The Headmaster’s Inner Sanctum smelled of burning sandalwood, healing musk, and ancient panic.
Dean Shang Chen lay sprawled across a luxurious rosewood daybed, his silk collar torn open, his silver hair soaked in cold sweat. His right leg was exposed to the knee. He showed an ankle swollen to the size of a winter squash, the skin taut, shiny. Then he mottled with angry crimson veins.
Every thirty seconds, a painful muscle burst rippled up his leg, causing the Three-Star Master Teacher to groan and claw at the velvet mattress.
Surrounding the daybed were six senior Academic Elders and Grandmaster Mu. The revered chief of the Academy Physician Hall, clad in emerald robes stitched with two silver medical gourds.
In Grandmaster Mu’s trembling hands was an ornate golden-lacquered pill box lined with red satin.
Inside the box rested a shimmering, marble-sized golden pill that radiated a thick, sweet healing mist: the Heaven-Nourishing Foundation Pill, valued at five thousand middle-grade spirit stones.
“Hold the Provost steady!” Grandmaster Mu shouted wildly to the elders. “The Yongquan Yin Necrosis has breached his lower gate! If his spirit veins collapse, his Sea of Qi will implode! Force his jaw open! He must swallow the Heaven-Nourishing Foundation Pill right away to seal his dantians and lock his vital breath!”
Two elders stepped forward, reaching for the groaning Dean’s jaw.
Click.
A chipped blue enamel tea mug was set gently onto the rosewood side table, right next to the golden pill box.
A plain grey linen sleeve reached between the two elders. Two calloused fingers tapped Grandmaster Mu’s wrist, arresting his forward motion with the unmoving leverage of an iron pivot point.
“Put the golden marble down,” Frank’s voice cut through the panicking room, cool and flat as a concrete slab. “If you shove that brick into his throat-pipe, he’ll be in heart arrest before the candle burns down half an inch.”
Grandmaster Mu nearly dropped the pill box in shock. He whipped his head around, glaring at Frank with bulging, outraged eyes.
“Lu Zhen?!” Mu shrieked. “You insolent junior! How dare you step foot inside the Headmaster’s medical quarantine?! This is the sacred Heaven-Nourishing Foundation Pill, refined by Three-Star Alchemists of the Capital! It costs five thousand spirit stones! Step back before I have the guards sever your hands!”
Frank didn’t step back. He didn’t even look at Mu’s face.
His eyes dropped directly onto the shimmering golden pill. Meanwhile, the micro-star-fire spark in his dantian passed a barely noticeable chemical scan through the air.
DING.
Frank’s DAO-QA console flashed bright amber. It projected a careful chemical breakdown directly across the golden lacquer box.
Frank stared at the floating data, letting out a whistle of deep, disgusted amusement.
“Five thousand spirit stones for fifty percent crushed chalk, twenty-eight percent heavy-duty lead oxide, and twenty percent baking soda?” Frank muttered, picking up the golden pill between his bare thumb and forefinger.
“Heresy! Sacrilege!” Grandmaster Mu screamed, reaching for the pill. “You dare touch a royal tribute with your greasy hands?!”
Frank ignored him, rolling the pill in his palm with a dry, cracking sound.
“This isn’t a Foundation Pill,” Frank announced to the room, speaking with the clear, cold and exact power of a careful chemist. “This is a bitter-salt sintering agent mixed with heavy metal flux. The potion-maker who rolled this used lead oxide to give it a shiny golden luster and packed it with chalk to fake the thickness.”
Frank pointed the golden pill at the groaning Dean Shang.
“The Dean has chronic uric acid crystal-forming blocking his lower drainage line. In plain language: forty years of gout caused by too much consumption of sweetened rice wine, rich venison fat, and zero cardiovascular exercise. His kidney straining network is choked with sharp, needle-like uric acid salt crystals.”
Frank turned to Grandmaster Mu, his eyes narrowing coldly.
“And your medical plan is to feed him a high-bitter-salt sintering pill loaded with lead and calcium? Do you know what happens when calcium and lead react with uric acid salts at body heat inside an unvented living vessel?”
The elders in the room fell fully silent, staring at Frank with wide, confused eyes.
“It cures the black rot?” one elder whispered slowly.
“It bakes the crystals into solid stone,” Frank replied flatly. “In sixty seconds, that chemical mix will sinter the uric crystals into jagged kidney stones the size of walnuts. His renal arteries will rupture, his bladder will suffer total acute black rot. He will die of systemic lead poisoning in agony. You’re not saving him. You’re pouring quick-dry high-pressure mortar down a clogged sewage pipe.”
Grandmaster Mu’s face drained of all color, turning from red to sickly green, then to pale ash.
He opened his mouth to shout heresy, but his medical training caught up with him. He knew the ancient herbal formulas. He knew that lead was often used by greedy capital pill-smiths to fake the weight of foundation elixirs.
Looking at Frank’s icy, steady eyes, Mu’s knees began to shake wildly.
“You... You lie...” Mu whispered, but his voice lacked even a shred of conviction.
Frank tossed the five-thousand-stone pill into a bronze spittoon in the corner with a dull clink.
He stepped over to the daybed and looked down at Dean Shang’s agonizingly swollen right foot.
Frank pulled a handful of dried brown dandelion roots and withered mountain twigs from his tool pouch. The leftover scrap harvest Shitou had gathered from the quarry cliffs that morning.
He tossed the dirty roots directly into Dean Shang’s fine china tea bowl on the bedside table.
“Boiling water,” Frank commanded. “Now.”
A scared servant right away rushed forward with a steaming iron kettle. It poured fresh boiling spring water over the dirty dandelion roots.
Frank stepped up to the bowl.
He extended his right pinky finger, lightly dipping the tip into the boiling water for a split second.
Tssst.
Deep within Frank’s Sea of Qi, the micro-star-fire spark flared at a tiny 0.0001% throttle.
A nearby, ultra-dense pulse of ten-thousand-Degrees of star-heat passed through his fingernail into the tea.
The water didn’t splash. It cavitated.
Tiny steam bubbles collapsed against the dandelion roots at high-pitched speed, in a heartbeat shearing the plant cell walls and pulling every single active inulin molecule, organic flavonoid, and anti-inflammatory alkaloid into the liquid without scorching a single organic bond!
The murky brown water flash-transformed into a crystal-clear, shimmering golden nectar that radiated a clean, fragrant mountain aroma smelling of morning dew and honey.
Frank picked up the fine china bowl and brought it to Dean Shang’s trembling lips.
“Drink it,” Frank ordered. “All of it. Don’t sip. Chug.”
Dean Shang looked up through bloodshot, pain-maddened eyes. He had consulted nine royal grandmasters over forty years, spent a kingdom’s fortune on jade pills, and suffered agony that made him wish for death.
Looking into Frank’s calm, unblinking eyes, Dean Shang felt a gut, soul-deep surge of trust.
The old master parted his lips and swallowed the hot golden tea in four desperate, heavy gulps!
GULP. GULP. GULP. GULP.
The hot liquid hit his stomach.
For three seconds, nothing happened.
And then, Dean Shang’s entire body went fully rigid!
HUMMMMMMM!
A wave of pure, golden heat energy—so soothing, so miraculously light that it felt like liquid sunlight—rushed downward from his dantian, coursing through his main thigh blood vessel like a high-pressure hot water flush!
The golden warmth slammed into his swollen right ankle.
Crackle-pop!
Beneath his skin, a sound like dissolving sea salt echoed through the quiet room!
Forty years of hardened uric acid crystals—stubborn, needle-sharp stone deposits that had defied hundreds of spiritual pills—dissolved on contact with the bubbling blast-pulled out alkaloids!
The stale, poisoned black blood in his Yongquan acupoint was melted in twenty seconds flat, flushed harmlessly into his dark-blood return!
The angry crimson swelling around his ankle pulled back at visible speed, the taut skin softening and returning to healthy, supple pale bronze!
“Ah... AHHH!”
Dean Shang gasped, throwing his head back!
He didn’t scream in agony.
He screamed in pure, pure, heavenly ecstasy!
The forty-year iron shackle that had tortured his soul, crippled his martial progress. Then he poisoned his sleep was gone.
Fully, utterly, flawlessly gone!
THUD!
Before the elders or Grandmaster Mu could blink, Dean Shang kicked off his heavy healing bandages, swung his legs over the edge of the rosewood daybed, and stood up!
He stomped his right foot onto the polished teak floorboards with a thunderous BAM!
“MY FOOT!” Dean Shang roared, tears of boundless joy streaming into his long silver beard. “MY YONGQUAN Spirit vein! IT’S OPEN! IT’S Fully OPEN!”
The old master hopped on his right leg, kicked his foot three times in the air. Then he let out a laugh that rattled the roof tiles of the administration pavilion!
“A Saint Physician!” Dean Shang cried, bowing deeply toward Frank with trembling hands. “A living Saint walking in mortal dust! Forty years of agony cured with a bowl of wild grass!”
Frank picked up his empty enamel mug and wiped the rim.
His internal DAO-QA console lit up with brilliant golden banners.
Frank smiled faintly, tucking the newly earned Golden Page into his inventory.
“Four pages in reserve,” Frank murmured. “Not bad for five minutes of plumbing work.”
Dean Shang rose from his bow, wiped his tears. Then he strode toward his massive dark wood desk with the smooth, easy stride of a man forty years younger.
He reached into the innermost iron lockbox of the academy vault. He pulled out a heavy, red-silk scroll bound with gold wire and stamped with the Great Seal of Tianxuan.
“Teacher Lu Zhen,” Dean Shang proclaimed, his voice ringing with total office sovereignty. “By the power of the Headmaster’s Office, I grant you the Permanent Freehold Land Deed to Classroom 404 and the entire southern quarry ridge! From this day forth, your classroom is an independent Academic Sanctum, beholden to no committee and subject to zero property tax for one hundred years!”
Before Frank could take the scroll, the heavy oak doors of the sanctum were kicked open.
Vice-Principal Lu Xun burst through the threshold. He held a thick stack of petitions signed by thirty clan elders. His face was dark with triumphant malice:
“Dean Shang! An emergency full vote of the Academic Senate has convened! We have thirty signed names demanding the immediate expulsion of Lu Zhen for—”
SLAP!
A sound like a thunderclap echoed across the office!
Dean Shang didn’t wait for Lu Xun to finish his sentence.
The newly cured Headmaster took two smooth, lightning-fast steps across the carpet and slapped the gold-sealed freehold land deed directly across Vice-Principal Lu’s arrogant face!