The final bell of the Grand Freshmen Tournament echoed through the heavens.
CLANGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!
Ten thousand spectators in the Colosseum rose to their feet in an ear-splitting frenzy.
In three hundred years of Hongwu Academy history, never had a wildcard class from the discarded outer ridges carved their way into the Grand Championship match. Yet here stood Class 404. Three students in spotless carpenter aprons and yellow gourd hard hats, with zero injuries, zero broken bones, and zero wasted sweat.
The Chief Judge’s voice trembled with solemn, historic gravity:
“The Grand Freshmen Championship Final! Class One versus Class Four-Hundred-and-Four!”
From the eastern gate stepped Lu Yan, the captain of Class 1.
The moment he entered the ring, a collective shudder of gut-deep revulsion ran through the spectators in the lower bleachers.
Something was horrifyingly, monstrously wrong with him.
Lu Yan’s silk robes were soaked in foul, greasy black sweat. His skin was mottled with pulsing crimson veins that bulged like angry earthworms across his neck, temples, and cheekbones. His eyes were entirely blood-red, devoid of mortal reason, leaking wisps of acrid, metal-smelling crimson smoke that stung the eyes of the front-row elders.
In his right hand, he dragged a jagged greatsword forged from blood-iron. He scraped sparks against the flat stone slabs with a painful screech.
“Look at his aura!” an elder in the VIP stands stood up, his face filled with shock. “Tier Two Layer Three! His spiritual energy is boiling like hot fiery pitch!”
“That’s not natural training,” Dean Shang hissed from the central judging pavilion, his knuckles whitening on his carved armrest. “That foul stench... The Blood-Demon Berserk Pill! A forbidden demonic concoction from the northern wastes! It burns three decades of lifespan to triple the host’s combat lethality in a temporary slaughter frenzy!”
Down in the wreckage of VIP Box #1, Vice-Principal Lu sat with clenched fists, his eyes glinting with rabid, desperate madness.
‘Die!’ the corrupt vice-principal screamed in his heart. ‘Kill them all, Yan’er! Tear those three lowborn dogs into shredded meat! Long as Class 1 takes the championship trophy. Then, the royal subsidies are ours and the Dean can’t touch us!’
In the center of the ring, Lu Yan threw his head back. That let out a beastly, subhuman roar that shook the arena castle walls:
“ROOOOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR!”
A blast wave of toxic crimson foul fog exploded from his chest, churning across the arena flat stone slabs. The demonic energy was so skin-burning that the surface of the granite began to sizzle and pit. That turned black wherever the mist drifted!
“KILL!” Lu Yan snarled, his voice a distorted chorus of screeching demons. “TEAR THEM TO PIECES! DRINK THEIR BLOOD!”
On the western team bench, Frank stood up.
He didn’t draw a sword. He didn’t order his students to flee from the demonic beast.
Instead, Frank raised his pine clipboard, tapped his pencil against the brass clip. Then he let his DAO-QA screen scan the foaming berserker.
Frank lowered the clipboard, looking down the line at Shitou, Ling’er, and Niu Mang.
All three students were standing in a rigid row, their yellow gourd hard hats gleaming under the sun, their eyes calm, steady, and resolute as deep mountain ponds.
“Alright, crew,” Frank said, his voice flat, rhythmic, and clear as a factory shift whistle. “Standard factory assembly-line protocol. We have an unbonded, overheated pressure vessel leaking toxic volatile chemicals into the workspace. It’s an outside code rule-break.”
Frank looked at Shitou. “Step one: Buffer.”
Frank looked at Ling’er. “Step two: Vent.”
Frank looked at Niu Mang. “Step three: Ground.”
“Three seconds total cycle time,” Frank commanded, checking his pocket watch. “And remember safety protocol: don’t breathe the chemical vapors or the crushed rock dust. Quartz dust specks cause permanent lung fibrosis. Put on your hemp dust masks. Move out.”
“Students obey the standard running procedure!” the three shouted in perfect all at once!
They pulled square patches of folded hemp cloth from their apron pockets, tying the twin strings swiftly across their noses and mouths like heavy-duty dust masks.
Then, they strode into the arena side by side.
Ten thousand spectators held their breath in utter disbelief.
“They’re taking the field together?!”
“Three against one berserker!”
“Look at their movements... They aren’t forming a three-sided sword array! They’re moving like timed together factory gears!”
Lu Yan saw the three approach, and his demonic madness blew up!
“DIE, INSECTS!”
BOOM!
The granite beneath Lu Yan’s boots shattered into dust as he lunged forward, moving at three times the speed of sound!
His blood-iron greatsword slashed down from above. It was wrapped around in a forty-foot crescent of screaming crimson gore! The sheer air pressure of the strike pushed down on the arena floor like an anvil, threatening to flatten everything within twenty paces!
“STEP ONE: BUFFER!” Shitou roared!
Shitou stepped forward with his left foot, dropping his balance point into the classic horse stance.
He didn’t swing his sledgehammer. Instead, he gripped the hickory handle with both hands. He held the twenty-pound forged iron hammer head horizontally across his chest like a load-bearing bumper!
His Tier 2 Earth-Vein Qi erupted, turning his skin into polished star-iron!
CLANGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!
The forty-foot blood-red sword wave crashed directly into the face of Shitou’s sledgehammer!
An ear-splitting blast wave rippled across the Colosseum, rattling the teeth of spectators in the highest tiers! But Shitou’s boots didn’t budge by a single tiny fraction of an inch. The huge moving impact was channeled straight through his silver-steel-hardened spirit veins and into the arena bedrock via the copper-bonded earth loop!
Shitou absorbed the entire moving charge with zero strain, acting as an unbending blast shield!
“STEP TWO: VENT!” Ling’er’s crisp voice rang out!
The blood sword struck Shitou’s hammer. Then, the toxic crimson foul fog billowed outward, attempting to wrap them in flesh-melting acid.
Ling’er darted forward like a silver swallow.
She pulled her two cold-chisels from her tool loops, crossed them at an exact ninety-degree angle. Then she channeled her Tier 2 Frost-Flame Qi in reverse!
Instead of projecting high-pressure steam, she created a high-speed heat empty pocket!
WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
A nearby ice-cold vortex formed between her chisels. It dropped the air heat to minus eighty degrees in a heartbeat!
The boiling crimson toxic gas struck the freezing field and underwent instant phase water drops!
Hiss-crack-pop!
The acid-burning acid gas didn’t melt their skin. It instantly condensed into harmless, frozen crimson crystals that clattered onto the flat stone slabs like red sugar candy, swept away by a blast of clean white steam!
The outside toxicity was reduced to zero percent in less than half a second!
“STEP THREE: GROUND!” Niu Mang roared from behind!
With the blast buffered and the toxic vapors vented, Lu Yan’s chest was left fully exposed.
The demonic pill had overloaded his internal spirit veins. Because of that, Lu Yan’s solar nerve web was pulsing with thousands of volts of wild, ungrounded spiritual back-EMF—a massive floating voltage looking for an exit!
Niu Mang surged forward with the unstoppable driving force of a runaway steamroller.
He dropped his hips, slid his square-nosed trench spade flat along the flat stone slabs. Then he drove the curved heel of the iron blade straight upward into Lu Yan’s ungrounded solar nerve web!
THWACK!
The spade head seated itself perfectly against the floating spirit vein hub.
Niu Mang locked his arms, tightened his belly muscles. Then he twisted the spade ninety degrees while slamming his right boot onto the arena floor!
[Heavy Tamper Drive]!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
It wasn’t a slash. It wasn’t a stab.
It was eight thousand foot-pounds of upright clockwork pile-driving force!
The massive striking force seized Lu Yan by the chest bone and drove him straight down into the arena bedrock!
CRUNCH-CHUNK!
The granite flat stone slabs parted like dry clay.
Lu Yan’s boots, legs, thighs, waist, and chest were hammered straight down through the solid stone floor, sinking like a cedar fence post driven by a diesel pile-driver!
When the dust cleared, the entire arena fell into a state of stunned, numbed silence.
Standing in the center of the ring was Lu Yan.
Except only his head, his neck, and his collarbones were sticking out of the floor.
The rest of his six-foot body was buried neck-deep in the solid mountain granite, his arms pinned to his sides beneath eight inches of linked stone!
His crimson pill-haze was fully knocked out of him. His eyes were wide, white, and crossed, with a single comical bubble of bloody snot expanding and popping on his nose.
Pop.
Lu Yan blinked weakly, his teeth chattering against the stone floor:
“W-Where... Is my body...?”
Silence.
Total, deep, ear-splitting silence gripped all ten thousand spectators.
Niu Mang leaned on the ash handle of his trench spade, looked down at Lu Yan’s exposed head. Then it gave a satisfied nod.
“Seated to grade,” Niu Mang announced, wiping his brow with his canvas sleeve. “Plumb, level, and tamper-compacted. That post isn’t moving for fifty years.”
Shitou lowered his sledgehammer, resting it across his shoulder.
Ling’er tucked her chisels back into her apron loops, untying her hemp dust mask and exhaling a gentle breath of clean mountain air.
Down on the western bench, Frank checked his pocket watch.
“Two point eight seconds,” Frank said, jotting down a mark on his clipboard. “Under the three-second cycle threshold. Good assembly-line exact timing. Students, grab your toolbags.”
The Chief Judge stood in the center of the ring. He stared down at Lu Yan’s head sticking out of the stone like a decorative turnip.
He looked at the three students who were already packing their tools.
He looked at Dean Shang, whose face was glowing with blinding golden radiance.
The Chief Judge swallowed a mouthful of dry air, raised his ivory mallet with two trembling hands. Then it brought it crashing down onto the great iron chime!
DONGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!
“The Grand Freshmen Championship Final!”
“WINNERS AND SUPREME CHAMPIONS: CLASS FOUR-HUNDRED-AND-FOUR!”
A sound like the collapse of heaven and earth erupted from the ten thousand spectators!
“CHAMPIONS!”
“CLASS 404! THE HARD HAT BRIGADE!”
“THEY HAMMERED HIM INTO A FENCE POST!”
The bleachers shook wildly as thousands of students leaped, cheered, and threw their hats into the air! The era of Class 1’s undisputed high-born reign had been demolished—not with ancient royal treasures, but with a sledgehammer, a pair of chisels, and a common trench spade!