Dawn arrived over the Hongwu Mountain Range in a wash of pale, frosty rose.
Inside Classroom 404, the smell of freshly brewed herbal tea and toasted sesame flatbreads drifted from the iron stove.
Niu Mang was sitting on an overturned nail keg, eating his third bowl of steamed rice with pickled mountain radish, his jaw working with the steady, relentless rhythm of a stone grain mill. Beside him, Shen Shitou was finishing the final brass latch on the newly hung pine front door. It tested the swing with quiet, focused pride.
A sharp, impatient knock rattled the doorframe.
Thump, thump, thump.
Frank set down his enamel tea mug, walked over, and opened the door.
Standing on the newly swept porch was a young sick room steward wearing the pale green robes of the Academy Medical Hall. He held a brass wire basket containing three glazed clay pot jars sealed with red wax.
The steward looked past Frank, eyeing the plain shack with open disdain, his nose wrinkling as though smelling an unvented sewer pit.
“Teacher Lu Zhen?” the steward asked, his tone dripping with condescending boredom. “By decree of the Academic Committee, all participants in official Mock Teaching Duels are entitled to a standard pre-combat medical ration. Here are three jars of the academy’s Grade-1 Five-Leaf Healing Salve.”
The steward shoved the brass basket into Frank’s chest, chuckling with cruel amusement.
“If I were you, Teacher Lu, I’d have your student rub all three jars across his throat and legs right now. Young Master Bai Heng’s Falling Leaf Sword has thirty-two cutting variations. If your student is lucky, the exam guards will carry him to the morgue before he bleeds out fully.”
Frank caught the wire basket with one hand, his face fully expressionless.
“Thanks for the delivery,” Frank said, his voice flat as a spirit level. “Leave the invoice on the stoop.”
The steward scoffed, shook his green silk sleeves with dramatic disgust. Then it hurried down the rocky mountain trail, eager to escape the lonely quarry ridge before anyone associated him with the failing teacher.
Frank walked back into the classroom, placed the three clay pot jars on his leveled podium. Then he pulled a pocket scraper from his tool belt.
He sliced through the red wax seal of the first jar and popped the cork with a dry plop.
The moment the seal broke, a pungent, oily odor wafted across the room.
Shen Shitou’s head snapped around from the doorway, his nose wrinkling. “What a strange smell... It smells like scorched lard and rancid kerosene.”
Jiang Ling’er stepped closer, her delicate brow furrowing with suspicion. “The Five-Leaf Salve is a standard healing paste used across the Empire. It should smell of crushed green mint, bitter pine-resin, and winter aconite. Why does this jar smell like cheap street-lamp fuel?”
Frank didn’t answer. He dipped the blunt end of his wooden carpenter’s pencil into the dark, jelly-like sludge, pulled out a small glob of the grey paste. Then he rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger.
The micro-star-fire spark in his dantian gave off a tiny test ping.
Frank’s DAO-QA console flashed bright amber, projecting a detailed chemical breakdown directly across his vision.
Frank stared at the floating analysis, his eyes widening in pure builder disbelief.
“Four point two percent active ingredients?” Frank whispered, his voice rising in that slow, icy, dangerous tone of a veteran building checker who had just caught a crooked subcontractor pouring plaster of Paris into a load-bearing foundation wall.
“Four point two percent?!” Frank repeated, slamming the clay pot jar onto the wooden desk with a loud THWACK that rattled the pencil cup.
“Sixty-eight percent rendered pig lard and pine tree rosin! Fifteen percent expired lamp oil, and twelve percent crushed chalk dust!” Frank wiped the greasy grey sludge off his fingers with a shop rag, his teeth grinding in pure disgust.
“They diluted a sterile topical antibiotic with commercial axle grease and blackboard chalk to stretch the inventory! If you rub this toxic sewer sludge on an open jagged cut, the kerosene will dissolve the cellular membrane. Meanwhile, the unsterilized pig lard breeds anaerobic bacteria! This isn’t healing salve. This is an intentional living hazard designed by accountants to maximize quarterly margin!”
Shen Shitou and Jiang Ling’er stared at the jars in horrified disbelief.
“Fraud...” Ling’er breathed, her golden eyes burning with royal anger. “The Academy Medical Hall is funded by student tuition and royal grants! Tens of thousands of spirit stones are allocated every semester to get genuine Five-Leaf Mint from the eastern valleys!”
“Where did the money go?” Shitou asked, his fists clenching until his bronze knuckles popped like firecrackers in the quiet room.
“Where does the money always go on a crooked job site?” Frank muttered, tossing the tainted jar directly into the kindling bin. “The general builder pockets the cash, buys the cheapest scrap filler on the wholesale black market, and skims eighty percent of the running budget for his private villa. Vice-Principal Lu and his trade ring are running a textbook supply-chain embezzlement scheme.”
Frank walked over to Niu Mang, who was looking nervously at his bare knees. He held his rice bowl with both hands.
“Don’t worry, Niu Mang,” Frank said, his voice reassuring. “We’re not putting that toxic garbage anywhere near your skin. Grab the brass mortar from the bottom shelf of the tool cabinet.”
Frank stepped out onto the porch, looking over the wild, overgrown hillside behind Classroom 404.
While the academy’s cultivated gardens were bloated with overpriced, pesticide-sprayed spiritual herbs that needed five servants to water, the rocky limestone cliffs of the quarry were covered in hardy, deep-rooted mountain flora that fought the wind every single day.
Frank’s botanical QA scanner traced the rocks, highlighting clumps of wild herbs with sharp green wireframe rectangles.
“Shitou, grab a trowel and a clean wooden bucket,” Frank commanded. “Three ounces of wild mountain mugwort, four ounces of high-sky plantain leaf, two roots of wild dandelion. Take only the ones growing out of the dry limestone crevices where the drainage is sharp.”
“Student obeys!” Shitou leaped off the porch, his heavy boots crunching into the shale as he harvested the plants with razor-sharp care.
In three minutes, Shitou returned with a wooden basket filled with fresh, dew-covered leaves and thick, stringy roots smelling sharply of stone-rich soil.
Frank dumped the greens into the heavy brass mortar. He took a heavy cast-iron pestle and began crushing the leaves with rhythmic, tuned downward strikes.
Thump. Thump. Crunch.
The green plant fibers broke down under clockwork pressure, releasing a sharp, clean, aromatic oil that smelled of mountain pine, mint, and fresh earth.
Frank carried the crushed mash over to the iron stove. There, Jiang Ling’er was tending the boiling water kettle.
“Ling’er,” Frank said. “Hold your hand three inches above this copper bowl. When I drop the mash in, release a nonstop, low-pressure pulse of ninety-two-degree steam. Don’t let it boil over. We need heat extraction to pull the essential oils without scorching the volatile terpenes.”
“Student obeys!” Ling’er replied with total focus.
She extended her slender hand over the copper bowl. A gentle, golden-white mist of solar dragon vapor drifted from her palm. It maintained a perfectly steady, humming heat of ninety-two degrees.
Frank stirred the mash with a clean pine dowel.
The green herbal oils dissolved into the pure well water, emulsifying into a rich, emerald-green liniment that gave off a soothing, radiant warmth that filled the room with the scent of mountain spring.
Frank pulled the bowl away from the heat and set it on the bench beside Niu Mang.
“Niu Mang,” Frank said. “Roll up your trousers to the knee. Rub this liniment across your knee joint cords, your hamstrings, and your Achilles tendons. Don’t rub it in circles. Stroke upward toward the heart to help dark-blood return.”
Niu Mang dipped his massive, calloused fingers into the emerald paste.
He rubbed the warm liniment across his skin. Then, a sharp, revitalizing tingle shot through his muscle fibers.
The herbal extracts pierced deep beneath his deep skin, flushing muscle burn from his tissues and increasing the elastic pulling strength of his tendons by twenty percent! His joints felt weightless, lubricated, and fully immune to clockwork friction.
“Master!” Niu Mang gasped, rotating his ankles with smooth, easy power. “My knees... They feel like oiled ball bearings! The stiffness from yesterday’s trench digging is fully gone!”
“Good,” Frank nodded, checking his pocket watch. “That’s how proper preventative upkeep works. You don’t use diluted pig lard to lubricate high-torque machinery. You use clean fluids and balanced friction reduction.”
Jiang Ling’er watched Frank wipe down the copper bowl with clean linen, her heart overflowing with awe.
In the royal palace, Ling’er reflected silently, a Saint Potion-maker would need three days of fasting, an eight-trigram pill fire, and hundreds of spirit stones to refine a Grandmaster-grade tendon-strengthening elixir. Yet Master Lu strolled into the backyard, plucked weeds from the gravel. Then he blended an elixir that surpasses royal tributes in five minutes flat!
He doesn’t need grand cooking pots or sacred incantations. To Master, nature is merely a warehouse of raw chemical compounds waiting for proper heat-powered extraction!
GONG—! GONG—! GONG—!
The thunderous, deep chime of the Academy’s Grand Assembly Gong echoed across the valley. It shook through the mist like distant thunder.
Nine strikes. The formal summons to the Grand Freshmen Arena.
Frank took off his denim shop apron, folded it neatly, and placed it on his desk. He smoothed down the sleeves of his plain grey linen robes, checked his pockets to ensure his tape measure, framing square, and bag of watermelon seeds were securely stowed. Then he turned to face his three students.
Shen Shitou stood like a bronze castle, his twenty-pound demolition sledgehammer resting across his shoulder.
Jiang Ling’er stood with royal poise. Her golden eyes glowed with quiet confidence, a clean enamel tea kettle tucked into her travel basket.
Niu Mang stood at full height, his six-foot-four frame towering over the room, his sharpened hard dark metal trench spade gleaming with an oiled, black glass edge.
Frank picked up his tea mug, finished the last sip of warm water. Then he walked toward the newly hung front door.
“It’s nine-forty,” Frank said calmly. He pushed open the door with a quiet, satisfying glide of the greased hinge. “The arena is a fifteen-minute walk. Let’s go watch a young master learn the law of conservation of driving force.”