The morning wind blew fiercely across the western ridge. It whipped Dean Shang’s silver hair across his furrowed brow.
Elder Zhao, stripped of his scale-mail armor and bound in glowing spirit-crushing weight chains, was hauled away by two stone-faced Grand Law Elders. His boots dragged through the slush, leaving deep, humiliating ruts in the snow.
Lu Yan remained kneeling in the snowbank. He shivered wildly from both the freezing cold and the leftover blast wave of Dean Shang’s spiritual pressure.
Yet, despite his terror, Lu Yan’s eyes flashed with desperate cunning.
“Dean Shang!” Lu Yan cried out, pressing his forehead into the snow. “My uncle acted alone! He was deceived by wicked rumors! As the direct heir of the Lu Clan, I knew nothing of the stolen ginseng! You can’t expel me without an Imperial Clan Trial!”
Several teachers from Class 1 stepped forward, their faces tense.
“Dean Shang, please reconsider,” one elder whispered cautiously. “The Lu Clan patriarch is currently dining with the Royal Minister of War in the capital. If we execute or expel their direct heir on the eve of the tournament without a royal hearing, the academy’s annual spirit-stone subsidy could be suspended.”
Dean Shang’s hands clenched tightly inside his wide sleeves. His knuckles popped like dry twigs.
The academy was an ancient institution. But even ancient institutions were bound by the ugly, entangled roots of royal high-born politics.
“You speak of clan laws, Lu Yan?” Dean Shang’s voice dropped to a freezing growl. “You dare invoke royal subsidies after defiling this sacred mountain with planted evidence?”
Lu Yan swallowed hard, sensing an opening. “According to the Founding Ancestor’s Charter, Chapter Seven, Article Three: any unresolved grievance between academy lineages may be settled through the crucible of the Grand Freshmen Tournament! If my Class 1 is victorious, our honor is vindicated! If Class 404 defeats us, I’ll accept whatever punishment the Academy Council decrees!”
It was a blatant bending, a desperate gamble by a noble who believed his clan’s top-tier resources, pseudo-spirit swords. Tier 1 peak formations could still crush Frank’s ragtag students in an open arena.
Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
A rhythmic scratching sound broke the heavy silence.
Everyone turned their heads.
Frank had walked back inside Classroom 404 and returned with a long-handled straw broom and an iron dustpan. With careful, unrushed strokes, Frank was sweeping the dried clumps of purple conservatory loam off the cedar porch and into the pan.
He didn’t look at Dean Shang. He didn’t look at the trembling elders.
Frank simply swept the dirt into a neat pile, stepped to the edge of the porch. Then he looked down at Lu Yan.
“I don’t care about your family tree,” Frank said, his voice flat as a carpenter’s rule. “I don’t care about your Founding Charter, your royal subsidies, or your lineage honor. But I do care about job site upkeep.”
Frank tapped the brim of his straw broom against the stone threshold.
“During the tournament, make sure none of you bleed on my new granite steps,” Frank continued dryly. “Human blood contains high levels of iron oxide. Once it soaks into porous white granite, you have to scrub it with muriatic acid to lift the stain, and acid etches the polished crystal-clear surface. I spent three hours leveling that granite threshold yesterday. If you get blood on it, I’ll make you re-hone the stone by hand.”
Lu Yan’s teeth ground together in fury. ‘He treats our life-and-death clan honor like dirty floorboards?!’
Dean Shang let out a long, heavy breath, his eyes glinting with cold resolution.
“So be it,” Dean Shang declared, his voice ringing across the western ridge like an iron verdict. “By old family decree, the tournament shall be the crucible! Lu Yan, your private seeding privileges are revoked! Your Class 1 will receive zero preferential draws!”
Dean Shang turned toward Frank and his three students, who stood quietly beneath their yellow gourd hard hats.
The old Dean reached into his robes. Then he pulled out a heavy golden scroll bound with red silk ribbon: the Grand Freshmen Tournament Master Registry.
With a flick of his finger, a golden brush materialized in Dean Shang’s hand. In bold, blazing calligraphy that flared with radiant spiritual light, he inscribed three names directly onto the tournament monolith roster.
The golden scroll flared, sending a pillar of light shooting straight up toward the central mountain peak!
High atop the Academy Monolith in the central plaza, the giant stone tablet rumbled, carving the newly registered bracket into the eternal granite for all five thousand students to see.
***
Down in the Academy Central Plaza, the sudden eruption of golden light drew hundreds of rushing students.
Students from Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3 clustered beneath the towering monolith, craning their necks to read the freshly carved golden stone carvings.
“Look at the bottom bracket!” a Class 3 beast tamer cried out, pointing his whip at the stone. “Class 404?! Is that a clerical error?!”
“The western ridge shack?!” a Class 2 spell-sword student gasped in disbelief. “The roster lists Shitou, Ling’er, and Niu Mang! Weren’t those three cripples destined for expulsion this term?!”
“How did an unranked class get seeded directly into the elimination gauntlet against the top three divisions?”
“Look at their seed title: ‘#1 Seeded Underdog’! Dean Shang signed it himself with the vermilion seal!”
Murmurs of shock, nervous laughter, and growing unease swept through the crowd.
Just hours earlier, the three chimes of the Grand Founding Bell had shaken the entire mountain to its core. Rumors had already begun spreading that the divine deep ring originated from the western cliff where dead peach trees were blooming in the snow.
“Could it really be them...?” a young noble whispered, his voice trembling. “Did those three trash students really trigger the Founding Bell?”
“Absurd!” a Class 1 loyalist scoffed loudly, though his own hands were shaking. “Senior Brother Lu will tear them apart in the finals! A carpenter and his ditch-diggers can’t defeat true royal swords!”
***
Back on the western ridge, the elders and punishment guards pulled back in grim silence, clearing the courtyard.
Soon, only Dean Shang remained standing on the crushed-gravel walkway.
The old Dean walked up to the porch steps. He stared at the warm, glowing cedar inside of Classroom 404, then at the blooming peach trees, and finally at Frank, who was dumping the dustpan into a compost bucket.
“Teacher Lu,” Dean Shang said quietly, his tone laced with deep respect and barely suppressed curiosity. “The three rings of the Grand Founding Bell... The blossoming of withered wood in winter... The water drops of three flawless Qi Seas... What kind of ancient divine legacy are you passing down to these children?”
Frank emptied the last speck of purple dirt from the pan and hung the broom on its wall hook.
“I’m teaching them basic trade fundamentals, Dean Shang,” Frank replied calmly. “You people push children to swing heavy steel and swallow toxic fire pills before they even know how to balance their balance point or seal an outside draft. You build castles on quicksand and wonder why your walls crack.”
Frank turned to look at the old Dean, adjusting his suspenders.
“Training isn’t magic. It’s load-bearing building. If your foundation is square, your plumbing is leak-free. Your spark ground is nonstop, the rest of the building takes care of itself. Good day, Dean. We have check prep.”
Frank stepped inside Classroom 404 and pulled the solid pine door shut with a quiet, solid THUD.
Dean Shang stood on the porch for a long time, staring at the closed door.
‘Training is load-bearing building...’
The old Dean repeated the words in his heart. A sudden surge of enlightenment flashed through his mind, causing his dormant bottleneck of twenty years to tremble wildly! He bowed deeply to the closed door, turned, and strode down the mountain with never seen before excitement.
Inside the warm classroom, Shitou, Ling’er, and Niu Mang stood in a rigid row before Frank’s desk.
Their yellow gourd hard hats sat straight on their heads, their eyes burning with intense, resolute fire.
“Teacher!” Shitou said, his deep voice trembling with eagerness. “The tournament bracket is set! In two days, we’ll step onto the Grand Colosseum stage. How shall we show the glory of Classroom 404?”
Frank sat down behind his freshly planed desk, opened his ledger, and dipped his quill into black ink.
“Rule one of competitive field operations,” Frank said, looking up over his glasses. “Zero wasted motion. Every moving strike must have an eighty percent energy transfer ratio into the target. If you swing your arm and hit nothing, that’s twenty calories burned for zero yield.”
Frank stood up and walked down the line, inspecting their equipment one by one.
He stopped in front of Niu Mang, checking the heavy boy’s work boots.
“Niu Mang. Laces double-knotted. Good. You’re facing the Beast Tamers in Round One. Animals are simple clockwork systems of bone levers and tendon pulleys. Don’t fight their teeth or claws. Disrupt their balance vectors at the hip joint. One tap, one shifted weight. When a four-hundred-pound dire-boar charges, step thirty degrees off-axis and trip its front pivot point. Driving force does the rest.”
“Disrupt the pivot point! Students remember!” Niu Mang shouted, slamming his iron fist into his palm.
Frank moved to Ling’er, inspecting her dual iron chisels.
“Ling’er. Your backup edge is twenty-five degrees. Razor sharp. Class Two uses spell-swords. Metal blades conduct heat energy four hundred times faster than sky air. When they channel fire or frost through steel, use their own heat flow rate against them. Counter-phase their heat slope and cause heat shock failure in their blade matrices. One hot touch, one cold touch. The steel shatters itself.”
Ling’er’s silver eyes sparkled with fierce understanding. “Heat shock fatigue! Students shall execute the cool with total care!”
Finally, Frank stopped in front of Shitou, checking the steel wedge seated in the head of his twenty-pound sledgehammer.
“Shitou. Lu Yan is obsessed with high-energy flare and flashy light shows. Light is radiant energy that isn’t doing load-bearing work. It’s pure inefficiency. When he attacks with his Golden Crow sword aura, don’t dodge. You’re the ground rod. Channel his excess voltage straight into the arena flat stone slabs and let him trip his own circuit breaker.”
Shitou gripped the hickory handle with both hands, bowing deeply with his yellow gourd helmet. “Students obey Teacher’s supreme blueprint!”
Frank closed his ledger, blew on the wet ink, and smiled faintly.
“Forty-eight hours until check day,” Frank said calmly. “Check your boots, tighten your chin straps, and sharpen your chisels. We have a tournament to decommission.”