The Great Hall of Ancestral Righteousness was the most terrifying court chamber in the Great Da-Qi Empire.
Under its soaring, hundred-foot ebony vaults, nine High Clan Judges sat upon raised thrones of black dark rock, their scarlet dragon robes stitched with the silver scales of royal law. For six hundred years, this courtroom had decided the fates of rebel princes, fallen consorts, and disgraced lineage heads. The bronze seal of the Clan Court dropped upon an edict of treason. Then, not even the military marshals of the four frontiers could stay the headsman’s hand.
Along the outer edge stone railings, forty royal censors dipped their jade brushes into black ink, ready to record the permanent extermination of Princess Jiang Ling’er’s royal branch. Before them stood thirty executioners leaning on heavy, double-handed decapitation blades, while royal censors with jade writing brushes lined the outer edge galleries.
In the center of the marble floor stood Third Prince Jiang Feng.
The arrogant prince wore a fresh robe of purple royal silk. Even so, he couldn’t fully hide the heavy splints bound around both wrists, nor the yellow bruises mottling his jaw from Niu Mang’s shovel compaction.
“Lords of the High Clan Court!” Jiang Feng’s voice rang with poisonous, righteous anger, echoing off the dark rock pillars. “I stand before the old family tablets of Great Da-Qi to formally petition for a Royal Decree of Execution against the runaway princess, Jiang Ling’er!”
Jiang Feng raised a scroll written in scarlet red stone ink.
“Eleven years ago, Jiang Ling’er abandoned her royal obligations, fled the royal palace, and brought shame upon our lineage!” Jiang Feng shouted. “Yesterday, she returned to the capital as the concubine-laborer of a foreign vagrant! She broke the ribs of Imperial Elder Shen Kuo, sabotaged the Potion-maker Guild, and conspired with heretics to overthrow the legal order of the realm!”
Up in the family gallery behind an ornate bamboo screen, Consort Rong dabbed her eyes with a lace handkerchief, sobbing with dramatic heartbreak:
“My lords... My heart bleeds for the royal ancestors! That ungrateful wench has brought demonic barbarians into our city! If her head isn’t cut before the old family shrine, the mandate of heaven shall abandon our dynasty!”
The Chief High Clan Judge—an eighty-year-old royal grand-uncle whose white eyebrows reached his chest—raised his heavy bronze gavel.
“Under Royal Row Statute Section Nine,” the Chief Judge declared in a voice cold as tombstone granite, “a princess of the direct bloodline who colludes with foreign vagrants to inflict physical battery upon royal elders is guilty of high treason. The court hereby issues—”
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The massive, ten-ton bronze double doors of the Great Hall were kicked open with a thunderous, shuddering crash!
The heavy iron latch pins snapped cleanly in half, skittering across the polished marble floor like loose pennies.
A chorus of shocked, scared gasps ripped through the gallery of censors!
Marching through the threshold came Frank, his yellow builder hard hat gleaming under the hall’s skylights, his denim overalls covered in faint traces of motor grease, a light metal clipboard tucked casually under his arm.
Beside Frank walked Princess Jiang Ling’er. She wore her clean builder overalls, her safety glasses pushed up onto the brim of her yellow hard hat, her eighteen-inch brass valve-wrench resting against her shoulder like a royal scepter.
And walking right between them—leaning gently on Frank’s left arm while sipping hot jasmine tea from a stainless-steel thermos—was a seventy-year-old matriarch in a relaxed, green floral silk housecoat.
The Dowager Empress Yan.
The nine High Clan Judges upon their raised thrones froze as if struck by lightning.
Their eyes bulged. Their breathing seized. And the Chief Judge’s bronze gavel slipped from his numbed fingers. It bounced down the dark rock steps with a series of hollow, ringing clatters: CLANG-CLANG.
The... The Dowager Empress?!
The sovereign mother who had been entombed in ten feet of iron-hard Nether Frost for thirty years... Was walking into the High Clan Court in a floral housecoat, drinking tea from a steel bottle?!
“Old family Mother!” the Chief Judge shrieked, tumbling off his dark rock throne in a tangle of scarlet robes, scrambling down the marble stairs on hands and knees!
All nine High Clan Judges, forty royal censors, and thirty executioners threw themselves flat against the icy marble floor. He pressed their foreheads into the dust with scared, earth-shaking respect!
“Greetings to the Empress Dowager!” the entire hall roared in frantic all at once. “May Her Royal Majesty live ten thousand times ten thousand years!”
Third Prince Jiang Feng’s knees turned to liquid water. He collapsed onto the floorboards, his jaw hanging open, his braced wrists shaking wildly.
Consort Rong’s handkerchief slipped from her fingers. She slid off her chair behind the bamboo screen, her face turning the color of curdled lime.
The Dowager Empress walked slowly to the center of the hall, her silk slippers clicking softly over the marble. She took a slow, refreshing sip of jasmine tea, handed the thermos to Frank. Then she raised her heavy golden dragon cane.
THWACK.
The dragon cane slammed against the flat stone slabs two inches from Jiang Feng’s nose!
“Jiang Feng,” the Dowager Empress’s voice rolled through the hall, cold, deep, and carrying the undisputed majesty of a founding sovereign. “You ungrateful, dangerous viper.”
Jiang Feng thrashed against the floor, weeping in pure terror: “Grandmother! Imperial Grandmother! I... I didn’t know you had awakened! I was merely upholding clan law—”
“Silence!” the Dowager Empress barked, her eyes flashing with royal fury. “For thirty years, I was locked inside an icy nightmare, unable to scream while your mother and your quack doctors poured poisoned freezing pills down my throat! You thought that by keeping this old woman on the brink of death, your faction could manipulate the throne and seize the royal treasury!”
The Empress turned to the kneeling High Clan Judges, pointing her dragon cane at Ling’er:
“Eleven years ago, it was Jiang Feng and Consort Rong who poisoned Ling’er’s spirit veins with Nine-Deep pit ice, driving my precious granddaughter from the palace to die in the wilderness! And now, when she returns having found a Master of true sky virtue who rescued this old woman from the grave... You dare convene a kangaroo court to execute her?!”
The Chief High Clan Judge pressed his forehead so hard against the marble that blood welled on his brow: “Forgive us, Imperial Mother! We were deceived by Jiang Feng’s forged memorials! We had no knowledge of this heinous treason!”
Frank stood beside Ling’er, twirling his red carpenter’s pencil with a relaxed, deadpan smirk.
In Frank’s eyes, the Heavenly Bug Tracker screen flared with royal legal validation!
The Dowager Empress struck her dragon cane against the floor three times, delivering the final, royal decree:
“By the sovereign will of the Ancestral Mother of Great Da-Qi! Jiang Feng is hereby stripped of his princely title, expunged from the Imperial Clan Registry, and banished to the Northern Frontier Salt Mines for the remainder of his natural life!”
“As for Consort Rong, she shall be confined to the Cold Spring Nunnery under permanent guard, her clan assets seized to pay for the medical remediation of the capital!”
Two dozen armored palace court guards surged forward, dragging the screaming, wailing Jiang Feng from the hall as his boots scraped against the marble: “Mother! Save me! Grandmother, have mercy!”
The Dowager Empress turned to Ling’er, her wrinkled face softening into a warm, grandmotherly smile.
“Jiang Ling’er,” the Empress proclaimed. “You have endured thirty trials of frost and proven your filial devotion. By royal order, you’re fully restored to the direct row and appointed Grand Overseer of the Imperial Treasury & Boiler Works! Every clockwork system, every fire, and every copper pipe in the royal palace shall answer to your wrench!”
Ling’er took off her yellow hard hat, tears of overwhelming relief and vindication streaming down her cheeks.
She knelt gracefully before her grandmother: “Disciple Jiang Ling’er thanks Imperial Grandmother for her justice!”
Ling’er then turned to Frank, bowing deeply to her Master: “Master Lu... If not for your teaching, Ling’er would still be freezing in the shadows.”
“Stand up, Ling’er,” Frank said, patting her shoulder. “Contractors don’t kneel on dusty floors. It ruins the knee pads on your overalls. Now that you’re Grand Overseer, your first job is to order eighty brass pressure relief valves to replace the death traps in the palace basement.”
Frank turned to the Chief High Clan Judge, who was still trembling on the floor.
Frank pulled his tape measure from his belt and tapped the snapped bronze hinges of the entrance door.
“And while we’re closing this ticket, Chief Judge,” Frank said deadpan. “Those main entrance double doors have a tiny hinge sag and severe latch binding. It’s an emergency exit hazard. Next time you hold a treason trial, make sure your fire doors are properly hung. Plus, those three-ton wrought-iron chandeliers hanging from your ceiling rafters are suspended by rusted through link chains with zero extra safety cables. If a size-three shaking shakes this hall, half of your court panel will be flattened like dried persimmons. I’ll send Ling’er over with a crew on Monday to retrofit the mid-air mounts.”
The Chief Judge nodded wildly: “Yes, Grandmaster! We shall hire your workshop to rehang the doors right away!”
Classroom 404 walked out of the Great Hall under the blinding morning sun, the entire royal court bowing in respectful silence behind them.
Princess Ling’er’s familial nightmare was permanently resolved. Ironwood Peak was now backed by the total power of the Dowager Empress and the Imperial Treasury.
Yet across the city, fifty feet beneath the bustling streets, dark shadows were gathering.
In the underground vaults beneath the Nine-Cauldron Crucible Tower, Grandmaster Ouyang stood before a huge, thirty-foot bronze behemoth hooked to glowing red magma veins. Behind him stood the shadowy elders of the Thunder Fire Sect. Their eyes burned with manic, suicidal desperation.
“The tournament finale is tomorrow morning,” Ouyang whispered, his bloody fingernails digging into the bronze hull. “If we can’t defeat him with alchemy... We’ll let the ancient Earth Dragon eat the capital!”