The roar of ten thousand spectators was still shaking the mountain when the air turned foul with madness.
Throughout the Colosseum, wild celebration erupted. Bookmakers across the upper terraces were weeping openly. It tore up betting slips as bankrupt aristocrats stared blankly at their empty coin purses. Against fifty-to-one odds, Class 404—the laughingstock of the western ridge—had swept the Grand Freshmen Tournament with clean, single-strike eliminations!
In the shattered ruins of VIP Box #1, Vice-Principal Lu Xun stood trembling among the splintered dark wood tables and spilled wine bowls. His stitched silk robes were torn, his official jade hairpin knocked askew. His thinning gray hair fell wild across his bloodshot eyes.
His entire life’s ambition—thirty years of ruthless academy politics, bribery, family prestige, and the tens of thousands of spirit stones he had mortgaged with underworld loan sharks to bet on Class 1’s victory—had collapsed in two point eight seconds.
His direct nephew, Lu Yan, was buried neck-deep in the arena floor like a fancy turnip.
His punishment puppet, Elder Zhao, was chained in the dark underground dungeon.
And the three crippled outcasts he had discarded into the mud were now standing crowned as the undisputed supreme champions of Hongwu Academy!
“No...” Vice-Principal Lu whispered, his voice trembling before rising into a shrill, frantic screech. “NO! THIS CANNOT BE! A CHARLATAN! A WORTHLESS CARPENTER HAS DESTROYED MY ENTIRE LINEAGE!”
A black, twisted aura of mental deviation erupted from Lu’s chest.
His eyes rolled back, burning with murderous insanity. The underworld loan sharks would skin him alive by midnight if he couldn’t repay his debts. His political allies would abandon him, and Dean Shang would strip him of his tenure. He had nothing left to lose.
From beneath his torn sleeve, Lu drew a six-inch curved stiletto forged from deep-sea dark-iron: the Soul-Drinker Viper.
It was an ancient, forbidden assassin’s ancient object he had purchased thirty years ago from the southern black markets, cooled in the packed bile of a nine-headed nether-serpent. A single tiny scratch from its black serrated edge could dissolve the soul of an Earth-realm fighter into rotting black sludge within three heartbeats!
“LUUUUUU ZHEEEEEEN!” Lu screamed like a wounded demon, leaping onto the edge of the shattered stone railing. “GO TO HELL WITH ME!”
BOOM!
The floor of the VIP box exploded as Vice-Principal Lu hurled himself over the stone railing!
He didn’t target Shitou. He didn’t target Ling’er or Niu Mang.
He fell from the fifty-foot sky like a plunging vulture, his poisoned black stiletto aimed straight between Frank’s shoulder blades!
Seeing the sneak attack from above, Shitou, Ling’er, and Niu Mang reacted instantly, their Tier 2 auras flaring to intercept the assassin.
“Stand down, crew,” Frank said calmly, holding up a single finger without turning around. “The man is falling at a fifty-two-degree descent vector with zero core balance. His wind-cutting drag is terrible. If you jump into his drop zone, you’ll just create a backup crash hazard.”
“DEAN SHANG! STOP HIM!”
“A TEACHER IS COMMITTING REGICIDE IN THE ARENA!”
The grand stands erupted in sheer panic. Elders leaped from their seats, drawing their swords. Dean Shang roared in fury, a golden light gathering in his palms as he tried to cross the two-hundred-foot distance. But Lu was already diving at end-post speed, less than ten paces from Frank’s neck!
“TEACHER LU, EVADE!” the Chief Judge screamed, throwing his hands over his face in horror.
Down on the western team bench, Frank was still holding his pine clipboard.
He was currently writing down the post-match tool upkeep log: Item 1: Sledgehammer hickory handle - tight, no splinters. Item 2: Cold-chisels - slight carbon film, needs acetone wipe. Item 3: Trench spade -
A sudden gust of foul, rotten-egg air ruffled Frank’s paperwork.
Frank sighed, frowning in deep skilled irritation.
“Unlicensed edged weapon in a chosen safety outer edge,” Frank muttered, not even bothering to look up from his ledger. “Zero job-site etiquette.”
Vice-Principal Lu’s face twisted in savage ecstasy as his poisoned blade reached Frank’s spine.
“DIE, DOG!”
TINK.
The poisoned stiletto struck Frank’s faded gray canvas work shirt right between the shoulder blades.
To Vice-Principal Lu’s horror, the blade didn’t pierce flesh.
It didn’t even pierce the canvas fabric.
The instant the blade touched the fabric, the tiny Micro-Star-fire Fusion Spark residing inside Frank’s dantian—an entity running at ten thousand degrees of star-heat, governed by the Heavenly Bug Tracker—sensed a secret foreign particle intruding upon the host’s physical shape.
The system didn’t even need Frank’s conscious command.
A tiny 0.0001% heat flare—thinner than a core lattice—flickered across Frank’s canvas shirt.
FZZZZZZZZZZT!
There was no explosion.
The six-inch deep-sea cold-iron stiletto, an old family forbidden treasure capable of killing Earth-realm fighters, didn’t break. It didn’t bend.
It instantly flash-boiled away into a puff of odorless gray stone smoke!
Vice-Principal Lu’s hand closed on empty air, his driving force slamming his chest directly against Frank’s back.
At that exact second, Frank felt a small bubble of indigestion from the cold roasted barley tea he had chugged ten minutes earlier.
Frank opened his mouth and let out a mild, quiet burp:
Burp.
Along with the burp, a tiny, tiny wisp of excess heat energy—roughly equivalent to a matchstick lit on the surface of the sun—leaked outward through Frank’s heat boundary.
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
A silent, golden ball-shaped blast wave erupted outward for three feet!
The heat backdraft caught Vice-Principal Lu dead center.
FLASH!
In less than a tenth of a heartbeat, the intense, pure blasting heat stripped away every single thread of silk, cotton, and velvet on Vice-Principal Lu’s body!
His golden crane robes, his stitched trousers, his dragon-scale leather boots, his velvet underwear, his silk socks. His gray beard were instantly burned up into pure, spotless white ash!
The bone-shaking heat swelling blew Lu backward through the air. It sent him spinning like a roasted chicken over a spit:
“GYAAAAAAAH! HOT! IT BURNS! IT’S THE SUN!”
THUD.
Vice-Principal Lu slammed flat onto his back on the arena flat stone slabs, ten paces away.
When the smoke cleared, the entire Colosseum of ten thousand spectators froze in sheer, pure, mind-shattering shock.
Hundreds of noblewomen in the stands screamed, covering their faces behind their fans, while students pointed and burst into uncontrollable hysterics.
There, lying in the center of the arena floor, was the mighty Vice-Principal of Hongwu Academy.
He was fully, totally bald.
His eyebrows were gone. His eyelashes were gone. His gray beard was gone.
He was wearing nothing in the world except a thin strip of charred rawhide from his money belt, lying on his back like a plucked turkey, with tiny wisps of gray smoke curling lazily from his nostrils and ears.
Lu’s eyes were wide as saucers. It stared up at the clear blue sky, his mind utterly, permanently shattered by what he had just touched.
‘The sun...’ Lu whined internally, his soul shivering in total cosmic terror. ‘His internal body... Is not a mortal dantian... It’s a Primordial Sun Core... A living, burning sky star... And I tried to stab a star with an iron knife...’
Lu’s fingers twitched twice against the stone. Then he passed out cold, a faint puff of smoke puffing from his mouth.
Frank blew a speck of gray ash off his clipboard, uncapped his brass pencil, and wrote down:
Item 3: Trench spade - blade intact. Job site cleared of dangerous debris.
Frank turned around, looking down at the charred, naked old man lying on the stones. Then he shook his head with mild disgust.
“Public nudity on an active work site,” Frank muttered. “Zero respect for occupational health and safety. Where is the site work boss?”
By this time, Dean Shang and thirty senior Law Elders had landed on the arena floor, their swords drawn.
Two flustered law guards quickly threw a coarse horse blanket over Lu’s naked, blackened body, scooping the unconscious vice-principal up like a bundle of charred firewood.
They looked at the faint puff of gray smoke drifting from Frank’s shoulder.
And then, Dean Shang’s spiritual sense brushed against the lingering heat residue on the stones.
Dean Shang’s soul nearly leaped out of his chest!
Ten thousand degrees...
The leftover heat wasn’t Daoist fire. It wasn’t Phoenix flame.
It was the ancient, terrifying heat of the Ancient Cosmos before the separation of heaven and earth. A heat that could boil oceans and burn up immortal souls into cosmic dust!
And this shabby teacher in canvas overalls had casually burped it out while filling out an upkeep checklist!
Dean Shang swallowed hard, his knees trembling beneath his white robes. He bowed his head so low to Frank that his silver beard brushed the stone floor.
“Grand... Grandmaster Lu,” Dean Shang stammered, his voice filled with terrifying, desperate respect. “This old man was negligent! I allowed this treasonous madman to disturb your divine peace! Please... Please spare our academy from your sky wrath!”
Frank looked at the bowing Dean, then pointed with his brass pencil at the pitted stone where Lu had stood.
“Wrath? What wrath?” Frank asked, blinking behind his glasses. “The guy tripped over my suspenders and scorched his own robes with some bad alchemy fire. But look at this stone, Dean. That’s an eight-inch heat spall on your flat stone slab. You’ll need to patch that with heat-proof high-pressure cement before tomorrow’s junior bouts, or someone’s heel is going to catch in the depression.”
Dean Shang pulled out a jade memory tablet and wildly carved Frank’s words into the stone with trembling fingers: Fire-clay Hydraulic Cement heals the wounds of the Primordial Sun.
“Understood, Grandmaster!” Dean Shang bowed again, tears of deep enlightenment shining in his eyes. “We shall apply the sacred Refractory Cement right away!”
Frank sighed, shaking his head. “Just get him off the flat stone slabs, Dean. He’s ruining the aesthetic of the arena. We still have our re-sign-off audit paperwork to submit.”
Dean Shang rose slowly, his chest heaving with awe. He waved his wide sleeve, his voice booming with total power:
“Law Guards! Drag this treasonous criminal into the underground deep pit! Strip the Lu Clan of all academic titles and confiscate their properties! Today, Hongwu Academy stands cleansed!”