The roar of two hundred thousand spectators inside the Imperial Pill Plaza sounded like the nonstop crash of an angry ocean breaking against granite cliffs.
High above the arena floor, thousands of scarlet and gold silk banners fluttered in the crisp morning breeze. Every tier of the huge stone tiered arena was packed to maximum capacity: sect leaders from the northern snowfields, merchant princes from the southern maritime leagues, royal marshals, and royal censors with jade writing brushes ready to record history.
On the grand royal balcony sat Emperor Yan in his golden dragon-stitched ritual armor. Beside him sat the Dowager Empress Yan in her comfortable floral robe, holding Frank’s stainless-steel thermos and chatting amiably with Princess Jiang Ling’er. In the central judge’s box, Chief Arbiter Pill King Dan Kui sat with both palms resting flat against the marble railing, his yellow builder hard hat catching the morning light like a golden bright light.
In the center of the vast stone arena loomed the thirty-foot Nine-Dragon Primordial Cauldron.
The blackened bronze behemoth seemed to devour the surrounding sunlight, streaming waves of deep, ancient heat that caused the air to shimmer with greasy mirages. Its huge tube-shaped hull was supported by four thick dragon-claw legs bolted into massive bronze foundation rings. It connected via underground chimney pipes straight into the capital’s deepest fiery magma vein.
Standing on a raised staging platform beside the ancient vessel were Grandmaster Ouyang and sixty senior alchemists dressed in flowing crimson robes stitched with golden flames.
“See the sacred inheritance of the First Dynasty!” Ouyang’s voice boomed through the amplifying sound-stones, his chest swelling with arrogant, defiant pride. “Forged ten thousand years ago by the Potion-maker-Emperor, this Nine-Dragon Primordial Cauldron possesses the divine ability to refine Grade-6 Heaven-Ascending Dragon Pills! Its bronze skin has endured the true fires of the earth for ten thousand years without a single crack! Today, the Potion-maker Guild shall show the total supremacy of our old family heritage!”
The two hundred thousand spectators erupted into ear-splitting cheers. Their collective voices shook the morning mist from the rafters.
Twenty yards away, near the southern boundary line of the testing zone, Frank’s pine handcart came to an unrushed halt.
Shen Shitou, Princess Ling’er, and Niu Mang set down the cart handles, unstrapping the sixteen-inch seasoned cast-iron wok and setting it onto a modest folding table. Frank pulled out a folding light metal lawn chair, set his clipboard on his knee. Then he adjusted his hard hat.
Princess Jiang Ling’er unpacked four bright orange wooden safety cones from the cart. She set them in a neat twelve-foot outer edge around their station.
“Exclusion zone established, Master,” Ling’er reported, checking her brass valve-wrench. “If the main vessel fails, this outer edge gives us thirty split seconds of wind-cutting bending behind the cart’s iron shield.”
“Good practice, Ling’er,” Frank said, inspecting the hose connection on his portable spirit burner. “Always establish your hot-work zone before lighting the torch. Niu Mang, how is the ground grade?”
“Grade is firm and compacted, Master,” Niu Mang replied, planting his trench shovel. “No movement under foot.”
Then, Frank reached into his tool belt, pulled out an eight-ounce brass ball-peen hammer, and walked unhurriedly toward the thirty-foot bronze monster.
Grandmaster Ouyang sneered, looking down from his platform as Frank approached: “What are you doing, Lu Zhen?! The competition hasn’t yet begun! Do you intend to kneel and beg for mercy before our old family fire?!”
Frank didn’t answer. He stepped up to the south-facing dragon leg, raised his hammer. Then he delivered three firm, rhythmic taps against the bronze casting ([Physical Hardware Tap]).
TINK. TINK. TINK.
The sound that echoed from the metal was not a clear, ringing chime.
It was a choked, groaning shaking that rattled through the base ring with a high-pitched, ringing shudder.
Frank pulled his red carpenter’s pencil from behind his ear. Then he ran his gloved fingers along the four emergency exhaust ports located around the vessel’s upper collar.
Each port was capped by a heavy bronze plug. But instead of being held by tuned shear pins or spring-loaded levers, the plugs were fully coated in a thick, glass-like layer of reddish-brown lacquer.
In Frank’s eyes, the Heavenly Bug Tracker screen flared with vivid crimson hazard warnings!
Frank wiped his brow, turning around to stare at Grandmaster Ouyang with utter, skilled disbelief.
“Grandmaster Ouyang,” Frank said, his voice flat and perfectly amplified across the stone floor. “Who did your boiler upkeep before wheeling this thing into a public venue?”
Ouyang scoffed with haughty derision: “Upkeep?! This is a sacred relic of the Founding Emperor! It doesn’t need mortal upkeep!”
“Did you coat the emergency pop-off relief valves in red stone lacquer?” Frank asked deadpan, pointing his red pencil at the sealed exhaust ports.
Ouyang puffed out his chest proudly: “Those are the Sacred Dragon Sealing Runes, applied by sixty high elders chanting for seven days! They ensure that not a single drop of sacred heaven-and-earth spiritual essence can escape into the air during refinement!”
“You didn’t seal sacred qi, you complete maniac,” Frank said, his voice echoing with deadpan clarity. “You glued the safety valves shut with furniture polish.”
A ripple of nervous snickers ran through the front rows of spectators.
Frank pulled an adjustable wrench from his belt, leaned down. Then he tested one of the anchor pipe rim bolts securing the south leg.
With a light turn of his wrist, the bolt spun freely in its hole, stripped of all internal threads.
“Look at this anchor bolt,” Frank said, addressing the judging pavilion and the arena at large. “This vessel was cast ten thousand years ago using primitive gravity-pour techniques in an open sand mold. Wall thickness on the north face is sixty-five tiny fractions of an inch. Wall thickness on the south face is twenty tiny fractions of an inch. That’s a forty-tiny variance in cross-sectional pulling strength.”
Frank looked up at the two hundred thousand people sitting in the tiered stands.
“If you light the fiery magma floodgates beneath this vessel, heat swelling will concentrate entirely on the thin south pipe rim,” Frank continued. “Internal static pressure is already sitting at forty-five hundred PSI. At fifteen thousand PSI, the hull will suffer a total boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion.”
Frank glanced toward the royal box, where Dan Kui was watching with wide, frozen eyes.
“Blast radius: fifteen miles,” Frank finished flatly. “You didn’t bring a pill cooking pot to a tournament. You built a thirty-foot bronze pipe bomb in the middle of a packed sports stadium.”
The crowd erupted into roaring laughter!
“A pipe bomb?!” a young master in the merchant stands guffawed. “The peasant handyman is scared! He knows his frying pan can’t compete with the Nine-Dragon Cauldron. So he invents ghost stories about exploding boilers!”
“Indeed!” another elder mocked, waving his stitched fan. “The sacred cooking pot has refined pills for ten thousand years! How could a mortal carpenter understand the Dao of Ancient Fire?!”
Ouyang laughed hysterically from his platform: “Did you hear that, Lu Zhen?! The people of Great Da-Qi laugh at your cowardice! If you’re afraid of the dragon fire, forfeit your entry and crawl back to your ditch!”
Frank sighed, shaking his head. He pulled a piece of white marking chalk from his overalls, drew a bold chalk ‘X’ on the thin south pipe rim weld. Then he walked back to his folding table.
“I warned you,” Frank muttered, setting his wrench on the pine table. “Zero safety margin. Documented on the record.”
In the high VIP box, Chief Arbiter Pill King Dan Kui didn’t laugh.
Dan Kui stared at the chalk ‘X’ Frank had drawn on the bronze hull. He remembered the underground check from yesterday. The melted rock waste pillars, the wired-down relief valves, the accurate predictions of metal fatigue and cold shuts.
An icy dagger of pure, choking dread plunged directly through Dan Kui’s spine!
Master Lu... Master Lu is not bluffing!
He tested the metal with a hammer! The hollow chime... The stripped bolts... The glued valves! The sacred old family cooking pot is an uninspected, unvented death trap!
Dan Kui leaped to his feet. He knocked his chair backward, opening his mouth to scream an emergency escape order—
“Start THE GRAND FINALE!” Emperor Yan’s voice boomed from the royal throne, his dragon saber raised high in ritual salute!
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The great bronze bells of the Nine-Cauldron Tower tolled nine times, sealing the arena floor for the final round!
On the central platform, Grandmaster Ouyang’s eyes burned with demonic madness.
He reached down to the bronze control console and wildly pulled the main magma intake lever all the way back!
KA-THUNK.
Deep beneath the arena floor, the ancient dark rock floodgates swung wide open!
A terrifying, ancient roar erupted from the bowels of the earth!
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!
An underground river of molten fiery magma surged upward through the intake pipes, flooding directly into the belly of the Nine-Dragon Primordial Cauldron!
The nine bronze dragon heads carved around the vessel’s rim blazed with blinding, world-ending crimson fire!
The entire Imperial Pill Plaza began to shudder as if struck by a size-six earthquake. Cobblestones cracked along the foundation seams. And the heat on the arena floor spiked by forty degrees in three seconds!
Inside Frank’s eyes, the digital pressure gauge on the Heavenly Bug Tracker HUD flared to life, its amber needle beginning a fatal, unstoppable climb:
[PRESSURE: bone-crushing pressure... bone-crushing pressure... bone-crushing pressure (CLIMBING AT bone-crushing pressure/SEC)].
Frank pulled a pair of dark-tinted shade-five heavy-duty welding goggles from his canvas tool bag. It snapped the elastic strap firmly around his hard hat. Then, he pulled two yellow foam earplugs from his pocket, rolled them between his thumb and forefinger. Then he seated them securely into his ears.
Frank reached into his cart, pulled out his seasoned carbon-steel spatula. Then he tested the flat edge against his thumb.
“Shitou. Ling’er. Niu Mang,” Frank called out, his voice muffled behind the foam plugs. “When the gauge crosses twelve thousand, step behind the heavy granite stone railing. Today’s fireworks display is sponsored entirely by the Great Da-Qi Potion-maker Guild.”
“Here we go,” Frank muttered deadpan. “Heat runaway started.”