Shen Lang stood in the center of the arena. His knees knocked together like dry bamboo.
Around him, shimmering blue dust and broken fragments of the old family sword Frostbite glittered on the flat stone slabs. The ten thousand spectators in the stands watched in breathless, stunned silence, their eyes fixed on the empty shark-skin handle in his trembling hand.
“A-Ancestral sword...” Shen Lang whimpered, his face pale and twisted with hysteria. “I’m the chosen heir of the Shen Clan... I’m the pride of our four-hundred-year lineage! I can’t lose to a broken dog! I CANNOT!”
A gleam of desperate, poisonous madness flared in Shen Lang’s bloodshot eyes.
His left hand dropped into his wide silk sleeve. His fingers wrapped around a hidden black iron metal tube. The Seven-Poison Shadow Dart, a forbidden assassin’s gearwork loaded with corpse-dissolving venom, capable of piercing Tier-2 armor at point-blank range!
Shen Lang flicked his wrist with a sudden, vicious jerk.
TWANG!
A silent black shadow flashed from his sleeve, aimed straight for Shitou’s unprotected throat!
High above, several observant elders in the VIP stands gasped in outrage: “A hidden poisoned gearwork! That’s a capital rule-break of tournament rules!”
Down on the western team bench, Frank didn’t even look up from his teacup. He blew on the roasted barley steam, took a slow sip, and murmured:
“Tap the pivot point, Shitou. Point-zero-four inches from the toe.”
Shitou didn’t dodge the poisoned dart.
In fact, he didn’t even acknowledge the lethal needle flying at his neck.
Instead, Shitou tightened his two calloused hands around the polished hickory handle of the twenty-pound forged iron sledgehammer. His Tier 2 Earth-Vein Qi rolled down his shoulders like an underground mudslide. He locked his pelvic bone into the bedrock of Mount Hongwu.
He didn’t swing the hammer at Shen Lang’s skull.
He didn’t swing the hammer at the poisoned dart.
With a smooth, economical arc that traveled no more than eighteen inches, Shitou brought the flat steel head of the sledgehammer down. He tapped the granite flat stone slab exactly one inch in front of Shen Lang’s right boot.
TAP.
It looked like a gentle, harmless touch—no louder than a carpenter driving a finishing nail into soft pine.
Then, physics answered.
The nearby sound blast wave traveled through the granite slab, tightly packed against the underlying bedrock, and rebounded upward at a vicious eighty-five-degree lateral angle!
The black poisoned dart was instantly caught by the upward sound pressure wave, snapping in two and clattering harmlessly to the dust.
And then, the moving rebound struck Shen Lang’s soles.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
Shen Lang didn’t fly upward.
The level vector grabbed him by the boots, launching him horizontally across the arena floor at blinding speed!
Skim! Skim! Skim!
Like a flat pebble skipped by a giant across the surface of a frozen lake, Shen Lang’s body skipped three times across the arena flat stone slabs. That left long white skid marks of crushed granite behind him!
“GYAAAAAAAH!”
Shen Lang screamed as the third skip launched him forty feet into the air, hurtling directly toward the raised VIP stands!
In VIP Viewing Box #1 sat Vice-Principal Lu and the senior dignitaries of Class 1, sipping iced wine behind ornate carved dark wood screens.
CRASHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
The dark wood screen exploded into toothpicks.
The iced wine bowl shattered into a million crystal droplets.
Shen Lang crashed headfirst through the velvet curtains, plowed across the banquet table. Then he slammed into the stone rear wall of the VIP box, wedged upside down between two broken chairs with his boots dangling through the wreckage!
Silence.
The entire ten-thousand-man colosseum was numbed.
Not a single drum beat. Not a single banner rustled in the wind.
Down in the arena ring, Shitou rested the twenty-pound sledgehammer back across his broad shoulder. He reached up, tapped the brim of his yellow gourd hard hat. Then he inspected the stone floor where he had struck.
There was only a faint, circular hairline mark on the granite. Zero cracks. Zero broken flat stone slabs.
“Clean energy signal,” Shitou whispered to himself, his voice thick with respect. “Teacher’s order is total. A hammer isn’t for breaking stone. It’s for directing force.”
High in the central VIP box, Patriarch Shen stood frozen, his old body trembling wildly.
Tears of painful regret spilled down the deep wrinkles of his weathered cheeks. His breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps as he looked down at the towering, rock-steady youth standing in the ring. Behind him, the six Shen Clan elders who had voted to cast Shitou into the snow hung their heads in utter shame. Their faces were pale as ghosts.
“The Star-Forged God Physique...” Patriarch Shen cried openly, his voice carrying across the silent tiers. “He caught Frostbite with five fingers... He redirected the mountain’s ground-shaking pulse with a tap... He’s the greatest heaven-chosen genius our Shen Clan has produced in four hundred years!”
Unable to contain his desperation, Patriarch Shen leaped over the dark wood stone railing!
His gray robes billowed as he landed heavily on the arena floor, his knees almost giving way. The ancient patriarch scrambled across the granite dust toward Shitou. His hands reached out, his voice cracking with pleading desperation:
“Shitou! My grandson! My beloved grandson!”
The crowd gasped. The supreme patriarch of a major martial family was running across the dirt like a beggar!
“Shitou, look at your grandfather!” Patriarch Shen pleaded, stopping five paces away, his eyes filled with tears. “The clan was blinded by wicked advisors! Shen Lang is a cowardly dog who disgraced our name with poisoned darts! Return to the clan, Shitou! I’ll right away strip Shen Lang of his heir status and name you the Sole Hereditary Successor! All ninety-nine old family spirit caves, our family treasury, our direct bloodline elders—everything belongs to you! Return home, my boy!”
Ten thousand spectators held their breath.
The Sole Hereditary Successor of the Shen Clan!
That was a position of supreme wealth and power, granting command over thousands of fighters and vast territories across the principality. Any young man would drop to his knees and cry with joy at such an offer.
Shitou stood motionless.
His broad face remained calm, his golden-amber eyes looking at the weeping old man before him with neither hatred nor warmth.
He was silent for three long seconds.
Then, Shitou slowly turned his back on Patriarch Shen.
He turned toward the western team bench. There, Frank was still calmly checking his pocket watch, chewing on a dried apricot.
Shitou placed his right fist over his heart, bent his waist at an exact ninety-degree angle, and bowed deeply to Frank.
Then, Shitou turned back to Patriarch Shen, his deep, ringing voice echoing through every corner of the Grand Colosseum:
“My surname was Shen. But my lineage is Classroom 404.”
Shitou’s voice was as steady and unbending as the bedrock beneath his boots.
“Five months ago, when my spirit veins turned to melted rock waste, the Shen Clan threw me into the frozen mud to rot. You didn’t look at me. You didn’t give me a crust of bread. You gave my courtyard to the coward who just tried to poison me in broad daylight.”
Patriarch Shen flinched as though slapped across the face, his lips turning white.
“It was Teacher Lu who walked into the mud,” Shitou continued, his eyes blazing with eternal devotion. “It was Teacher Lu who gave me a sledgehammer and showed me how to break my own mortal chains. He taught me how to stand straight, how to respect the grain of matter, and how to build a life with my own hands.”
Shitou patted the yellow gourd helmet on his head, a proud, triumphant smile spreading across his rugged face.
“I have no interest in your ninety-nine spirit caves or your family treasury. Today, I’m only an apprentice ironworker under Teacher Lu! The Shen Clan has no claim over me!”
BOOM!
Those words struck Patriarch Shen like a physical sledgehammer!
The old patriarch stumbled backward, his face turning gray as lead. He clutched his chest, coughing a mouthful of dark blood onto the stones, his soul fully hollowed out by the painful realization of what his clan had discarded forever. Two clan elders rushed down from the stands to support the weeping patriarch. They dragged him away in complete, public disgrace.
In the stands, the spectators erupted into thunderous, earth-shaking roars!
“Well spoken!”
“Classroom 404! What rock-steady backbone!”
“To reject an entire clan’s treasury for a carpenter’s apprenticeship! That’s a true man!”
In the student sections, dozens of young fighters began tearing up their Class 1 and Class 2 pennants, wildly searching for dried gourds and yellow ribbons to strap onto their heads in solidarity with the legendary “Hard Hat Brigade”!
The Chief Judge wiped cold sweat from his neck, took a deep breath. Then it struck the iron chime with all his leftover strength:
GONGGGGGGGGGGG!
“Semi-Final Match... Winner: Class Four-Hundred-and-Four!”
“Advancing to the GRAND FINAL CHAMPIONSHIP: Class Four-Hundred-and-Four versus Class One!”
Down on the western bench, Frank made another neat checkmark on his clipboard, glanced up at Shitou. The boy walked back. Then he inspected the sledgehammer.
“Check the steel wedge in that hickory handle, Shitou,” Frank said mildly. He tapped the head with his pencil. “Rebound shock from granite can loosen the head if the grain was cut off-center. Good. The wedge is tight. Drink your tea. We have the final check in ten minutes.”
Shitou took the tea with two hands, his eyes shining. “Student obeys!”
Across the arena, in the wreckage of VIP Box #1, Lu Yan kicked away a broken dark wood chair leg. His eyes were burning with psychotic, murderous madness as he glared down at the western bench.
“Class 404...” Lu Yan hissed, his fingernails digging into his palms until blood dripped onto his white dragon-scale boots. “You ruined my family. You destroyed our face in front of the entire principality. In the Grand Final... I’ll make sure none of you leave this arena alive!”