Frank turned to glare at Physician Gu.
“Instead of clearing the exhaust chimney pipe, this quack packed her radiator lines with heavy-duty dry ice,” Frank continued. “Every time she complained of feeling hot, you fed her more frozen pills. You froze the return lines, locked up the outer breath flow, and turned her chest cavity into an unvented icebox.”
Physician Gu’s face turned bright red: “Blasphemy! Her Majesty was afflicted by the Primordial Nether Demon! The ice is a sacred seal!”
“It’s an airlocked radiator, you hack,” Frank snapped back. “And if you keep blasting it with open spiritual fire like those fire bowls in the corner, the heat shock will crack her ribs like frozen glass.”
Frank turned to his students: “Shitou, set up the tripod. Ling’er, run the extension cord to the spirit battery pack.”
“Right away, Master!”
Shitou planted the steel tripod five paces from the black ice block. Ling’er rapidly plugged the thick three-pronged cable into a heavy wooden battery box. Meanwhile, Frank reached into his canvas bag. Then he pulled out a polished light metal curved reflector cone and a bulb of thick, clear quartz glass.
Inside the quartz bulb ran a coiled filament of dark heavy dark metal-rhenium wire.
Physician Gu laughed hysterically, clutching his stomach: “A toy lantern! A glass bauble! He thinks a common glass candle can melt the Nine-Abyss Nether Frost that withstood the True Samadhi Flames of thirty high elders?!”
Frank ignored him. He screwed the quartz bulb into the baked-clay socket, adjusted the reflector cone until it pointed directly at the Dowager Empress’s upper chest spine. Then he clicked the rheostat switch on the battery box.
CLICK.
A soft, golden-amber glow bloomed from the quartz bulb.
There was no ear-splitting roar of spiritual flame. There was no dramatic manifestation of fire dragons or soaring phoenixes. There was only a steady, gentle cone of 1.2-hair-fraction radiant infrared energy washing smoothly over the black ice block.
Frank pulled an infrared heat gauge gun from his tool belt and clicked the laser trigger against the dark frost.
“Surface heat holding steady at forty-two degrees,” Frank instructed Ling’er. “Ling’er, monitor the rheostat. If the dial creeps past forty-four, back off the resistor by two notches. We’re breaking the water’s skin of frozen fats in the skin tiny blood vessels, not roasting a pig.”
“Understood, Master! Monitoring voltage!” Ling’er replied, her fingers steady on the brass dial.
Physician Gu sneered, folding his arms: “A peasant’s delusion! In ten seconds, the cold qi will shatter his cheap glass bauble into—”
GROOOOOOOAN.
A deep, underground sound rumbled from the center of the ten-foot ice block.
The thirty kneeling physicians gasped all at once.
The iron-hard black ice—which had remained as hard as diamond for three decades—began to sweat!
Tiny, amber droplets of moisture beaded across the dark surface. It rolled down the crystal-clear face like golden tears. The infrared heat pierced the crystal-clear lattice. Then, fragrant clouds of white water vapor began to rise toward the gold-trimmed ceiling. He carried a faint, soothing scent of ancient healing herbs.
The choking demonic chill that had gripped the bedchamber for thirty years began to recede!
A gentle, spring-like warmth spread across the room, melting the three-foot icicles hanging from the dragon rafters. The kneeling physicians stopped shivering. Color returned to their blue lips as they breathed in the sweet, warm air.
“The Nether Frost...” Physician Gu stammered, his eyes bulging as he stumbled backward. “The Nether Frost is weeping! The demonic runes... They’re dissolving without a single Daoist magic charm?!”
“It isn’t weeping. It’s burning into gas,” Frank muttered, checking his watch. “Basic phase shift from solid to vapor under steady blasting heat. When you apply uniform infrared wavelength, the water molecules vibrate at their ringing hum. It’s middle school physics.”
Emperor Yan dropped his sword to the floor with a loud CLANG.
The sovereign of Great Da-Qi stepped toward the dais, tears streaming freely down his weathered cheeks. He watched the thick black ice rapidly thin from ten feet down to six inches!
Through the semi-clear amber frost, the Dowager Empress’s silver eyelashes began to flutter!
Her skin, once frozen white as ash, began to show the faintest flush of living warmth!
“Mother...” Emperor Yan choked out, falling to his knees before the dais. “Mother is breathing!”
Frank checked his heat gauge gun: “Surface ice thickness at three tiny fractions of an inch. Prepare the drain bucket, Niu Mang.”
“Bucket ready, Master!” Niu Mang set the zinc-coated tub right beside the bed.
Suddenly, a violent, ear-splitting crack ripped through the room!
KRAAAAAAAACK!
The leftover shell of black ice shattered into a million sparkling, harmless crystal fragments, evaporating into mist before they even touched the silk carpet!
For the first time in thirty years, the Dowager Empress Yan lay uncovered upon her bed!
The physicians erupted into wild, stunned praise: “A miracle! A sky miracle from the First Epoch!”
Consort Rong’s face turned corpse-pale behind the curtain, her hands trembling in utter panic.
But Frank didn’t celebrate.
In Frank’s eyes, the QA system box flashed an urgent, crimson alert banner!
[CRITICAL ALERT: Core Thaw Complete. Thirty Years of Melted Necrotic Sludge Influx Mobilized toward Left Ventricle. Time to Myocardial Infarction: 12 Seconds].
On the bed, the Dowager Empress’s body suddenly arched in a violent, painful convulsion!
Her chest heaved spasmodically. Her eyes rolled back into her head. And her skin, which had just turned a healthy pink, suddenly transformed into a terrifying, deep purplish-black!
A foul, toxic stench of decayed stale bile filled the bedchamber!
Physician Gu shrieked at the top of his lungs, pointing an accusatory finger at Frank: “Treason! High treason! The peasant has poisoned Her Majesty! Her heart has burst! Guards, execute him! Slay the charlatan before he escapes!”
Emperor Yan snapped his head up, his eyes flashing with desperate, murderous rage: “Master Lu, what’s happening?!”
Frank didn’t flinch. He reached into his tool belt. He pulled a six-inch polished copper grounding pin and an eight-ounce brass ball-peen hammer. Then he stepped onto the bed dais.
“Hold your horses, Emperor,” Frank said deadpan. “I told you: nobody ever remembers to bleed the radiator before cranking the boiler.”