The royal highway connecting the border province to the capital was advertised as a triumph of kingdom building.
In reality, it was a disaster of civil fault.
Every four yards, wheel ruts deepened into jagged trenches. Loose shale pebbles lay scattered across the crown, while stale brown rainwater pooled in muddy hollows.
Frank sat on the bench of a flatbed farm cart, clutching an enamel mug of cold tea.
Behind him, atop crates of seasoned pine planks and carriage bolts, were his three registered students.
Shen Shitou was polishing his steel demolition sledgehammer with an oily rag. Princess Jiang Ling’er monitored a brass valve on her portable kettle, venting tiny wisps of steam. Niu Mang leaned against the tailboard. His hard was dark metal spade tucked under one arm, gnawing on a roasted sweet potato.
“Look at this crown slope,” Frank muttered, shaking his head. “There isn’t one. The center is lower than the shoulders. Who engineered this drainage? An illiterate badger?”
Shen Shitou stopped wiping his hammer, eyes widening in religious contemplation.
“Master speaks of the Inverted Leyline Inversion,” Shitou whispered to Ling’er with solemn respect. “The highway was shaped to trap underground Yin-moisture, testing travelers with mortal tribulations!”
Ling’er nodded thoughtfully. “A true master understands that when the earth’s spirit veins are clogged, the kingdom’s fortune bleeds away.”
Frank sighed, rubbing his temples. Trying to explain civil grading to fighters only made them transcribe his rants onto silk scrolls like sacred scriptures.
Suddenly, the ground trembled.
CLOP-CLOP!
From the southern bend, a convoy tore through the morning mist.
Four horned Dragon-Scaled Stallions surged forward with snorting fury. Behind them rolled a fancy three-tiered carriage crafted from purple sandalwood, decorated with gold leaf and the roaring dragon crest of the Royal Master Teacher Academy.
A formation of eight armored retainers rode alongside, silver axe-spears gleaming.
“Clear the thoroughfare!” a mounted retainer roared, brandishing a horsewhip. “Make way for Grand Instructor Song of the Royal Capital Academy! Scram into the ditch, country dogs!”
The carriage didn’t slow down.
As it rocketed past, its iron-shod wheels struck a deep mud puddle. It erupted a violent spray of sludge toward Frank’s cart.
“Pressure vent,” Ling’er murmured, flicking her wrist.
HISSSS!
A white-hot curtain of steam flared from her palm, vaporizing the sludge into harmless white vapor before a single drop touched Frank’s jacket.
Fifty yards ahead, the royal carriage slowed.
An azure-robed man leaned out the window, a bronze emblem with a silver star gleaming on his lapel. Grand Instructor Song, the celebrated junior tutor of the Royal Academy.
Song looked back at Frank’s cart, his nose wrinkling with distaste.
“What terrible trash cluttering the Emperor’s highway,” Song sneered. “Coarse linen aprons, iron hammers, and rusty shovels. Are those testers or escaped quarry slaves?”
“Master Song,” a retainer laughed, “they bear the signboard of Hongwu Lower Academy! That borderland hasn’t produced an approved teacher in forty years!”
“Hongwu Academy?” Song scoffed, waving a perfumed handkerchief. “A den of crippled failures traveling in a manure cart. Driver, speed up! The stench of poverty is offensive.”
The driver cracked his whip, and the stallions surged forward, leaving behind a cloud of grey dust.
Frank didn’t blink. He pulled out his yellow carpenter’s pencil and tapped his temple as his internal console engaged.
Frank looked at the amber box and took a sip of tea.
“Unbelievable,” Frank said flatly. “Ten silver coins in tolls. They haven’t run a grader down this strip since the last dynasty. Our cart will shatter if we hit another washboard ripple.”
Shen Shitou gripped his hammer handle. “Master, allow this student to shatter their carriage into splinters!”
“Sit down, Shitou,” Frank ordered. “Road rage doesn’t fix a broken axle. We have two hours before the gates close. We’re doing basic road upkeep.”
Frank pointed at the rough track ahead.
“Shitou, see those protruding boulders in the right wheel path? They’re three inches above grade. Take your sledge. Fracture them flush into two-inch aggregate to fill the ruts.”
“Understood!” Shitou barked.
“Mang, take the left shoulder,” Frank continued. “The ditch is silted up. Cut a forty-five-degree edge along the bank. Throw the spoil into the center low spot. We need a two-percent crown slope so water drains.”
“Excavate at forty-five degrees to divert the muddy sky-trial!” Niu Mang roared.
Frank nodded. “Ling’er, moisture control. Give it a light steam mist as Shitou packs it down.”
“Yes, Master!” Ling’er replied.
Frank leaned back against the cart’s backrest. “Work as we roll. Five miles an hour. Let’s make this passable.”
Shen Shitou leaped from the moving cart. His boots struck the dirt, his Star-Forged Iron Body circulating striking force with inhuman rhythm.
Whenever a jagged granite boulder appeared, Shitou observed the chalked grain lines. It raised his twenty-pound sledgehammer, and struck.
CLANG! CRACK!
The granite fractured along cleavage planes, shattering into uniform aggregate with crisp perfection.
Behind him, Niu Mang moved like a high-pressure trenching unit. His hard dark metal spade bit into the roadside with easy driving force.
SHUCK! THWACK! SHUCK! THWACK!
With every scoop, sixty pounds of clay and gravel were lifted and deposited directly into the center wheel ruts. That left the ditch sloped at a clean forty-five-degree slope.
Behind Niu Mang, Princess Ling’er extended her palms.
FSSSSSH.
A gentle mist settled over the soil, dampening the clay to optimum moisture.
Then Shitou brought the flat back of his hammer down like a plate compactor.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
The ground shook with ringing blast waves. Specks rearranged, trapped air collapsed, and loose aggregate interlocked under high-hum compaction.
Behind Frank’s slow-rolling cart, a ten-foot-wide swath of road emerged. Raised in the center, sloping toward clear ditches, packed so smooth the crushed stone reflected the sky like polished slate.
Frank watched the wooden wheels roll silently across the tamped surface without a single creak.
“Not bad,” Frank murmured. “Sub-base thickness is ninety-two percent. Should handle five-ton axle loads.”
Meanwhile, three miles ahead, Grand Instructor Song’s carriage met the laws of physics.
The stallions galloped at forty miles an hour, iron shoes churning clods of earth.
Inside the cabin, Song sipped expensive Cloud-Mist tea. “A teacher’s stature is determined by his environment. Those Hongwu bumpkins think crude tools can compete with capital nobility. They don’t realize the Dao of Teaching needs—”
Before Song finished, the front right wheel plunged into an unflagged, eighteen-inch pothole at Mile Marker 42.
KABOOM!
The impact was total.
The stallions shrieked as slowdown jerked their harnesses. The right front wheel, crafted from unseasoned pearwood and brittle iron, absorbed four tons of dynamic impact in five split seconds.
CRACK-SNAP-SPLINTER!
Spokes shattered like kindling. The iron tire snapped off, spinning through the air before embedding into an oak tree.
The heavy carriage tilted wildly.
CRASH!
Hot tea splashed directly into Grand Instructor Song’s eyes.
“My tea! My robes!” Song shrieked as the carriage rolled onto its side, skidding thirty yards across shale before slamming into a stale mud ditch.
Attendants tumbled out in a heap of silk, brocade, and bruised limbs. Song crawled through a shattered window, his star-badge smeared with brown muck, his topknot disheveled, and his face coated in green duckweed.
“Unfit scum!” Song roared, spitting muddy gravel. “Who dug this pit in the royal road?! Behead the road wardens!”
“Master! Your robes!” his student cried. “The axle is snapped clean through! We can’t move!”
Retainers scrambled around the wreckage in panic. Meanwhile, the stallions kicked blindly at broken carriage poles.
Just as Song was preparing to unleash spiritual qi to burn up the carriage, a smooth, rhythmic rumbling drifted from down the road.
Song froze. The retainers looked up in shock.
Cresting the hill was the wooden cart of Classroom 404.
It was no longer bouncing.
The cart glided across the road with the silent smoothness of a boat sailing across calm water. Behind it stretched an amazing strip of crushed grey stone. Flawlessly leveled, cleanly crowned, with clean drainage ditches flanking both shoulders.
Frank sat on the bench, holding his enamel mug, looking fully bored.
As the cart reached the wreckage, Frank pulled the reins, halting five paces from Song’s ditch.
Frank looked at the shattered wheel, the eighteen-inch pothole, and finally at Song, dripping with yellow swamp water.
Frank sighed with the weary disappointment of a town safety clerk.
“Told you,” Frank said flatly. “Overloaded axle, brittle wood grain, and zero mid-air damping on a loose ground base. You hit that transverse sideways tearing force at forty miles an hour. You’re lucky the hub didn’t take your kneecap with it.”
Song stood frozen in the mud, mouth hanging open.
Shen Shitou rested his sledgehammer on his shoulder, glaring down at the retainers. “You mocked our Master’s cart. Yet our road is true, while your false grandeur lies shattered in the mire of your own ignorance!”
Niu Mang leaned on his spade, spitting a sunflower seed shell. “Master, should I dig them out, or leave them as compost for the radishes?”
“Don’t waste time digging out unlicensed vehicles,” Frank said, flicking the reins. “They didn’t pay for road upkeep. Let the royal road wardens tow it.”
The mule snorted. The wooden cart rolled smoothly past the wreckage, wheels purring across the leveled aggregate without a single shaking.
Song watched in trembling fury as the Hongwu cart glided away, leaving him sitting waist-deep in cold muck.
Ten minutes later, Frank’s cart crested the final northern ridge.
The morning mist cleared, revealing the massive black glass castle walls of the Tianxuan Royal Capital.
Towering over one hundred feet into the sky, the black stone walls were etched with ancient defensive runes pulsing with cerulean light. Above the palaces in the center of the metropolis, a huge spire of white jade and gold-trimmed brass pierced the clouds like a sky spear.
At the very peak of that spire, a radiant golden sun emblem spun slowly against the heavens.
The 1-Star Master Teacher Pavilion of Bounded Cloud Prefecture.
Frank closed his thermos with a sharp click, squinted at the massive spire, and nodded.
“Decent upright clearance,” Frank muttered. “Let’s see if their office desk is as badly managed as their highway.”