The stench of rotting black bile and thirty years of putrefied healing herbs hit the royal bedchamber like a physical blow.
On the white-jade dais, the Dowager Empress Yan was thrashing wildly beneath her stitched silk sheets. Her face had deepened from a sickly purple into the bruised, glass black of rotting elderwood, her veins bulging like tangled iron cords beneath paper-thin skin.
Around the dais, twelve royal bodyguards drew their golden-hilted curved sabers with a terrifying chorus of metal rasps: SHING-SHING.
“Treason!” Imperial Physician Gu howled, his voice reaching a pitch that could shatter crystal. “Her Majesty’s Heart spirit vein has suffered total rupture! The wandering charlatan has carried out a royal assassination before thirty witnesses! Cut him down! Flay his flesh into ribbons!”
Emperor Yan stepped forward. His eyes burned with maddened, royal fury. His hand gripped the handle knob of his saber so hard that veins tore along his knuckles.
“Master Lu!” Emperor Yan’s voice shook the heavy dragon pillars. “If my mother’s breath ceases... Your entire lineage shall burn in the nine fires!”
Frank didn’t even blink. He didn’t look at the drawn sabers, nor did he look at the weeping physicians scrambling toward the exits.
“Emperor, tell your security guards to step back five paces,” Frank said. His voice as were calm and steady as a diesel generator. “And put down that butter knife. If you swing a blade in here, you’ll breach the fluid holding zone and spray thirty years of toxic bio-sludge all over your palace wallpaper.”
Frank stepped onto the edge of the jade dais, reached out with one gloved hand. Then he firmly rolled the thrashing Dowager Empress onto her left side.
“Ling’er, position the tub,” Frank barked. “Keep the lip below the discharge port.”
“Bucket deployed at lower height, Master!” Princess Jiang Ling’er slid the twenty-gallon zinc-coated steel wash tub right against the lower edge of the mattress.
Physician Gu shrieked in horror: “He’s desecrating the Sacred Imperial Body! He’s rolling the Dowager Empress like a dead swine! Stop him before the royal ancestors curse us!”
Frank reached into the pocket of his denim overalls. Then he pulled out a six-inch-long, three-eighths-inch-thick rod of solid, heat-softened red copper.
One end was ground into a clean, fifty-degree narrowed hollow point. The other end had a wide, flat striking anvil.
In Frank’s eyes, the DAO-QA screen locked onto the base of the Empress’s spine, painting a glowing green crosshair over the Changqiang acupuncture point at the tip of the coccyx.
“Look at this test readout,” Frank grumbled. He held the copper pin in his left fingers. Meanwhile, his right hand unhooked his eight-ounce brass ball-peen hammer. “One hundred and eighty-five pounds of pressure of high-pressure liquid sludge backed up in the lower pool.”
Frank glanced back at the screaming Physician Gu with cold disdain.
“You spent thirty years dumping frozen tonics into a closed system without installing a single pressure relief bypass,” Frank said deadpan. “When you thaw an engine block, the liquid expands. If you don’t crack the radiator bleed cock, the metal tube head blows off.”
Frank lined up the narrowed tip of the copper pin against the base of the Empress’s tailbone.
“Cover your mouths, crew,” Frank said. “This is going to smell like high tide in a tannery.”
Frank flicked his wrist.
TINK.
The brass hammer tapped the copper anvil with a crisp, tiny chime.
The heat-softened copper pin parted the skin layer without cutting a single blood vessel, docking perfectly into the natural connective muscle tissue at the base of the central governing spirit vein.
For half a second, the entire bedchamber hung in frozen silence.
And then—
PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHH!
An ear-splitting, high-pressure screech tore through the room, sounding exactly like a steam locomotive dumping its high-pressure blowdown valve!
From the hollow core of the copper pin erupted a nonstop, pencil-thick jet of jet-black, foul-smelling, semi-frozen rotting sludge!
SPLAT-SPLAT!
The toxic jet blasted across the gap and hammered straight into the bottom of Frank’s zinc-coated steel wash tub!
The fluid was a nightmare of ancient potion-made corruption. Black as crude oil, glittering with tiny shards of unabsorbed lead and liquid silver crystals, and reeking so wildly of rotten eggs and stale marsh gas that five royal physicians instantly fainted dead away onto the floor!
“By the Heavens above!” Pill King Dan Kui screamed, his hard hat rattling as he backed away in horror. “The Nether Sludge! That’s the condensed spiritual poison of thirty thousand Nine-Glacial Pills! It has turned into liquid corpse-bile!”
The jet of black sludge poured relentlessly into the tub: one gallon... Two gallons... Three gallons!
On the bed, the violent convulsions wracking the Dowager Empress’s frame began to subside with astonishing speed.
With every quart of sludge that drained into the metal bucket, the bruised, black glass-black hue across her skin visibly pulled back, chased away by a surging wave of vibrant, natural golden qi!
The tangled, bulging veins across her neck smoothed down into smooth, fine china skin.
Her uneven, dying heartbeat suddenly locked into a deep, rhythmic, ringing rhythm: It had been fluttering on the verge of total heart collapse.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
The sound of her pulse was so powerful and steady that the silk bed hangings fluttered with each systolic beat!
Five seconds.
From the first strike of Frank’s hammer to the final sputter of fluid, exactly five point two seconds elapsed.
GURGLE... CHUFF.
A final puff of harmless gray water vapor escaped the copper pin. The flow stopped cleanly, leaving three and a half gallons of foul black settled mud resting safely in Frank’s tub.
Frank reached down with his gloved fingers, gave the copper pin a smooth, quarter-turn twist. Then he pulled it free.
He wiped the tip with an oily rag, slid the pin into his tool belt. Then he picked up a piece of sterile cotton gauze to tape down the puncture point.
“Bleed-down complete,” Frank muttered, shaking his head as he inspected the tub. “Three point five gallons of sludge removed. System pressure normalized to twelve point two PSI. The chest radiator is breathing again.”
Frank gestured with his chin toward Shitou: “Shitou, slide the lid over that bucket before the sulfur fumes corrode the gold leaf on the ceiling.”
“Right away, Master!” Shen Shitou slammed a tight zinc-coated metal lid over the tub, sealing the foul vapors inside.
The bedchamber was so quiet that you could hear the soft, rhythmic flutter of the Empress’s breathing.
The thirty royal physicians, Emperor Yan, and the twelve armored guards stared at the covered tub, their minds fully shattered into dust.
Three decades of fatal demonic affliction... Cured in five seconds with a copper grounding pin and a plumber’s bucket?!
Emperor Yan stood frozen, his jaw hanging open, his drawn saber trembling in his fingers.
Suddenly, a frail, creaking sound broke the stillness.
On the bed, the Dowager Empress Yan slowly opened her eyes.
Her irises were no longer clouded with frosty gray waterfalls. They were bright, clear, and glowing with the deep, sharp soft glow of an ancient sovereign matriarch!
She blinked twice, looked at the gold-trimmed ceiling, and then slowly rolled onto her back.
The seventy-year-old matriarch raised a frail, wrinkled hand to her forehead. She rubbed her temples with mild irritation.
“Why is it so noisy in here?” the Dowager Empress rasped, her voice rough from disuse but carrying clear royal power. “And why does the room smell like a burnt sulfur kiln?”
Emperor Yan fell to his knees beside the bed, tears splashing onto the silk sheets: “Mother! Imperial Mother! You... You have awakened!”
The Dowager Empress looked down at her son, then glanced around the room at the thirty physicians kneeling in white mourning robes. Then she finally locked her eyes on Frank’s covered tub.
“Yan’er,” the Empress asked, pointing a trembling finger at the bucket. “Why are those useless old quacks wearing funeral shrouds? Did someone pass away? And why is there a bucket of ditch water sitting next to my slippers?”
Physician Gu trembled so wildly his knees knocked together, attempting to stammer: “Your Majesty... We... We preserved your soul with sacred Glacial Pills...”
“Silence, unfit fool!” the Dowager Empress snapped, her gaze flashing with royal lightning. “For thirty years, I was trapped in an icy nightmare, unable to move my tongue while you poured freezing poison down my throat! If not for this young craftsman, my bones would have rotted in your frost!”
The Empress then looked toward the foot of the bed. There, Princess Jiang Ling’er was standing in her yellow hard hat and safety goggles.
The old Empress’s eyes softened, a tremor of deep emotion shaking her voice:
“Ling’er? Is that my little dragon-girl? Come closer, child... Let your grandmother look at you.”
Ling’er took off her safety goggles, tears welling in her eyes as she stepped to the bedside and took the Empress’s warm, living hand: “Grandmother... It’s me. I’m back.”
“You’ve grown strong, child,” the Empress whispered, gently touching Ling’er’s yellow hard hat. “And you brought a master of true wonders to save this old woman.”
The Empress touched her stomach, letting out a soft, delicate rumble:
GRRRRRRRR.
“Thirty years of sleeping,” the Dowager Empress grumbled, a radiant smile touching her lips. “I feel as if I haven’t eaten since the founding era. Royal kitchen! Send word to the head chef right away! Bring me a steaming bowl of spicy braised lamb noodles with extra scallions and chili oil!”
Emperor Yan threw his golden saber to the ground, buried his face in the blankets, and cried like a child!
“Bring the noodles!” Emperor Yan roared to the palace eunuchs, his voice choked with joyful tears. “Bring all the lamb in the royal treasury! Slaughter a thousand sheep if Her Majesty desires!”
The eunuchs scrambled out the doors in pure ecstasy, shouting the miraculous news across the palace courtyards: “The Dowager Empress has awakened! The Dowager Empress requests lamb noodles!”
Behind the silver curtain, Consort Rong’s knees buckled. She slid down against the wall, her face the color of wet chalk, her mind reeling in cold, choking terror.
The Dowager Empress was alive.
The thirty-year poisoning scheme that had cemented her faction’s dominance over the royal medical bureau had been dismantled—not by an immortal grandmaster or an ancient deity—but by a vagrant builder with a piece of scrap copper wire!
Frank picked up his light metal clipboard from the side table. He pulled his red carpenter’s pencil from behind his ear. Then he began scribbling across a fresh invoice sheet.
Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
“Alright, Emperor,” Frank said. He stepped down from the dais and tapping the paper with his pencil. “The emergency service call is finished. Let’s settle the ticket so my crew can pack the truck.”