The Grand Examination Hall of the 4-Star Master Teachers felt less like an academy testing chamber and more like a royal courtroom staged for an execution.
Soaring vaulted arches of polished dark rock rose eighty feet overhead, hung with black-and-gold tapestries bearing the royal dragon insignia. The floor was paved with five-foot six-sided slate slabs inscribed with crushing weight formations designed to smother uncontrolled bursts of zhenqi.
Seated upon the three-tiered judge dais at the far end of the hall was Arbiter Zong.
A 5-Star Master Teacher and the Chief Test Arbiter of the Great Da-Qi Conferred Empire, Zong was a severe, thin-lipped man in his late fifties. His raven hair was bound in a towering crown of carved black glass. His robes of royal purple were trimmed with silver ermine fur. Beside him sat six senior exam guards, each holding heavy brass-bound registers and red stone seals.
When Frank entered the chamber, the room’s heat seemed to drop five degrees.
Frank strolled down the central aisle with his hands tucked into his denim bib, his yellow hard hat tilted casually, his sixteen-ounce ball-peen hammer swinging at his hip. Under his left arm, he carried the two-hundred-pound rusted three-sided World Anchor as if it were a sack of dry flour. Clinking against his copper buttons were his freshly minted tokens: the solid red-gold 4-Star Blacksmith medallion and the purple amethyst 4-Star Appraiser token.
