The sunset over the western suburbs of the Imperial Capital had turned the autumn sky the color of bruised plums and tarnished copper.
At the end of a quiet gravel alley, the high brick outer edge walls of Ironwood Peak’s temporary carriage house were shaking with a nonstop, faster-than-sound hum that rattled the roof tiles. Above the courtyard hovered three hundred floating steel broadswords, their razor tips lined up toward the center of the yard, bathing the cobblestones in a shimmering dome of murderous silver-blue sword qi.
Forty senior elders of the Divine Sword Shen Clan stood in a fine, detailed, nested circular battle formation. Their silver-and-black robes whipped furiously in the nearby gale. Their eyes burned with the cold, hungry gleam of veteran killers who had enforced the clan’s will for decades.
In the center of the courtyard, standing alone on the newly swept pea gravel, was Shen Shitou.
The young ironworker stood with his work boots planted wide, his calloused hands resting heavily on the hickory handle of his twenty-pound forged sledgehammer. His indigo work shirt was torn across the shoulder, revealing skin that gleamed with the dark, polished sheen of cold star-iron.
Standing ten paces before him was Patriarch Shen Canghai.
The sovereign of the Shen Clan had discarded his court handcuffs—unshackled by corrupt clan retainers who had intercepted the town prison cart along the backup avenues—and now wore his old family battle plate of black dragon steel. In his right hand, Shen Canghai held the legendary, four-foot-long 4-Pattern Great Da-Qi Divine Sword, its blade etched with four ancient gold-inlaid dragon runes that pulsed with terrifying Golden Core sword intent.
“Shen Shitou,” Shen Canghai hissed, his voice trembling with manic, high-born hatred. “You were born from my seed. You were nursed on the clan’s spiritual broth until you turned six. And yet, you joined an illiterate carpenter’s circus to humiliate our lineage before the Emperor, the High Trial. The entire world!”
Shen Canghai raised the glowing divine blade, pointing it directly at Shitou’s throat with lethal care.
“Under the old family Bloodline Statutes of Great Da-Qi, a son’s flesh, bones, and marrow are the permanent property of his clan patriarch!” Shen Canghai sneered, his eyes bloodshot with desperate madness. “Our foundry is unsafe. Our treasury is sealed! But if I carve out your star-steel skeleton and smelt your marrow into the core of this Ancestral Divine Sword, our clan shall rise to conquer the northern border!”
Elder Shen Kuo, his braced arm hanging in a dirty sling, hobbled forward from the formation: “Don’t waste words on this crippled dog, Patriarch! Break his limbs! When he was an infant, we should have crushed his spine instead of merely throwing him into the melted rock waste pit!”
Shitou didn’t raise his hammer. He didn’t take a single step backward.
His starlight eyes looked upon the two men who had abandoned him in an icy ravine with total, unmoving stillness.
“When I was six years old, Patriarch,” Shitou’s deep voice rolled across the courtyard like heavy granite blocks, “I begged you for a bowl of warm rice porridge in the middle of a winter blizzard. You looked at my hardened joints, called me a useless piece of scrap iron, and had the guards dump me into the frozen melted rock waste ravine to die.”
Shitou’s knuckles tightened against the smooth hickory wood of his hammer handle.
“The Shen Clan gave me no bloodline. You gave me frostbite and broken bones,” Shitou continued, his voice calm as a mountain ridge. “Master Lu pulled me out of the ditch. Master Lu fed me hot turnip soup. Master Lu taught me how to forge steel with pure heart and clean joints. I’m not your son. I’m Ironwood Peak’s lead ironworker.”
“Insolent cur!” an elder shrieked from the array. “Without our clan’s noble blood, you would be a maggot crawling in the ditch!”
Before the elders could unleash their swords, the wooden front gates of the carriage house were suddenly pushed open with a casual, squeaking creak.
Frank walked into the courtyard, holding his stainless-steel tea thermos in one hand and his red carpenter’s pencil in the other.
Behind him marched Princess Jiang Ling’er in her yellow hard hat. Her brass valve-wrench shone under the twilight, and Niu Mang. She carried his five-foot hard dark metal-iron trench shovel across his shoulders like an ox carrying a yoke.
Frank stopped five paces inside the gate, took a sip of lukewarm jasmine tea. Then he looked around the courtyard with deep builder annoyance.
“Look at this mess,” Frank muttered, clicking his tongue. “Forty grown men trespassing on private property, trampling my newly laid pea-gravel driveway, and tracking red clay all over the outer edge.”
Ling’er stepped up beside Frank, inspecting the hovering swords through her safety glasses: “Master, look at the power-coil fields. Three hundred ungrounded blades hovering thirty feet in the air without lightning arresters. If a thunderstorm rolls in, this entire courtyard will suffer a spark arc flash.”
“Not to mention the complete lack of a town demolition permit,” Frank added. He shook his head. “They’re running forty feet from a residential property line.”
Shen Canghai whirled around, his face twisting into demonic fury: “Lu Zhen! You dare show your face here?! You think that worthless Master Teacher badge can protect you outside the palace gates?! This is the Ten Thousand Flying Sword Slaughter Array! In this courtyard, not even a true Saint can escape the wrath of forty Golden Core masters!”
Frank didn’t even look at Shen Canghai.
In Frank’s eyes, the DAO-QA screen activated. It swept across the forty hovering sword positions, the silver qi channels connecting the elders, and the crushing weight spreading of the array.
A complex three-space-folding wireframe lit up the entire yard in vivid amber lines.
Frank let out a long, weary sigh.
“Who designed this rigging?” Frank asked, pointing his red pencil toward the southeast corner of the courtyard. “You’ve got forty dynamic loads tied to a single load-bearing pivot stone with zero extra bracing. If that corner settles by half an inch, the entire tension truss suffers immediate phase cancellation.”
Frank looked at Shitou: “Shitou, you see that decorative granite sundial base in the southeast corner?”
“I see it, Master!” Shitou rumbled, his stance shifting smoothly into position.
“The wooden props is fully substandard,” Frank said deadpan. “Knock the center wedge out with your hammer. Clear the pathway so Niu Mang can bring the tool carts through.”
Patriarch Shen Canghai roared with frantic laughter: “Madness! He thinks the ancient Slaughter Array of our ancestors can be undone by striking a garden stone?! Kill the boy! Flay his bones into dust!”
The forty elders raised their hands all at once, channeling their spiritual energy into the array!
Three hundred flying swords shrieked through the air, their tips glowing with searing silver light, converging toward Shitou’s position like a flock of hungry iron vultures!
Shitou didn’t look at the sky.
He trusted his Master’s blueprints with every fiber of his soul.
Shitou spun on his left heel with smooth, heavy-duty driving force, swung his twenty-pound forged sledgehammer in a sweeping level arc. Then he brought the hardened steel hammerhead directly against the corner sundial’s granite base!
CLAAAAAAANG-BOOOOOOOM!
The impact didn’t merely shatter the stone. It discharged a focused moving deep ring wave straight into the underground qi channels beneath the courtyard!
SNAP-CRACKLE-POP!
The single pivot point holding the entire array in tension was in a heartbeat wiped out!
A violent backdraft of spiritual phase cancellation rippled backward through the thirty-nine leftover channels!
KER-BLAM! KER-BLAM! KER-BLAM!
The three hundred flying swords hovering in the air instantly lost their spinning exact timing!
Instead of striking Shitou, the swords collided with each other mid-air like a swarm of drunk wasps, shearing off crossguards, snapping handles, and showering the courtyard in a harmless storm of cut steel scrap!
SPLAT-THUMP!
All forty Golden Core elders staggered backward all at once, coughing up mouthfuls of black spiritual blood as the sudden backdraft blew out their spirit vein linkages!
“The array...” an elder screamed, clutching his fractured chest. “The Ancestral Slaughter Array... Collapsed with a single hammer strike?!”
Patriarch Shen Canghai stood in the center of the rain of broken steel, his mind snapping into complete, suicidal madness.
“No... NO!” Shen Canghai screamed, his eyes rolling back in fury. He burned his very life essence to ignite the 4-Pattern Great Da-Qi Divine Sword!
SHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
The four dragon runes carved into the divine blade blazed with blinding, world-ending violet fire!
A one-hundred-foot-tall sword beam of condensed, tightly packed star-iron qi showed up into the twilight sky, parting the storm clouds, splitting the air with faster-than-sound blast waves, and streaming enough moving shearing force to cleave an entire mountain castle into two halves!
The cobblestones beneath Shen Canghai’s boots boiled away into fine gray dust under the sheer air pressure!
“Die, unfilial dog!” Shen Canghai bellowed, his voice carrying the final, desperate shriek of a doomed patriarch. “Take the wrath of the Shen Clan to your grave!”
The hundred-foot golden sword beam dropped from the heavens!
It was aimed straight down toward the crown of Shen Shitou’s head!
The moving blast wave alone was enough to level the carriage house, flatten the surrounding trees, and tear the brick walls into flying shrapnel!
Frank calmly took another sip of jasmine tea from his thermos. He watched the falling sword beam with the bored expression of an engineer watching a faulty crane.
“Watch the crystal lattice, Shitou,” Frank murmured calmly. “Remember the lecture on yield strength.”
The surrounding air tightly packed to ten sea-weights, cracking the carriage house brickwork and blowing the dust away in nested rings.
In the center of the blinding golden storm, Shen Shitou stood fully motionless.
He didn’t raise his twenty-pound sledgehammer to block.
He didn’t dodge.
He simply tilted his chin up, angled his head fifteen degrees to the left, and opened his mouth.