The inside of the Heart of Innocence Trial Tower felt like stepping into the cold belly of a dormant beast.
Seven stories tall, the tube-shaped chamber was built from seamless slabs of black spirit-slate, plain by windows or tapestries.
A damp chill hung in the stale air. It carried the faint metal scent of ancient bronze and crushed jade incense.
Suspended in the exact center of the vaulted dome, eighty feet above the floor, hung the ancient relic: the Heart Inquiry Mirror.
It was an eight-foot disc of sky black glass framed in tarnished brass, rotating with painful slowness.
Faint pulses of pale silver light beamed downward from the mirror’s face, lighting up twelve circular prayer mats arranged in a nested ring upon the stone floor.
Elder Mo floated to a raised stone watching dais overlooking the chamber. He was flanked by six senior exam guards with hands tucked inside wide silver sleeves.
Below, the examinees filed into the circle, their silk robes rustling nervously against the chill.
Grand Instructor Song had arrived late, having hastily cleaned the pond muck from his ears and replaced his ruined azure robe with a stiff, high-collared ritual gown of crimson satin.
His face was still mottled with suppressed rage, his eyes glaring venomously at Frank across the circle.
“Listen well, testers,” Elder Mo’s voice rang from the high dais, cold as winter hail. “A teacher’s Dao isn’t built upon flowery rhetoric or borrowed clan prestige. It’s forged in the purity of his heart.”
The exam guards nodded in grave agreement, stroke by stroke fingering their silver prayer beads.
“The Heart Inquiry Mirror reveals all that you hide from Heaven,” Elder Mo continued. “Your secret lusts, your covetousness of royal wealth, your terror of mortality. Those whose souls harbor deceit will have their sea of mind scourged by sky light.”
Elder Mo raised his hand, pointing down at the nested circle of mats.
“Take your seats. The trial duration is five minutes. Endure the mirror’s gaze, or be carried out in disgrace.”
The high-born examinees hurried to their assigned prayer mats, sitting cross-legged with practiced, high-born poise.
Several noble youths pulled out silver vials of spirit-calming dew, wildly rubbing the fragrant oil into their temples while whispering ninety-character mental steadying mantras.
Grand Instructor Song smoothed his crimson robes, assumed the meditative stance of the Five-Element Gathering Dragon. Then he closed his eyes with supreme confidence.
Frank walked over to his assigned mat on the far eastern edge of the formation.
He looked down at the circular cushion. It was stuffed with dried coarse rushes and reeked faintly of old sweat from decades of nervous examinees.
Frank bent down, nudged the mat with the toe of his work boot, and frowned.
“Lumpy straw fill,” Frank muttered, shaking his head. “Uneven squeezing thickness. Sitting on that for five minutes will pinch the sciatic nerve and wreck your lower-back posture.”
With a casual flick of his boot, Frank kicked the sacred prayer mat three feet to the side.
He slid his back down the cool black stone wall of the chamber, sat directly on the bare flat stone slabs, stretched his legs out. Then he crossed his ankles.
He looked around the chamber, tapping the stone wall behind him with his knuckles.
“Single-layer stone stonework without vapor heat padding,” Frank observed to himself. “The moisture in the air in this shaft is over eighty percent. Cold drafts dropping down from the dome will give anyone over forty chronic arthritis.”
He reached into his jacket, pulled out an apple he had taken from Hongwu Academy’s kitchen, wiped it against his denim thigh. Then he took a crisp bite.
CRUNCH.
The sharp sound of breaking apple skin echoed through the silent, solemn trial tower like a small thunderclap.
On the high dais, Elder Mo’s left eyebrow twitched wildly.
The six exam guards froze, staring down at Frank in utter, numbed disbelief.
In eight hundred years of Master Teacher Pavilion history, hundreds of thousands of testers had entered the Heart of Innocence Trial.
Every single one had knelt with trembling respect, burning spirit-cleansing incense and reciting calming mantras to fortify their souls against divine scrutiny.
No one had ever kicked aside the sacred prayer mat.
No one had ever criticized the tower’s humidity levels.
No one had ever eaten a fresh orchard apple.
“Insolent barbarian,” Grand Instructor Song muttered through clenched teeth, keeping his eyes firmly shut. “Enjoy your final meal, Lu Zhen. When the mirror strikes your soul, your mind will be ripped to shreds.”
HUMMMMMMMMM.
The eight-foot black glass mirror suspended from the ceiling sped up its rotation.
A cone of radiant silver light dropped from its shiny surface. It swept across the twelve testers like a sky searchlight.
The first tester touched by the beam was a young noble from the Golden Valley Clan.
The moment the silver light washed over him, the boy’s eyes flew wide open, veins bulging across his forehead.
Above his head, the mirror’s glow projected a misty, shimmering illusion of his innermost soul desires: mountains of gold metal bars, concubines feeding him grapes, and himself kneeling before the King to receive a royal dukedom.
“Mine! It’s all mine!” the noble suddenly screamed, thrashing wildly on his mat. “Give me the royal seal! I’ll execute you all! Hahahaha!”
BUZZ!
A sharp crimson rune flashed within the mirror. A backlash of psychic pressure struck the youth’s chest.
He vomited a mouthful of bile, collapsed onto the stones, and lay twitching, fully unconscious.
“Failed,” Elder Mo announced coldly. “Impure heart. Burned up by earthly greed. Carry him out.”
Two attendants rushed forward. It dragged the limp noble out by his heels like a sack of discarded turnips.
The silver beam moved to Grand Instructor Song.
Song’s stance stiffened. Above his head, the mirror projected an image of the Royal Palace. He was flanked by thousands of kneeling academy students chanting his name in adoration.
Song trembled, sweat pouring down his temples as he fought to suppress his vanity, grinding his teeth until blood seeped from his gums.
After thirty painful seconds, the mirror chimed with a soft brass tone.
[Score: 78 Points — Righteous Scholar Heart (Pass)]
Song slumped forward, gasping for breath like a landed fish. But a smug, triumphant grin spread across his pale lips.
Seventy-eight points was an exceptional score in the capital!
Finally, the rotating beam of silver light swept across the chamber floor, coming to rest squarely on Frank.
Frank chewed his mouthful of apple, swallowed. Then he looked up at the spinning black glass mirror eighty feet above.
To Frank, the light wasn’t a terrifying trial of sky judgment.
It was just an unskippable cutscene with terrible pacing, horrific frame stutter, and an annoying visual bloom filter.
“Five minutes of staring at a spinning brass hub?” Frank muttered, leaning his head back against the stone wall. “What a waste of running hours. I could be framing the outside lintels for the new cement shed back at Ironwood Peak.”
Frank tapped his temple. His internal console flickered into view.
Frank closed his eyes, let his chin rest against his chest. Then he began mentally sorting his lumber stash by moisture content and pulling strength.
Down on the floor, Frank’s breathing dropped to a slow, rhythmic, almost barely noticeable crawl.
Up on the dais, Elder Mo and the exam guards leaned over the stone railing. They watched the black glass mirror intently.
“Watch closely,” Elder Mo whispered to his subordinates. “This youth invoked the Pinnacle Challenge. His ambition must be monstrous. The mirror will likely expose a soul burned up by vanity, hubris, and violent rebellion.”
The exam guards waited with bated breath for the projection to manifest.
They waited for visions of mountain-sized palaces piled with jade, or bloody battlefields where Lu Zhen stood atop piles of defeated grandmasters.
Ten seconds passed.
Twenty seconds passed.
The silver light bathed Frank’s seated form, but no colorful mist arose. No figures appeared. No sounds echoed.
Instead, the shiny surface of the eight-foot black glass mirror began to darken.
Not the ordinary dark of shadow.
It was a total, terrifying, bottomless blackness.
A circular void showed up above Frank’s head. A sphere of pure, unmoving, non-shiny nothingness that seemed to swallow the surrounding light of the entire chamber.
Inside that projected sphere, there was no sound. No movement. No wind. No thought.
There was no greed for gold, for gold had no mass in the void.
There was no lust for power, for power was an illusion of mortal vanity.
There was no terror of death, for the void had existed before time began and would endure long after the stars turned cold.
Elder Mo’s fingers tightened against the marble railing until his knuckles cracked.
His breath caught in his throat. His ancient heart hammered against his ribs like a panicked bird.
“What... What’s that?” a judge whispered, his teeth chattering in sudden, instinctual terror. “Where are his desires? Where are his memories? Why is there nothing?!”
“It can’t be...” Elder Mo stammered, his white beard trembling with religious awe. “In the scriptures of the First Epoch, it’s recorded that only those who have cut all seven mortal emotions and fused their soul with the ancient chaos can manifest the... The Primordial Void Heart!”
“The Primordial Void Heart?!” another judge gasped, clutching his chest. “The legendary heart realm where Heaven and Earth can’t find a single flaw to weigh?!”
Grand Instructor Song sat on his mat, his eyes bulging as he stared at the terrifying black sphere hovering over Frank.
Song’s seventy-eight-point “Righteous Scholar Heart” suddenly felt like a speck of dust sitting next to an infinite deep pit!
“No! It’s a trick!” Song screamed hysterically, clawing at his satin collar. “He’s an unranked peasant! How could he possess the heart of an Ancient Sovereign?! He must be using a demonic soul-hiding magic charm!”
Down against the wall, Frank remained fully motionless, his head tilted sideways, happily asleep while calculating the shear strength of half-inch carriage bolts.
High above, the eight-foot black glass mirror began to rotate faster.
Its internal spirit-hearing formation, designed to calculate mortal desires by measuring fluctuations in emotional hum, met an exact strange flaw it had never faced in eight hundred years.
Zero.
Zero greed. Zero pride. Zero mortal attachment.
An total, exactly infinite void.
SCREEEEEEEEECH—!
From the brass housing of the ancient relic, a sharp, ear-splitting metal whine echoed through the vaulted tower.
Elder Mo’s face drained of color as he looked up at the ceiling.
“The mirror...” Elder Mo cried in horror. “The old family formation can’t measure his soul! Its core gears are overheating!”