Elder Gu didn’t hand over the 1-Star token. He looked as though he would rather swallow a handful of dry roofing nails.
“Cheating!” Elder Gu’s screech echoed through the drafty, windowless guildhall, sharp and frantic. “Demonic sorcery! Hidden explosive magic charms! No mortal iron nail can swallow forty thousand units of sky energy!”
Frank rested his hands on his hips, his head tilted back as a chilly gust blew through the blown-out stained-glass frames. “The test socket had sixty cycles of surrounding hum and forty amps of spare capacity,” Frank said mildly. “Your wiring was just begging for a magnetic-pull load. If you don’t want the meter to blow, install a fuse next time.”
“Silence, imposter!” Elder Gu roared, pointing a trembling finger toward the courtyard archway. “The 1-Star trial is null and void! If you claim this scrap metal is a legitimate defensive structure, you’ll prove it under the 2-Star Defensive Gauntlet right now!”
Ten minutes later, the entire check assembly had relocated to the Grand Testing Courtyard. The courtyard was an eighty-yard expanse of solid dark rock flat stone slabs, ringed by iron-spiked barricades and high watching towers. Dominating the center was a sixty-foot gallows crane built of linked black iron heavy beams. Suspended from the crane’s massive pulleys by three-inch braided steel chains hung the “Three-Headed Rock-Crushing Ram.” It was a ten-ton battering ram forged from enchanted sky bronze, cast in the likeness of three snarling horned dragons. Internal air-powered spirit cylinders hummed within its belly, high-pressure by twelve high-grade spirit stones to multiply its end-post impact speed.
In the eastern testing square, two high-born 2-Star examinees were already completing their defensive preparations. They had hammered forty-eight thousand-year cold jade boundary pegs into the stone. They formed a fine, detailed eight-sided outer edge. Above them hung a shimmering, semi-clear dome of sapphire light, inscribed with protective mountain-warding sigils.
“Observe the Nine-Mountain Turtle Shell Array!” an examinee announced proudly, wiping sweat from his brow. “Heavy with ninety high-grade spirit stones! Capable of deflecting the charge of a mountain rhinoceros!”
“Release the ram!” the field judge shouted.
The heavy iron release dog was knocked loose with a sledgehammer.
CLANK!
The ten-ton bronze dragon ram plunged downward along a forty-five-degree arc, propelled by gravity and shrieking air-powered spirit jets.
KABOOM!
The impact was ear-splitting. The sapphire light-dome held for less than a tenth of a second before spiderweb fractures exploded across its surface. The jade barrier exploded into thousands of razor-sharp glowing shards, the blast wave tossing both examinees twenty yards across the courtyard to tumble through the mud.
“Failure!” the judge called out dispassionately. “Clean the flat stone slabs for the next tester!”
Elder Gu stepped onto the judging balcony, a cruel smirk curling his thin lips as he looked down at Frank’s chosen square. “Winch the ram to maximum height! Engage the triple-tension air-powered springs!”
The winch chains groaned, hauling the ten-ton bronze beast to the total peak of the sixty-foot gallows. At that angle, the end-post moving impact would exceed four hundred thousand foot-pounds of packed crushing force. Enough to split an iron-plated siege wagon in half like a dry walnut. “There’s your trial, vagrant,” Elder Gu sneered over the stone railing. “Erect your defense. If your array shatters, don’t blame the guild for scraping your remains off the stone.”
Frank walked into the center of the marked impact zone, his heavy boots scuffing against the dark rock flat stone slabs. He didn’t pull out jade pegs. He didn’t sprinkle sacred water. He didn’t draw a single brushstroke of red stone. Instead, Frank turned back to his ox-cart. “Shitou, bring the four pieces of one-inch iron rods. Niu Mang, bring the sixteen-gauge tie wire and the heavy grounding braid.”
“Right here, Master,” Shitou grunted. He hauled four eight-foot lengths of heavily rusted, twisted carbon steel iron rods from the cart bed.
The surrounding crowd of examinees and exam guards stared in utter disbelief. “Rusted construction iron?” Ye Han scoffed from the sidelines, his bruised ribs bound with silk bandages. “He intends to stop a ten-ton air-powered ram with scrap metal from a ruined farmhouse?!”
Frank ignored them fully. He measured out a ten-foot square on the flat stone slabs with his steel tape, marking the four corners with chalk. “Shitou, drive them two feet into the bedrock. Keep them plumb.”
“Understood, Master,” Shitou replied. The mountain-sized student set the first one-inch iron rods post at the northwest corner. He raised his twenty-pound forged sledgehammer with one arm and brought it down with casual ease.
CLANG!
The heavy iron rods drove straight through the solid dark rock flat stone slab as if the stone were soft cheddar cheese. Within twenty seconds, all four iron rods posts stood embedded two feet deep in solid granite, perfectly upright. It formed the four corner pillars of a ten-foot square cage.
Frank moved around the posts with blistering smooth speed. He unrolled lengths of soft zinc-coated baling wire, lashing level and slanted cross-braces between the four iron rods posts using standard ironworker tie-wire knots. He didn’t create a solid wall. He created a flexible, open steel lattice cage. Finally, Frank unrolled a thick, braided copper strap. He bolted one end to the rear iron rods post using a heavy brass split-bolt connector. Then he walked over to the courtyard sewer drain and jammed the other end six feet down into the wet, sludge-coated cast-iron drainage pipe.
A neon-amber test window flared in Frank’s vision.
Frank wiped his hands on his denim overalls and nodded in satisfaction. “Rigid barriers are the dumbest way to stop striking force,” Frank announced to the silent courtyard. “You build an ultra-hard jade dome, it has zero ductility. The moment the blast wave hits, the yield point is exceeded and the crystal-clear lattice shatters. You need ductile steel that can flex three inches to absorb driving force. A grounding path to dump the moving heat into the earth.”
Frank waved his hand toward his crew. “Students, step inside the cage. Grab a drink of water. Don’t lean against the front posts. The bending might pinch your elbows.”
Jiang Ling’er, Shitou, Niu Mang, and the blind boy Xiao Yu calmly walked into the center of the four-post iron rods cage. Niu Mang unscrewed a wooden canteen, took a long swig of well water. Then it offered it to Xiao Yu, who accepted it with steady hands.
Elder Gu stared at the scene from his balcony, his eye twitching with uncontrollable rage. “Suicidal madmen! They’re standing inside a wire chicken coop! Exam guards, drop the ram! Pulverize them!”
The judge pulled the trip-lever.
CLANK-SHOOOOOOOOM!
The ten-ton bronze Three-Headed Dragon Ram broke free from its magnetic moorings. Propelled by triple-tension air-powered spirit pistons, the bronze monster plunged through the air with a faster-than-sound shriek. The air in front of the ram tightly packed into a visible cone of white vapor, hurtling straight toward the center of Frank’s iron rods cage at over two hundred miles per hour.
Xiao Yu stood in the center of the cage, his fingers tightening around his steel tuning forks. The wave is coming, Xiao Yu thought, listening to the rushing air. It’s violent... But the cage is singing.
The bronze ram struck the front level cross-brace.
THUD-CLANGGGGGGGGG!
The sound was not an explosion. It was the deep, ringing chime of a giant church bell struck with total care. The one-inch rusted steel iron rods didn’t snap. Under the moving violence of the ten-ton bronze beast, the steel frame groaned and bent three inches inward, elastic warping converting moving speed into clockwork strain.
At the same instant, the braided copper grounding strap clamped to the sewer drain began to hum with blinding intensity.
ZRRRRRRRRT!
All of the blasting blast wave was shunted down the copper guide-rod, racing into the wet underground sewer pipes and draining away harmlessly into the massive earth-shaking bedrock beneath the city. A low, gentle shudder rattled the flat stone slabs twenty yards away, like a distant subway train passing under a sidewalk.
Then, physics delivered its brutal counter-punch. Frank’s ductile cage refused to shatter. Because of that, and because the energy had evacuated down the copper ground, the leftover crushing driving force had nowhere to go except to rebound back into the rigid bronze ram itself.
CRACK-SNAP!
The enchanted bronze neck of the Three-Headed Dragon Ram suffered instant shear failure! The ten-ton bronze dragon head snapped clean off its iron mounting yoke, ricocheting backward through the air like a massive cannonball! It flew sixty feet across the courtyard. It smashed directly through the fancy stone railing of the judging pavilion!
KABOOM!
Elder Gu’s purple sandalwood desk, his fruit platters, and his velvet shade canopies were crushed into flying splinters and mashed persimmons. Elder Gu threw himself onto the floor. It screamed in terror as the ten-ton bronze head buried itself three feet deep into the stonework wall right behind his throne, showering him in stone dust and crushed cantaloupe.
A silence so thick it felt physical settled over the courtyard. The wind whistled softly through the four iron rods posts. Inside the cage, Frank took a sip from his tea mug. The front iron rods cross-brace, having absorbed the impact, slowly groaned and sprang back two inches, returning almost entirely to its original shape with only a minor cosmetic bow in the center.
“Told you,” Frank said, tossing a spent piece of tie wire onto the ground. “Ductility beats hardness every single time. If you don’t ground your moving loads, the rebound will take your head off.”
From the high central tower of the guildhall, a figure drifted downward like an autumn leaf. It was an elderly man with silver hair flowing over clean white robes stitched with nine golden trigrams. Around his neck hung a heavy medallion of solid sky lodestone bearing four carved golden stars. This was Grandmaster Feng, the Supreme Guild Master of the Thousand-Rune Formation Guild.
Grandmaster Feng’s sandals touched the flat stone slabs without making a sound. His eyes were wide, fixed upon the rusted iron rods cage with a terrifying, fanatical soft glow.
“The Sacred Cage of Indomitable Earth...” Grandmaster Feng whispered, his voice trembling with awe. “He didn’t resist the heavenly force with rigid pride... He bowed to the earth, gave the dragon a path to run, and let the stone swallow the wrath of Heaven!”
Grandmaster Feng dropped down on one knee. He reached out with trembling fingers to touch the cold, rusted surface of Frank’s one-inch iron rods. “Not a drop of red stone... Not a sliver of cold jade... Four rods of common iron and a strip of red wire... He has touched the ancient truth of the First Epoch!”
Frank stepped out of the cage. He stepped around the snapped bolts on the floor, and looked down at the kneeling Guild Master.
“Hey, Grandmaster,” Frank said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his guild application paper. “The lead judge is currently covered in melon pulp. Can you stamp this 2-Star token? I really need to buy some wholesale channel.”