The purple spiritual wind platform touched down with the delicate grace of a falling boulder.
A blast of churning Qi Sea aura swept across the quarry ridge, flattening dry weeds, whipping dead leaves into a violent cyclone, and kicking two shovel-loads of loose shale directly into the newly dug drainage swale.
Frank stood on the porch of Classroom 404, his left eyelid giving a slow, dangerous twitch.
“Unshielded thruster wash,” Frank muttered under his breath. He watched the fine gravel fill the trench Niu Mang had just spent an hour clearing. “No silt fencing. No dust crushing weight. The town erosion control board would have revoked their running permits on the spot.”
Three figures stepped off the floating platform.
Flanking the sides were two senior exam guards of the Disciplinary Hall, clad in heavy chainmail beneath midnight-blue robes, their hands resting on broadsword pommels.
In the center was Vice-Principal Lu Xun.
His purple scholar robes were woven from rainbow-bright cloud-silk, shimmering with defensive runes that hummed with Tier 2 Qi Sea power. But his high-born composure was fully gone. His face was mottled with purple fury as his eyes locked onto the muddy ditch beside the splintered courtyard gate.
There, curled in the muck like a stepped-on caterpillar, was his prized nephew.
Lu Yan was still clutching his swollen, sprained right arm against his ribs, wheezing in shallow gasps. Surrounding him in the dirty water were thirty jagged shards of bright silver steel. The shattered remains of the eight-hundred-spirit-stone Silver Frost Viper Rapier.
“Yan’er!” Lu Xun roared, his voice rattling the pine rafters of Classroom 404.
Lu Xun lunged forward, dropping to one knee in the slush. He pressed two fingers against his nephew’s neck, checking his pulse before channeling emerald wood-qi into the boy’s throbbing wrist.
Lu Xun’s spiritual senses entered Lu Yan’s arm. Then, the Vice-Principal’s face tightened in shock.
The wrist was wildly sprained, the elbow jammed out of posture. The shoulder muscles were fully locked from the blasting blast wave. It wasn’t a wound inflicted by a blade. It was a total clockwork stall caused by an unstoppable moving rebound!
“My sword...” Lu Yan choked out, his eyes glazed with tears of humiliation. “Uncle... My old family sword... His arm is made of solid iron...”
Lu Xun gently laid his nephew back onto the ground.
The Vice-Principal rose to his feet. Then, the air around him warped with shimmering, lethal heat. The pebble stones beneath his velvet boots began to float three inches off the ground, caught in the violent gravity pull of his Tier 2 aura.
Lu Xun slowly turned to face Frank, his eyes burning with murderous intent.
“Lu Zhen,” Lu Xun hissed, his voice echoing like grinding granite stones. “You dare use forbidden demonic relics to ambush an elite student of this academy?!”
Frank stood with his hands resting in the pockets of his denim shop apron, fully unimpressed by the floating pebbles.
“Nobody ambushed him,” Frank replied, his tone entirely flat. “Your nephew kicked off my custom leather hinge, refused to pay forty copper coins for property damage. Then tried to perform a high-speed piercing thrust with an unannealed piece of decorative sheet metal. His blade suffered a classic brittle fracture. The striking force kicked back into his shoulder. Basic Newtonian mechanics.”
“Silence!” Lu Xun bellowed. “The Silver Frost Viper Rapier was personally forged by Master Ouyang of the Capital Guild! Its blade can cleave three inches of cold-rolled steel! A mortal’s flesh would have been sliced into ribbons! Shen Shitou was born with dead, hardened spirit veins—a crippled waste discarded by the Shen Clan!”
Lu Xun pointed a shaking finger at Shen Shitou, who stood calmly beside Frank, his bare bronze forearm still gleaming faintly in the morning sun.
“He’s wearing a hidden ancient object!” Lu Xun declared, turning to the two senior exam guards behind him. “Lu Zhen has got a forbidden Saint-grade Spirit-Iron Gauntlet from the Black Market and grafted it beneath this boy’s skin! He used illegal defensive magic charms to cheat the sparring regulations and murder my nephew!”
The two exam guards drew their broadswords halfway out of their sword sheaths with a menacing rasp.
“Strip him!” Lu Xun commanded. “Cut the sleeves off his tunic! When the contraband is dragged into the sunlight, Lu Zhen, I’ll personally strip your training and hang you from the academy gates!”
Frank sighed, shaking his head in weary pity.
“Go ahead,” Frank said, gesturing toward Shitou. “Check all the serial numbers you want. But before you touch my apprentice, let’s settle the invoice. Forty copper coins for the gate hinge, plus twenty copper for the gravel you just blew back into my drainage swale. Cash or credit, Vice-Principal?”
Lu Xun’s temple bulged with throbbing veins.
He ignored Frank’s demand and waved his hand sharply: “Proctor Tie! Inspect the arm!”
Proctor Tie stepped forward, his heavy iron shin guards thudding against flat stone slabs.
“Boy,” Proctor Tie grunted. “Roll up your sleeve. Don’t try to channel spiritual energy, or I’ll sever your limb on the spot.”
Shen Shitou didn’t flinch. Seeing Frank give a casual nod, Shitou rolled his sleeve all the way up to his shoulder.
A heavy silence dropped over the ridge.
There was no hidden spirit gauntlet.
There was no hidden iron plate, and no glowing talismanic parchment taped to the skin.
There was only a solid, muscular arm. The skin was smooth, tinted a deep bronze that looked like it had been cast in an ancient bell foundry. Running beneath the bronze flesh were thick, corded veins that pulsed with steady rhythm, fully free of acid scars.
Proctor Tie squinted. He pulled out an official Punishment Knuckle-Duster. A two-pound piece of cold-forged black iron etched with anti-armor runes.
Tie slipped the knuckle-duster over his right hand. He channeled thirty percent of his Tier 1 Layer 9 Qi into his knuckles, delivering a sharp hammer-fist straight against the center of Shitou’s forearm!
CLANGGGGG!
A sharp metal spark flashed in the sunlight.
Shen Shitou’s arm didn’t move a tiny fraction of an inch. His bronze skin didn’t even show a red mark.
Instead, Proctor Tie let out a muffled grunt, pulling his hand back in sudden pain.
On the flat surface of the two-pound black iron knuckle-duster was a clean, tiny dent! The anti-armor runes etched into the metal were cracked fully in half!
Frank’s DAO-QA console chimed quietly, displaying the live audit.
Proctor Tie stared at the dented iron on his hand, his mouth slowly dropping open.
He looked at Shen Shitou. Then he turned around to face Vice-Principal Lu Xun, his voice shaking.
“Vice-Principal... There’s no hidden plate. No magic charm. No hidden armor. His skin has a surface hardness greater than cold-rolled black iron. When I struck him, my knuckle-duster twisted under moving rebound. If he had pushed back, my fingers would have broken.”
Silence settled over the gravel courtyard.
Jiang Ling’er stood beside the door, her golden eyes watching Lu Xun with cold amusement. Niu Mang leaned on his trench spade, chewing on sweetgrass. Meanwhile, Shen Shitou stood with his arm bared, looking like an ancient bronze giant statue.
Frank stepped off the porch, pulling a wooden toothpick from his pocket.
“Like I said,” Frank spoke in a calm, rational tone, “there’s no contraband. The boy has good bone thickness and high-pulling muscle fibers. He’s built for load-bearing framing.”
Frank pointed at the groaning Lu Yan in the mud.
“Your nephew was running defective hardware. The blacksmith who sold him that dress sword skipped the backup tempering cycle to save fuel costs. The grain boundary was coarse as beach sand. When an unannealed blade strikes high-thickness material at sixty miles per hour, physics takes over. An open-and-shut case of worker error compounded by fraudulent manufacturing.”
Frank stopped two paces from Lu Xun, crossing his arms over his apron.
“So unless you’re here to pay the sixty copper coins for property damage and ditch upkeep, you’re currently trespassing on town educational property during scheduled teaching hours.”
Lu Xun’s face turned from purple to ash-grey, then back to deep crimson.
Never in his forty years at Hongwu Academy had an unranked teacher spoken to him with such casual, shrugging arrogance!
He held the power to expel students, reallocate land deeds, and decide the career of every teacher in the principality.
Yet Lu Zhen stood there treating him like an unlicensed peddler who had tracked mud across a clean carpet!
Lu Xun forced his aura back into his core, though the effort caused his chest to heave wildly.
“Lu Zhen,” Lu Xun hissed through clenched teeth. “Possessing a freakish, thick-skinned brute doesn’t make you a Master Teacher!”
Lu Xun stepped over the broken gate, his eyes narrowing into slits.
“The forty-eight-hour probationary audit was merely the first phase! An teacher’s true duty isn’t raising mindless shields, but teaching combat technique and tactical execution!”
Lu Xun turned toward the mountain trail, raising his voice so every student hiding in the bamboo grove could hear:
“Three days from now! At the Grand Freshmen Arena! The Academic Senate will conduct a formal Mock Teaching Challenge! My premier student against your student! If your class loses, Classroom 404 will be demolished, your name erased from the rolls. You’ll be exiled from Tianxuan forever!”
Frank pulled the toothpick from his mouth, checking his pocket watch.
“Three days?” Frank asked. “Make it ten in the morning. I have concrete to pour in the afternoon. And don’t forget my sixty copper coins.”
Lu Xun didn’t answer. He scooped up his bleeding nephew, leaped onto his purple wind platform with his two guards. Then he soared into the sky with a furious thunderclap!
Frank watched the platform vanish behind the clouds, then turned back to his students.
“Niu Mang,” Frank commanded, pointing at the swale. “Clear the dirt out of the trench again. Shitou, help me measure the timber for a new gate hinge. We have work to do.”