The arena herald stepped onto the bloodstained stones, clearing his dry throat.
“The Grand Freshmen Tournament, Elimination Round Two! Class Two versus Class Four-Hundred-and-Four!”
GONGGGGGGGGGGG!
The iron chime shuddered under the judge’s strike.
From the eastern tunnel strode Zhao Gang, the “Iron-Skin Berserker” of Class 2. Every step he took caused his heavy iron-plated boots to ring against the flat stone slabs. Standing nearly seven feet tall, with shoulders like an ox yoke and skin the color of tarnished bronze, Zhao Gang looked less like a mortal student and more like a walking siege engine.
In his left hand, he carried a massive three-hundred-pound tower shield forged from layered cold-iron, two inches thick. In his right hand swung a vicious four-flanged iron mace connected to an iron chain.
“Look at that defense!” a spectator gasped in the middle tiers. “Zhao Gang survived being trampled by a two-thousand-pound dire-mammoth during the autumn hunt without breaking a single rib! His Iron-Bovine flesh can withstand three thousand pounds of direct impact!”
“Class 2 is taking no chances after what happened to Zhou Tian,” an elder observed, nodding approvingly. “An unmoving shield can’t be toppled by fancy earth tricks.”
Zhao Gang stopped in the center of the ring, slammed his cold-iron tower shield into the stone floor with an ear-splitting CLANG. Then it pointed his spiked flail toward the western bench.
“Little girl!” Zhao Gang roared, his deep bass rattling the teeth of the spectators in the front rows. “Step into the ring! Let me see if your sewing pins can scratch my three-hundred-pound cold-iron wall!”
On the western bench, Jiang Ling’er stood up.
She smoothed the front of her clean brown linen work apron, checked the chin strap of her yellow gourd hard hat. Then she pulled a six-inch polished brass posture pin from her leather tool loop.
Frank sat with his legs crossed, checking a pressure gauge on his pocket watch.
“Ling’er,” Frank called out, his voice calm and measured.
“Yes, Teacher?” Ling’er paused at the edge of the sawdust boundary.
“Keep the working pressure strictly under eight thousand PSI,” Frank instructed, not looking up from his ledger. “The town building code for this arena only rates those rear granite giant pillars for six thousand pounds per square foot. If you blow a hole through the retaining wall, the academy administration will try to dock our materials budget for load-bearing repairs. Modulate your nozzle sky-slit.”
“Students remember Teacher’s warning,” Ling’er replied with a respectful bow. “Controlled nozzle sky-slit. Sub-eight-thousand PSI. I shall not damage the town public works.”
She stepped gracefully into the arena ring.
To the ten thousand spectators, the contrast was almost absurd.
On one side stood a seven-foot mountain of muscle and cold-iron armor, streaming waves of brutal, choking Tier 2 Layer 1 killing intent.
On the other side stood a slender girl in a carpenter’s apron and a bright yellow gourd hat. She held a slender brass pin like a seamstress holding a needle.
“Hahahaha!” Zhao Gang’s booming laughter shook the cold air. “Is this a joke?! Lu Zhen sent an apprentice tailor to fight the Iron Berserker?! Little girl, crawl back to your kitchen before I turn your bones to chalk!”
Ling’er didn’t reply.
She raised her right hand. She held the brass posture pin horizontally between her index and middle fingers.
Deep within her lower dantian, her Tier 2 liquid Qi—half icy-cold sky dew, half blazing solar dragon fire—began to circulate in the exact seventy-thirty ratio Frank had engineered.
The liquid Qi rushed into her chest cavity, entering the overload phase.
Tick. Tick. Hiss.
Her internal dragon core boiler fired up. The heat soared to nine hundred degrees. Meanwhile, the pressure climbed at a terrifying, exponential rate!
bone-crushing pressure.
Exactly one hundred and fifty pounds of pressure below Frank’s strict town damage threshold!
“Die, arrogant wench!”
Zhao Gang roared, his patience snapping. He planted his massive feet, locked his cold-iron tower shield before his chest, and charged forward like a runaway locomotive!
THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD!
The flat stone slabs cracked beneath his thundering charge. The sheer mass of three hundred pounds of iron backed by seven hundred pounds of berserker muscle generated enough moving driving force to shatter an iron city gate!
Fifty paces.
Thirty paces.
Ten paces!
Zhao Gang grinned savagely behind his shield. He waited for the wet, satisfying crunch of breaking bones.
Ling’er sighed softly.
She extended her slender arm. She pointed the tiny tip of the brass posture pin directly at the center of the cold-iron shield.
PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
A sound like the tearing of the sky heavens blew up across the arena!
From the tip of the brass pin erupted a golden needle of light.
It wasn’t lightning. It wasn’t fire.
It was a stream of pure, overload steam, high-pressure to bone-crushing pressure and forced through a 0.tiny brass orifice at Mach 4.2!
In heavy-duty metal fabrication, nothing on earth cuts hardened steel faster than a high-pressure waterjet.
ZRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
The needle of golden steam touched the two-inch cold-iron tower shield.
There was no explosion. There was no clash of weapons.
There was only a high-pitched, terrifying hum, like a diamond saw biting into warm butter.
The two-inch cold-iron plate—enchanted with seven layers of defensive earth runes—parted like wet parchment. The steam jet sliced vertically through the three-hundred-pound shield, through the iron wrist guard on Zhao Gang’s forearm, and straight between his eyes!
Zhao Gang didn’t even feel the impact. He only felt a sudden, blistering gust of hot pine-scented vapor wash across his forehead.
The golden needle didn’t stop.
Traveling at four times the speed of sound, the faster-than-sound jet punched clean through the rear granite arena wall sixty feet behind Zhao Gang.
CRACK-SHHHHHHHHH!
A twenty-foot upright crevice, glowing cherry-red with molten rock along its glass-smooth edges, opened in the solid mountain cliff!
The steam jet vanished as Ling’er snapped her wrist, sealing her internal valve.
Zhao Gang’s charge ground to an abrupt, awkward halt three feet in front of Ling’er.
He stood there, panting heavily, his eyes wide and blank with sheer confusion.
“What... What was that?” Zhao Gang muttered, looking down at his shield. “Did you miss?”
CLANK.
The left half of the three-hundred-pound cold-iron tower shield slid downward along a mirror-smooth slanted cut, crashing onto the flat stone slabs.
A second later, the right half of the shield fell, exposing Zhao Gang’s trembling chest.
And then, a cold draft hit Zhao Gang’s scalp.
He reached up with a shaking hand and touched the top of his head.
His hair was gone.
The topknot, the braided warrior ribbons, and three inches of his thick black hair had been cleanly, surgically shaved off right down to the gleaming scalp, without drawing a single tiny drop of blood!
Zhao Gang slowly turned his head to look behind him.
Sixty feet away, in the mountain’s sacred “Founding Ancestor Monolith” that had stood untouched for three hundred years, a smoking, twenty-foot-deep upright clean cut was glowing with red-hot lava, steam hissing into the cold winter air.
Zhao Gang’s knees turned to liquid jelly.
His spiked flail slipped from his limp fingers, clattering uselessly against the stone.
A warm, wet stain rapidly spread across the crotch of his leather trousers. It steamed in the freezing morning breeze.
“S-Steam...” Zhao Gang whimpered, his teeth chattering so wildly he nearly bit his own tongue off. “S-She sliced a mountain with boiling water...”
THUD.
The seven-foot Iron-Skin Berserker rolled his eyes back into his skull and collapsed flat on his face, unconscious from pure, pure psychological terror.
The arena was as silent as a graveyard.
Ten thousand people sat with their eyes glued to the smoking, laser-straight crevice in the old family monolith.
In the VIP box, the Head Elder of Class 2 choked on his tongue, his face turning a sickening shade of indigo.
“A... A steam cutter?!” an old swordsmith in the artisan guild box screamed. It ripped his own beard out in hysterics. “That wasn’t a sword technique! That was a high-pressure divine razor knife! She carved through cold-iron and three miles of granite in the blink of an eye without disturbing a single hair on his head! That level of aimed pressure control... Only a Saint-Tier Array Master could achieve such micro-control!”
Down on the western bench, Frank squinted across the arena at the smoking fissure in the rear monolith.
He pulled his wooden ruler out, held it up against his eye to measure the angle of the cut. Then he let out a mild, dissatisfied grunt.
“Seven thousand eight hundred and fifty PSI,” Frank noted, shaking his head. “Told her to keep it under eight thousand. She cut it close. If the sky humidity had been two percent higher, the steam water drops would have chipped the finish on the bleachers.”
Ling’er walked back to the bench, sliding her brass posture pin back into its rawhide tool loop. She dipped her head respectfully.
“Student apologizes for the near-miss, Teacher. The backing-up pressure in my backup valve surged slightly upon first starting.”
“Keep your discharge port clear of scale, Ling’er,” Frank said. He handed her a clean cotton wipe. “Carbon buildup on the brass orifice causes jet divergence. Wipe the tip.”
“Yes, Teacher!” Ling’er took the cloth with glowing eyes, carefully cleaning her pin like a sacred relic.
In the center of the ring, the Chief Judge was shaking so hard his silver robes fluttered like sails. He banged the iron chime with the mallet, his voice cracking:
GONGGGGGGGGGGG!
“R-Round Two... Winner: Class Four-Hundred-and-Four! Advancing to the Semi-Finals!”
The arena blew up into sheer pandemonium!
“Two rounds! Two single-strike demolitions!”
“Class 404 is unbeatable!”
“Where did this teacher come from?!”
In the highest VIP box, Shen Lang’s face was pale as death. He gripped the handle of his Grade-2 treasure sword, “Frostbite,” his knuckles trembling with cold dread.
“Brother Lang...” a Class 1 peer whispered nervously. “In the semi-finals... You’re drawn against Shen Shitou.”
Shen Lang gritted his teeth, his eyes flashing with desperate, poisonous madness.
“So what if their tools are strange?!” Shen Lang hissed, unsheathing his glowing blue blade. “My sword was forged by a Three-Star Master! Shitou’s spirit veins were destroyed five months ago! Even if he holds a heavy hammer, he can’t withstand the Ninefold Glacial Sword Wave!”