The aroma of decomposing nightsoil and fermented kelp fertilizer drifted across the plaza in warm, persistent waves.
To any self-respecting fighter or high-born parent, this combination was an unbearable insult to their spiritual senses.
To Frank, it simply smelled like a digging site next to an unserviced septic tank. He had worked on sewage plant overhauls in August. Twenty bags of damp manure were barely a footnote.
Frank leaned back against the rickety pine chair, propping his boots on the table. He took a measured sip from his enamel tea mug.
Across the vast flat stone slab plaza, the air was entirely different.
Under the grand gold-trimmed pavilion of the “Azure Sky Faction,” Senior Teacher Mo stood atop a raised dias, preening like an oiled peacock. Mo was clad in sweeping sapphire silks stitched with three silver sky stars. He held a polished brass sound-amplifying magic charm to his throat.
“Hear me, noble clans of Tianxuan!” Mo’s magnified voice boomed, rattling roof tiles across the square. “The Azure Sky Faction has just enrolled young Master Han! Grade-4 Fire Spiritual Roots! A prodigy whose sword qi shall pierce the high sky before his twentieth year!”
The crowd erupted in thunderous applause. Parents shoved their children forward with desperate shouts.
Mo basked in the adulation. Then, his eyes drifted across the sea of heads. It locked onto the distant, lonely corner beside the manure bags.
A smirk curled Mo’s thin lips. He adjusted his brass magic charm.
“Of course,” Mo’s voice echoed with mocking theatricality, “not every teacher possesses our exacting standards. Look to the southwest corner, my friends! Teacher Lu Zhen sits ready to welcome those who aspire to achieve a historic negative five score! If any parent desires their child to learn the deep art of bladder-paralyzing qi deviation, Classroom 404 has plenty of vacancies!”
A ripple of derisive laughter cascaded through the plaza. Hundreds of faces turned toward Frank, pointing and sneering.
Frank didn’t even blink. He tapped his finger against the rim of his tea mug, his gaze resting lazily on Mo’s chest.
In Frank’s outer vision, a pale amber test cursor flickered over Mo’s throat.
“Forcing your throat instead of engaging your pelvic floor,” Frank murmured into his mug. “If he keeps shouting into that brass megaphone, his throat cords will snap like cheap rubber bands by Tuesday.”
Before the laughter across the plaza could fade, a violent commotion erupted near the entrance gates.
“Move aside, trash! Clear the lane for the Divine Sword Shen Clan!”
A dozen armored stewards in silver-threaded dragon robes marched into the square, their hands resting on broadsword handles. Their shin guards clattered rhythmically against stone, parting the crowd like a war galley slicing through pond scum.
In the center, two burly guards dragged a young man by the collar of his shredded tunic.
His face was unrecognizable beneath crusted mud and dried black blood. His bare feet left red, dragging streaks across the white flat stone slabs. Around his neck hung an iron collar stamped with the scarlet character: EXPELLED.
“Throw the garbage where it belongs!” the lead steward barked.
With a callous heave, the two guards swung the young man through the air.
He flew five yards and landed with a wet, sickening thud directly in the muddy gutter three feet from Frank’s table, his skull stopping inches from a stack of manure sacks.
The lead steward stood over him, spitting onto the boy’s matted hair.
“Shen Shitou!” the steward projected his voice across the plaza. “By order of the Clan Elders, your name is wiped from the old family registry! Born as the firstborn of the main branch, yet possessing dead, stone-like spirit veins that couldn’t wake up the Divine Sword Qi!”
The steward unrolled a formal clan decree, his voice dripping with disdain.
“To cure your worthlessness, the Elders graciously bestowed three barrels of Thousand-Bone Cleansing Acid upon you! Yet your spirit veins merely absorbed the poison and hardened into dead melted rock waste! You’re a walking corpse, a drain on our spiritual herbs! If you dare step within ten miles of our estate, your dog legs will be cut!”
The stewards laughed harshly, spun on their heels. Then he strode away, not sparing another glance at the bleeding heap.
In the gutter, the boy lay face down in the slush. His fingernails clawed through filthy mud, dragging himself toward the drainage ditch. A ragged, choking sob rattled his ribs, spraying specks of dark blood against stone.
“Dead... Melted rock waste...” the boy whispered, his voice trembling with agony. “Ten years of training... Three years in an acid vat... And I’m just... Rubbish...”
A dull clink echoed beside his ear.
The boy blinked through blood-soaked eyelashes.
A chipped blue enamel mug sat gently on the flat of his right shoulder blade.
A pair of worn leather boots entered his blurred vision. Above them stood a young man in plain grey linen robes, a heavy wooden measuring tape protruding from his pocket.
Frank looked down at the boy with the practiced test of a site work boss inspecting a burst water main.
“Kid,” Frank said calmly. “You’re spilling bile into the drainage trench. That’s a town sanitation rule-break.”
Shen Shitou gasped, struggling to lift his chin. “Who... Who are you? Have you come to... Mock the clan’s discarded dog?”
Frank didn’t answer. He reached down, pressed two fingers against the boy’s third neck vertebra at the base of his neck. Then he let a tiny pulse pass through.
Instantly, Frank’s internal HUD flashed vibrant amber.
Frank whistled softly through his teeth, shaking his head in disgust.
“Forty-two tiny fraction of an inch heavy-duty piping,” Frank muttered. “Heavy-gauge wall thickness, rated for fifty thousand PSI of molten star-fire. And some back-alley, unlicensed plumber poured raw muriatic acid into an unprimed boiler loop to ‘soften’ the pipes.”
Shen Shitou froze in the mud.
He couldn’t understand “tiny fraction of an inch” or “heavy-duty,” but the phrase poured raw acid into an unprimed boiler pierced through his despair like lightning.
For three painful years, the Shen Clan’s Grand Alchemists had shoved him into boiling copper vats filled with acidic spirit-extract, insisting his spirit veins were merely stubborn. Every session left him screaming until his throat bled, his internal pathways hardening into agony until his qi ceased flowing entirely.
“The acid didn’t dissolve your blockages,” Frank continued, wiping his fingers on a rag. “It reacted with calcium deposits and created solid stone lime-scale. Your pipes aren’t broken, kid. They’re just clogged with stone crust. You’re suffering from total high-pressure lock.”
Shen Shitou’s breath hitched in his throat. “High-pressure... Lock?”
“When you try to channel qi,” Frank explained, pointing at the boy’s lower back, “the fluid hits a wall of hardened settled mud. The pressure backs up into your pump station, which is why your chest bone feels like someone is driving an iron wedge through it every time you take a deep breath. Am I right?”
Shen Shitou trembled wildly. Tears cut clean tracks through crusted dirt on his cheeks.
“Yes...” Shitou choked out. “Every breath... Feels like fire! Like molten iron trapped behind my ribs! The Grandmasters said... My soul was cursed by heaven!”
“Your Grandmasters shouldn’t be allowed within fifty feet of a pipe wrench,” Frank said flatly. “They’re lucky you didn’t suffer a total pipe hub rupture and blow their pavilion into the upper stratosphere.”
Frank reached into his tunic, pulled out a crumpled yellow registration slip. Then he tossed it onto the mud in front of Shitou’s nose.
“Stand up, kid. Classroom 404 has an opening for a load-bearing ironworker. We need someone who can carry heavy timbers and unjam rusted bolts.”
Shen Shitou stared at the crumpled paper: Hongwu Academy — Classroom 404 (Teacher: Lu Zhen).
In the distance, the grand pavilions of the Azure Sky Faction gleamed with golden light. He was surrounded by hundreds of bowing prodigies. Yet not a single master in that grand square had seen the burning iron inside his chest.
This strange teacher, sitting beside a dung heap with grease on his cuffs, had diagnosed three years of agony in three seconds.
He doesn’t care about the Shen Clan, Shitou realized. To him, our nine Grand Alchemists are just clumsy children playing with dirty tools.
Shen Shitou rolled onto his knees. He bowed his forehead against the white flat stone slabs at Frank’s boots.
“Disciple Shen Shitou...” the boy cried, “begs Master Lu to accept me! If Master can teach this student how to cleanse this iron... Shitou’s life belongs to Master forever!”
Frank picked up his tea mug, taking another sip.
“Watch the forehead,” Frank said. “Concussions aren’t covered under our preliminary health plan. Grab the charcoal stick and sign line four.”
Shitou snatched the burnt charcoal with trembling fingers and carved his name across the parchment.
The Academy Central Registrar strolled over from the main administration tent, hands tucked into blue sleeves. He looked at Frank, then down at the bleeding boy kneeling by the manure.
“Well, well, Lu Zhen,” the registrar chuckled coldly, stamping the slip with a heavy brass seal. “You actually dragged a dying dog into your pen. But don’t celebrate yet.”
The registrar leaned down, eyes gleaming with malice.
“According to the emergency decree issued by Vice-Principal Lu this morning, your probationary extension only holds if you recruit three students before sundown today. That’s one crippled reject down. Two more before the sunset gong, Lu Zhen—or your shack is taken away tonight. You sleep in the quarry pit!”
The registrar tossed the stamped slip onto the table and walked away laughing.
Frank picked up the paper, checked the seal for ink smudges, and tucked it into his tool belt.
He looked down at Shitou, who was struggling to stand on wobbly knees.
“One down, two to go,” Frank said, rising from his chair. “Come on, Shitou. Let’s take a walk around the back outer edge. The best scrap materials are never on the showroom floor anyway.”