The bronze signal gong of the Nine-Cauldron Crucible Tower boomed across the Great Da-Qi Imperial Capital like the toll of a funeral bell.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT.
From the high royal balcony, Emperor Yan raised his golden dragon saber toward the heavens, his voice thundering through the sound jade arrays: “By sovereign decree of Great Da-Qi! The Grand Finale of the Tri-Kingdom Potion-maker Tournament has began! Let the contenders refine the Grade-6 Heaven-Ascending Dragon Pill!”
A roar that shook the very foundations of the royal palace tore from the throats of two hundred thousand spectators!
For three hundred years, no potion-maker in the eastern mortal planes had successfully concocted a genuine Grade-6 divine medicine. To achieve this impossible feat, seventy-two royal apprentices brought out carts loaded with legendary treasures. Thousand-year dragon-marrow crystals, nine-colored sun lotus petals, and vials of melted earth-core essence, dumping the raw ingredients directly into the cavernous bronze maw of the thirty-foot vessel.
In the center of the arena, Grandmaster Ouyang and twenty senior grandmasters of the Potion-maker Guild stood in a tight ritual circle around the thirty-foot Nine-Dragon Primordial Cauldron.
Their crimson ritual robes were whipped into a frenzy by howling rising heat gales. All twenty-one masters raised their hands toward the bronze hull, their Golden Core spiritual energy surging in blinding pillars of scarlet, emerald, and violet fire that channeled directly into the nine carved dragon mouths!
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!
The underground fiery magma floodgates shrieked as hundreds of tons of liquid fire surged through the foundation channels.
The thirty-foot bronze cooking pot began to hum with a terrifying, high-hum faster-than-sound pitch that rattled the teeth of every person in the front thirty rows of the stadium. The nine dragon heads blazed with searing, blinding crimson radiance, vomiting plumes of purple sulfur smoke that spiraled into the morning sky!
“Pour the True Samadhi Flames!” Ouyang screamed, his eyes bloodshot with manic ecstasy as blood trickled from his nose under the huge spiritual feedback. “Feed the Earth Dragon! Drive the core to total deep ring!”
Twenty yards away, on his small pine testing platform, Frank sat comfortably in his light metal folding lawn chair.
He wore his denim overalls, his yellow hard hat, and his shade-five dark-tinted welding goggles. He leaned back with one boot crossed over his knee. In his left hand he held his light metal clipboard. In his right hand he held his red carpenter’s pencil.
His sixteen-inch cast-iron wok rested quietly on the folding table beside him, its spirit gas burner turned fully off.
Beside the table, Shen Shitou stood like an iron statue with his twenty-pound sledgehammer, while Princess Jiang Ling’er watched the giant bronze cooking pot through her safety glasses. She held her brass valve-wrench at the ready. Niu Mang sat cross-legged on the stone floor, chewing placidly on a dried turnip slice.
In Frank’s eyes, the Heavenly Bug Tracker screen flashed with nonstop, real-time test tracking data!
Frank tapped his pencil against the clipboard, recording the numbers with the calm distance of an approved clockwork clerk watching a slow-motion crash test.
“Nine thousand eight hundred PSI,” Frank muttered through his yellow foam earplugs. “Core heat at four point two million Degrees of star-heat. Lower quarter-panel pipe rim warping has reached eighteen point four tiny fractions of an inch. Plastic warping phase started.”
Frank gestured with his pencil toward the bulging bronze plates, lecturing his crew: “Take note, crew. When an unvented pressure vessel exceeds its proportional elastic limit, hookian stretch ceases. The material enters ductile necking. Every heartbeat the strain rate accelerates, the cross-sectional wall thickness thins out faster and faster. When it crosses fourteen thousand PSI, the grain structure will experience total slip failure.”
Princess Ling’er noted the data down on her pad: “Master, look at the sound hum. The vessel hull is ringing at one hundred and twenty hertz. That matches the natural ringing hum of the stadium’s foundation slabs.”
“Exactly,” Frank nodded. “Which means deep wear is propagating into the bedrock.”
Across the stadium, the two hundred thousand spectators were fully dumbfounded by the contrast.
On one side, twenty-one legendary grandmasters were sweating blood, chanting ancient incantations, and unleashing blinding torrents of spiritual flame that threatened to scorch the clouds.
On the other side, a young man in denim overalls was reclining in a lawn chair wearing dark sunglasses, calmly scribbling on a wooden board. Meanwhile, his kitchen frying pan remained stone cold!
“What’s Master Lu doing?!” a sect elder in the third tier whispered in breathless awe. “He hasn’t even lit his burner!”
“Fool!” an ancient fighter beside him snapped, his beard trembling with religious respect. “Look at the dark black glass crystals covering his eyes! Those are the legendary Dark-Crystal Goggles of Void Sight! He’s not resting—he’s peering directly into the Primordial Void! While the grandmasters exhaust their mortal qi, Master Lu is meditating upon the ultimate cosmic balance of the universe!”
The rumor swept through the two hundred thousand spectators like wildfire:
“He wears the Goggles of Void Sight!”
“He’s observing the fabric of reality itself!”
“Look at his divine calm! A true immortal who treats the wrath of the Earth Dragon as nothing more than an autumn breeze!”
High in the royal box, Chief Arbiter Pill King Dan Kui didn’t share the crowd’s religious ecstasy.
Dan Kui’s knuckles were white as bone as he gripped the marble balcony rail. Through his spiritual senses, he could feel the terrifying, faster-than-sound shakes rippling through the stone floor beneath his boots.
He saw the cherry-red glow creeping up the southern hull of the Nine-Dragon Cauldron.
He saw the sealed exhaust plugs bulging outward like swollen boils under huge water-pressure stress.
It isn’t a holy ancient object... Dan Kui thought, cold sweat drenching his inner robes. It’s an unvented bomb! It’s going to explode!
Beside him, the Dowager Empress Yan took a slow sip of jasmine tea from Frank’s thermos, looking down at the arena floor with calm, grandmotherly amusement: “Yan’er, look at your grandmasters. They look like wild roosters running in circles. Look at Master Lu. He has his feet up. That’s the stance of a man who knows his trade.”
“Mother, Dan Kui says the cooking pot is in danger of rupturing,” Emperor Yan murmured. His hand nervously tapped his saber handle.
“If Master Lu thought it would kill us, he would have cited us for a safety rule-break,” the Empress replied placidly.
Before Emperor Yan could respond, the sound of tearing metal tore through the arena!
SKRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-CRACK!
The southern hull of the Nine-Dragon Cauldron bulged outward by three inches, the dark bronze stretching like hot wax!
The high-hum shaking reached a bone-rattling one hundred and twenty hertz!
Across the VIP pavilions, hundreds of delicate jade teacups, fine china bowls, and scrying mirrors in a heartbeat shattered into powdery dust under the sound blast wave!
On the central stage, Grandmaster Ouyang’s triumphant laughter froze in his throat.
He looked at the control console.
The magma intake valve had fused fully solid under the extreme four-million-degree star-fire heat! The bronze handle broke off in his hands with a sickening snap!
“The valve is jammed!” an elder screamed in sheer, frantic panic. “The earth fire won’t shut off! The underground dragon is feeding on the bedrock!”
Nine of the twenty elders abandoned their posts, shrieking in terror as their robes caught fire from the radiant backdraft!
And then—
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
An ear-splitting, ear-splitting explosion shattered the morning air!
Under nine thousand eight hundred pounds of pressure of overload pressure, a two-hundred-pound forged bronze pipe rim bolt snapped cleanly off the cooking pot’s upper collar!
The massive bronze projectile shot into the sky like a faster-than-sound cannonball, trailing a roaring wake of purple fire!
THOOOOOM-CRASH!
The flying bolt hammered straight through the gold-trimmed, double-tiered baked-clay roof of the central judging pavilion seventy yards away!
Timber roof beams shattered into flying matchsticks. Gold-painted tiles rained down in a deadly avalanche of jagged shrapnel. And the massive marble sound-stone collapsed into rubble. It sent exam guards and court guards screaming for their lives!
The two hundred thousand spectators in the stands stopped cheering.
A choking, turning to stone silence hung over the stadium for half a heartbeat.
And then, pandemonium erupted!
“IT’S EXPLODING!”
“THE ANCIENT CAULDRON HAS RUPTURED!”
“RUN! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES!”
Two hundred thousand people surged toward the narrow stone exit arches in a stampeding sea of pure, blind, animal terror! Guards abandoned their posts. Nobles trampled their silk cloaks. And the entire Imperial Pill Plaza dissolved into total chaos!
In the center of the roaring storm, the thirty-foot bronze cooking pot shrieked like a dying god, its cherry-red hull expanding with every passing second as the internal pressure needle spiked toward twelve thousand PSI!
Frank slowly stood up from his folding lawn chair.
He folded the chair, tucked his light metal clipboard into his canvas bag. Then he picked up his twenty-four-inch heavy-duty steel pipe wrench and his eight-ounce brass ball-peen hammer.
Frank adjusted his shade-five welding goggles, tested the jaw clearance on his twenty-four-inch pipe wrench with his thumb. Then he turned toward his three students.
Shen Shitou stood firm, his starlight eyes fixed on his Master, ready to hold the outer edge. Princess Ling’er secured the cart’s iron baffle plates. Meanwhile, Niu Mang planted his five-foot trench shovel deep into the granite flat stone slabs to create a physical anchor against the rising sky backdraft.
The heat wave coming off the thirty-foot bronze hull was already hot enough to scorch dry timber fifty yards away. The air above the arena was being sucked into a roaring heat-powered rising heat cyclone. It whipped torn banners, shattered tiles, and abandoned hats into a swirling vortex of ash and sparks.
Frank pointed his wrench toward the heavy granite stone railing behind them.
“Take cover behind the wall, crew,” Frank said, his voice flat, steady, and utterly calm by the screaming world around him. “The pressure vessel is entering overload failure. It’s time for my breakthrough.”
Frank tightened his canvas tool belt, took a deep breath of hot, ozone-scented air. Then he began walking unhurriedly across the trembling flat stone slabs straight toward the screaming, three-story bomb.