News of the shattered silver dress sword traveled through Hongwu Lower Academy with the speed of an uncontained forest fire.
By midday, the tea houses and training pavilions were buzzing with wild, incredulous whispers.
“Did you hear? Young Master Lu Yan had his arm snapped in three places!”
“By Lu Zhen? The negative-five teacher?!”
“No! By Shen Shitou, the cripple discarded by the Divine Sword Clan! They say Shitou didn’t even use a weapon—he raised a bare forearm and turned an eight-hundred-stone dress sword into scrap iron!”
“Absurd! It must have been a hidden gearwork! A steel brace under his sleeve!”
Under the gold-trimmed awning of the Academy Lumber Depot, Senior Instructor Fang stood surrounded by a dozen senior students. His face was dark with scorn.
Fang was Vice-Principal Lu’s most loyal hound on the faculty. That master of leg arts wore boots lined with lead plates to condition his shins.
“A dress sword is a delicate, slender blade designed for piercing vital points,” Fang sneered. She crossed his massive arms over his stitched azure robes. “Lu Yan was careless. He struck high-thickness hardened bone at a straight-across angle. But against crushing blunt force? Against the crushing speed of a true kick? That thick-skinned brute’s arm would shatter like brittle terracotta!”
Beside Fang stood his prized student, Song Tao—known throughout the freshmen ranks as “Gale-Foot.”
Song Tao was nineteen, tall and whip-cord lean. His legs wrapped in was tight black leather bindings. At Tier 1 Layer 9, he had mastered the academy’s prestigious Nine-Wind Gale Step, capable of delivering seven sonic-speed crescent kicks before a falling leaf touched the earth.
“Master Fang speaks the truth,” Song Tao chuckled arrogantly, rotating his right ankle with a series of sharp, popping clicks. “A stationary iron block is only dangerous if you run into it with a needle. Against my Gale Crescent, his joints will buckle on the first exchange.”
Before the students could cheer, the crunch of gravel drew their eyes to the depot gate.
Walking down the dusty lane was Frank.
He was pushing a heavy two-wheeled wooden handcart piled with six seasoned pine two-by-fours and a keg of iron square-shank nails. Beside him, towering like a mountain of bronze, walked Niu Mang. He carried his sharpened trench spade over his broad shoulder.
Frank stopped the handcart, pulling a grease-stained inventory manifest from his apron.
“Ten-foot spans,” Frank muttered to himself, checking the timber with his tape measure. “Good grain thickness. No knot clusters. These will make solid floor beams for the classroom remodel.”
“Halt right there, Lu Zhen!”
Song Tao stepped directly into the center of the lane, blocking the handcart with his chest puffed out like a fighting rooster.
Behind him, Instructor Fang and a dozen students fanned out in a menacing semi-circle.
Frank didn’t look up from his lumber. He checked the crown of the top pine board with one eye closed.
“Kid,” Frank said calmly. “You’re standing in the freight unloading zone. Move three paces to your left. You’re blocking the turning radius of the cart.”
Song Tao’s face darkened with instant offense. “Freight unloading zone?! Lu Zhen, do you know who stands before you?! I’m Song Tao of the Heavenly Wind Pavilion! Senior student of Instructor Fang!”
Frank finally lowered his timber and looked at Song Tao.
His gaze dropped lazily from the young man’s arched eyebrows down to his tightly wrapped leather boots.
Instantly, Frank’s internal HUD flickered into life, tracing Song Tao’s leg stance with a grid of glowing yellow measurement vectors.
Frank shook his head softly, letting out a small, tired sigh.
“High-hum rotation with an unanchored hip,” Frank remarked to nobody in particular. “He’s chambering his kicks twelve frames early by flaring his left pelvis. If he hits a rigid load-bearing beam at that angle, his knee pad is going to tear like wet tissue paper.”
Song Tao bristled with homicidal fury. “You dare insult my Nine-Wind Gale Step?! Lu Zhen, your freakish student broke Lu Yan’s dress sword through trickery! But can your illiterate farm ox withstand my Gale Crescent?!”
Song Tao pointed a leather-wrapped boot directly at Niu Mang’s nose.
“Ox-herder!” Song Tao barked. “Drop that rusty farm shovel! Face me in the open ring, or admit that Classroom 404 is nothing more than a pen of cowards and frauds!”
Niu Mang blinked his large, honest eyes. He looked at Frank, his massive hand tightening around the ash handle of his spade.
“Master,” Niu Mang whispered respectfully. “Should student... Dig a hole for him?”
“No,” Frank said, leaning against the handcart and pulling his water mug from his belt. “Digging takes time, and we have concrete to pour before sundown. Don’t use the shovel. The shovel is a care digging implement. Don’t dull the edge on cheap leather.”
Frank set down his mug and pointed at Niu Mang’s legs.
“Remember Movement Four from the butcher paper,” Frank instructed in a clear, teaching voice. “Feet twice shoulder-width. Drop your balance point until your thighs form a sixty-degree truss with the bedrock. Don’t swing. Don’t strike. Just lock your right knee at one hundred and twenty degrees and engage your thigh muscles.”
Niu Mang nodded solemnly. “Student understands. Stance Four: The Static Retaining Truss.”
Across the lane, Instructor Fang burst into booming, derisive laughter.
“Static Retaining Truss?!” Fang mocked, slapping his thigh. “Tao’er! The fool teacher is telling his student to stand fully still and take your full-power kick! Show them the true devastation of our Heavenly Wind Pavilion!”
“With pleasure, Master!”
Song Tao sneered. He took three rapid, skipping steps across the gravel, his boots whistling through the air with razor-sharp wind qi!
SWOOSH-SWOOSH!
Green gale-force energy swirled around Song Tao’s right leg as he leaped five feet into the air. His body rotated like a high-speed drill. His foot tracing a shone crescent arc that aimed straight for the side of Niu Mang’s neck!
“Nine-Wind Gale Crescent: Sky Decapitation!”
The wind generated by the kick whipped loose gravel across the lane. It whistled with the lethal force of a spinning saw blade!
Niu Mang didn’t flinch. He didn’t look at the swirling green gale.
He simply stepped forward with his right boot. He dropped his massive hips into the exact sixty-degree angle charted on Frank’s greasy butcher paper.
THUD.
His right heel sank two inches into the dirt road. He anchored his skeletal frame directly into the land-wide bedrock.
He raised his right knee three inches. He locked the joint at exactly one hundred and twenty degrees—creating an unmoving, tetrahedral load-bearing brace out of pure bone thickness.
And then, Song Tao’s spinning kick arrived at end-post speed.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The crash didn’t sound like two human beings sparring.
It sounded like a high-speed freight wagon slamming head-on into a solid granite retaining wall!
Song Tao’s leather-clad shin struck the apex of Niu Mang’s locked knee.
In that tiny split second, the overwhelming striking force of the kick met an unbending, unmoving foundation.
Niu Mang’s knee was locked in perfect sharp-angled posture with his spine and the earth. Because of that, zero percent of the impact was absorbed by his joint. One hundred percent of the striking force rebounded directly into Song Tao’s shin!
CLACK-SNAP!
A sharp, rubbery snap echoed across the depot lane!
Song Tao’s right boot ricocheted off Niu Mang’s locked knee like a rubber mallet hitting an anvil. It sent a ringing jolt of pure shaking straight through his leg!
“AGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!”
Song Tao’s scream tore through the sky like a startled rooster!
The moving recoil didn’t stop at his shin. It whipped his entire body through the air like a broken pinwheel. It spun him three times in midair before hurling him fifteen feet backward!
SPLAT.
Song Tao landed head-first into a large wooden upkeep wheelbarrow parked beside the depot stables. It was currently filled to the brim with three-day-old, wet horse manure.
A geyser of brown filth erupted into the air, splashing across Instructor Fang’s clean silk robes and coating the faces of the senior students.
Song Tao’s tingling, sprained leg hung limply over the side of the wheelbarrow, his screams muffled by a mouthful of wet straw and manure as his eyes rolled back and he passed out cold.
Dead, frozen silence blanketed the lane.
Instructor Fang stood covered in horse droppings, his jaw hanging open so wide a fat green blowfly flew directly into his mouth.
He looked at his premier student, unconscious in a dung cart with his boots jammed in wet straw.
Then, he looked at Niu Mang.
Niu Mang was still standing in Stance Four.
His massive bronze knee was entirely unmarked. There wasn’t a scratch on his skin. There wasn’t even a smudge of leather dust. He looked down at his knee, bent his quad, and then looked at Frank with childlike wonder.
“Master...” Niu Mang said, scratching his head. “His foot was very fast... But it felt like a dry twig snapping against a wagon wheel.”
“Because it was a dry twig,” Frank said deadpan, picking up the handles of his lumber cart. “A high-speed kick with zero skeletal bracing has high striking force but zero solid strength. When a brittle beam strikes an anchored cantilever truss, the beam fails every single time. It’s high school physics.”
Frank turned to face Instructor Fang, who was trembling wildly in shock and fury.
“Instructor Fang,” Frank said calmly. “Your student has a severe tibial bruise, a wrenched ankle, and manure contamination in his facial orifices. If you don’t wash that off with clean water in ten minutes, he’s going to have a rough week.”
Frank pointed at the handcart.
“Now, if you’ll excuse us, my students and I have a building code check to prepare for. Clear the lane.”
Before Fang could scream or draw his sword, the rapid clatter of armored hooves echoed from the upper campus road.
A amazing white spirit-steed bounded into the lane, ridden by an elderly attendant in gold-stitched velvet robes bearing the official seal of the Headmaster’s Office.
“Halt! By order of Dean Shang!” the attendant shouted, reining in the steed and unfurling a glowing golden decree.
The attendant looked at the unconscious student in the manure cart, then at Frank, his eyes widening in shock before clearing his throat.
“Teacher Lu Zhen of Classroom 404!” the attendant announcedloudly. “The Academic Senate and Vice-Principal Lu have officially filed the challenge! In three days at the Grand Arena, the Mock Teaching Duel shall take place!”
The attendant leaned down, his voice trembling with gravity:
“Vice-Principal Lu has fielded Young Master Bai Heng, master of the Falling Leaf Sword Art! Dean Shang commands both instructors to appear before the assembly at dawn!”
Frank took the golden decree with two fingers, scanned the date and time, and nodded.
“Three days. Ten in the morning,” Frank said. “We’ll be there. Come on, Niu Mang. Let’s get this lumber unloaded.”