Panic festered like black flesh-rot within the fancy chambers of the Lu Clan estate.
Late that night. Meanwhile, the blizzard howled against the leaded stained-glass windows, Lu Yan smashed a celadon tea bowl against the marble hearth. His handsome face was twisted with jealous rage, his eyes bloodshot and dark with tiredness.
“Three rings!” Lu Yan snarled, pacing wildly across the white bear-fur rug. “The Grand Founding Bell rang three times for those three discarded beggars! If they enter the Grand Freshmen Tournament in two days, my title as the undisputed top genius of the principality will be shattered! My father’s bid for the Grand Elder seat will collapse before the Clan Council!”
Across the heavy cedar table sat a gaunt, hawk-nosed man in charcoal-gray robes stitched with the iron scales of the Disciplinary Hall: Elder Zhao, Lu Yan’s maternal uncle and the Deputy Chief of Academy Law Enforcement.
Elder Zhao stroked his thin mustache, a poisonous smirk curling his lips. “Calm yourself, nephew. In this academy, raw talent means nothing without institutional backing. If a student is expelled or crippled for a capital crime, they can’t step onto the tournament stage. A dead dog can’t bite.”
Elder Zhao reached into his velvet sleeve and produced a heavy jade box wrapped in silver crushing weight magic charms.
He lifted the latch, revealing a foot-long, blood-red root shaped like a coiled dragon. It pulsed with intense, fiery heat, streaming thick waves of crimson spiritual mist that scorched the tabletop.
“A Tier-3 Crimson Sun Ginseng,” Lu Yan whispered, his breath catching in his throat. “The Academy Vault’s cornerstone treasure! Worth at least five thousand spirit stones! How did you get this?!”
“The vault keys were under my check duty tonight,” Elder Zhao said smoothly, his eyes glinting with cunning. “A simple sleight of hand. At midnight, my trusted shadows will slip beneath the porch of Classroom 404 and bury it beneath the crawlspace floorboards. At dawn, the Disciplinary Hall will stage an emergency surprise raid. Possession of stolen academy cornerstone treasures carries the penalty of dantian destruction and lifelong exile to the northern iron mines.”
Elder Zhao closed the jade box with a sharp, metal snap. “By sunrise, Lu Zhen and his three trash students will be convicts in iron chains.”
***
At the crack of dawn, the mountain was still cloaked in freezing gray mist.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The brass gongs of the Disciplinary Hall shattered the morning silence.
Thirty heavily armed punishment guards, clad in black scale-mail and wielding serrated iron batons and soul-suppressing chains, stormed down the western ridge. Their heavy iron-shod boots trampled through the pink peach blossoms, surrounding Classroom 404 in a tight, bristling outer edge of cold steel.
Elder Zhao walked at the head of the formation, his face rigid, cold, and righteous as carved iron. Beside him walked Lu Yan and several prominent teachers from Class 1. He looked on with solemn, made sorrow.
“Lu Zhen!” Elder Zhao bellowed, his voice amplified by Qi to rattle the pine rafters. “Step out of the building right away! Lay down all spiritual artifacts and surrender to the Disciplinary Hall!”
The solid pine door swung open with a smooth, oiled glide.
Frank stepped onto the porch. He was holding a freshly brewed mug of roasted barley tea in his left hand and a wooden clipboard with a brass clip in his right. He was wearing his heavy canvas work trousers and leather suspenders. He looked thoroughly calm by the thirty drawn blades.
Behind him, Shitou, Ling’er, and Niu Mang peered out from the doorway, still wearing their yellow gourd hard hats strapped securely beneath their chins.
Frank took a slow sip of hot tea, blew on the steam. Then he looked down at the thirty armed guards.
“Eight o’clock in the morning,” Frank said, his voice flat as an iron beam. “Do you people have an approved site check permit, or did you just feel like trampling my freshly raked crushed-gravel walkway?”
“Insolent dog!” Elder Zhao barked, pointing a jade baton at Frank’s chest. “Last night, the Academy Grand Vault was breached! A cornerstone Tier-3 Crimson Sun Ginseng was stolen! We have received an anonymous, sworn report that the stolen treasure is hidden right here in Classroom 404!”
“An anonymous tip,” Frank repeated, arching an eyebrow. “Fascinating. And I suppose you already know the exact load-bearing map points where this stolen tuber was hidden?”
“Search the outer edge!” Elder Zhao commanded the guards, ignoring the question. “Check beneath the porch crawlspace! Every corner!”
Before Frank could even take another sip of tea, two eager guards rushed directly to the southwest corner of the porch. Without checking any other part of the building, one guard dropped to his knees, reached straight under the third cedar skirting plank. Then he pulled out the jade box wrapped in silver magic charms!
“Elder Zhao! We found it!” the guard shouted triumphantly, holding the jade box high. “The Crimson Sun Ginseng is here!”
Lu Yan gasped with melodramatic horror, clutching his chest. “Heavens! Teacher Lu, how could you be so greedy?! To steal the academy’s cornerstone treasure to fuel your students’ illegal training! This is treason against Hongwu Academy!”
Elder Zhao stepped forward, sneering with undisguised malice. “The evidence is undeniable! Seize them! Shatter their dantians and throw them into the underground dungeons!”
The thirty guards raised their iron crushing weight chains, surging forward.
“Hold on a second,” Frank said, raising his clipboard. “Before anyone touches a single hinge on my porch, let’s run a basic five-point chain-of-custody audit.”
Frank stepped down from the porch, pointing his brass-tipped pencil at the skirting board.
“Point number one: Tamper-evident baseline,” Frank said calmly. “Yesterday at five PM, I chalked a nonstop blue snap-line along every joint of this skirting hatch, and tied a tuned horsehair telltale across the latch. If you look at the seam right now, the blue chalk is smeared. The horsehair is cut outward at a thirty-five-degree angle. The hatch was opened from the outside between midnight and three AM.”
Elder Zhao’s eyes flickered, but he sneered: “So what? You sneaked out in the middle of the night to stash your stolen loot!”
“Which brings me to point number two,” Frank continued, flipping a page on his clipboard. “Soil spectrometry.”
Frank walked over to the open jade box held by the trembling guard. With a small brass spatula from his pocket, Frank scooped a tiny clump of dark soil clinging to the ginseng’s root-ball.
He held it up to the morning light.
“Mount Hongwu is composed of bitter-salt granite and limestone,” Frank said, his voice ringing crisp and clear through the mountain chill. “Every ounce of dirt within ten miles of this academy has a pH of 7.8, rich in white lime-chalk. But this soil clinging to the ginseng roots? It’s acidic fiery loam with a pH of 5.2, heavily enriched with crushed glowing-shells and nightsoil from southern marsh-snails.”
Frank looked directly at Lu Yan.
“There’s only one place in the entire Tianxuan Principality that uses that specific imported soil mix: the heated private botanical conservatory of the Lu Clan estate in the eastern capital.”
Lu Yan’s face instantly lost all color. He stumbled back a half-step, his throat seizing. “You... You’re talking nonsense! That’s just common dirt!”
“Which brings me to point number three: Transfer forensics,” Frank continued. He pointed his pencil down at Elder Zhao’s feet.
“Elder Zhao. You crept over here last night to slide this box under my crawlspace. Then, you walked through your nephew’s conservatory first to retrieve the package. And because you’re sloppy and don’t believe in job site hygiene, you didn’t even scrape your treads.”
Everyone’s eyes dropped to Elder Zhao’s boots.
There, caked thickly along the welt and heel-grooves of Elder Zhao’s left leather riding boot, was a distinct, greasy smudge of dark purple fiery loam—matching in texture, color, and glowing-gleam to the dirt clinging to the ginseng!
Beside Frank, Shitou adjusted his yellow gourd hard hat and nodded sagely. “Teacher’s order is total. Elder Zhao’s stance angle shows a severe pelvic misalignment during his night-hunting trespass, resulting in uneven tread wear on the lateral heel.”
Niu Mang crossed his massive arms, scoffing loudly: “Teacher taught us never to plant crops in an untuned soil profile! Your agricultural discipline is fully trash-tier, Elder!”
Frank ignored his students and pointed his pencil at the fresh lime mortar.
“Point number four,” Frank added, tapping his pocket watch. “You stepped on my freshly poured lime mortar patch by the rain barrel. The tread pattern on your sole is an eight-ridge dragon-scale chevron, size ten and a half. The exact same depth, stride length, and wear pattern imprinted in my curing lime at two-fourteen AM.”
The entire courtyard went dead silent.
The thirty punishment guards stopped in their tracks. They looked between Frank’s clipboard, the purple dirt on the root. The matching purple mud plastered across their commander’s boot.
Elder Zhao broke into a cold, greasy sweat. His hands began to shake wildly beneath his wide sleeves. “S-Slander! Treasonous fabrication! Kill him! Kill this insolent dog where he stands!”
“WHO DARES ORDER AN EXECUTION ON MY MOUNTAIN?!”
A voice like tearing thunder cracked through the morning sky!
A terrifying, choking aura dropped from the clouds, pinning every single guard to the flat stone slabs. The snowdrifts exploded into mist as Dean Shang. He was flanked by thirty elite gray-robed Grand Law Elders, dropped from the sky like dropping war eagles!
Dean Shang’s face was as dark as a storm cloud. His spiritual pressure locked onto Elder Zhao like a vise. That forced the corrupt elder straight to his knees with a sickening crunch.
“Dean Shang!” Elder Zhao choked out, blood leaking from his lips under the pressure. “This... This is a misunderstanding!”
Dean Shang picked up the clump of purple loam from Frank’s spatula, brought it to his nose. Then he took one whiff. His eyes blazed with fiery fury.
“Purple glowing-loam from the Lu Clan greenhouse,” Dean Shang hissed. His voice shook with sheer outrage. “Elder Zhao... You abused your vault check power to steal a cornerstone relic, framed an approved teacher of this academy, and tried to butcher three Tier-2 geniuses on the eve of the Grand Tournament!”
Lu Yan fell to his knees in terror, weeping into the snow: “Dean, spare me! My father—”
“SILENCE!” Dean Shang roared, striking the air with his sleeve. A blast of wind sent Lu Yan spinning across the courtyard, crashing into a snowbank.
Dean Shang turned to the Grand Law Elders. “Strip Elder Zhao of his law enforcement badge! Confiscate his keys! Place him under solitary house arrest pending full trial investigation!”
Two Grand Law Elders stepped forward, ripping the iron scale-mail from Zhao’s shoulders and slapping heavy crushing weight seals across his wrists.
Frank took another sip of his roasted barley tea, checked the time on his pocket watch. Then he shook his head.
“Thirty-two seconds to clear the audit,” Frank muttered. “Not bad. But the cleanup is going to be a headache. Look at all this purple mud on my porch. Dean Shang, who’s reimbursing me for the aggregate gravel your guards crushed into the mud?”
Dean Shang stared at Frank, then glanced at the three clean Tier 2 students standing behind him under yellow gourd helmets. The old Dean’s chest heaved with a mixture of deep awe and cold dread.
“Every copper of damage,” Dean Shang promised through clenched teeth, “will be paid out of the Lu Clan’s punishment budget.”