The air in the underground testing vault cooled from religious hysteria into taut, hungry malice.
Grand Elder Yan stood on the edge of the stone dais, his grey eyebrows furrowed in total refusal.
“The sacred rules of the Master Teacher Pavilion are etched in the blood and marrow of the founding ancestors,” Yan’s voice echoed across the vault, each word ringing with the heavy deep ring of a bronze bell. “A true master doesn’t hide behind inanimate clockwork tricks. The ultimate proof of teaching lies in the flesh, bone, and combat instincts of his students!”
Beside him, Grand Instructor Song clutched his shredded satin robes, sneering with newfound venom.
“Exactly!” Song cried out, his voice shrill with vindictive fury. “Anyone can tighten a bolt or grease an axle! Let his so-called students step into the dueling ring! Let’s see if his ditch-diggers and blacksmiths can survive a single exchange against the royal prodigies of Tianxuan Capital!”
In the high spectator gallery, the high-born examinees broke into excited murmurs.
“Grand Elder Yan is right!” a noble youth whispered, fanning himself with painted silk. “A teacher’s true rank depends on pupil performance! Those country laborers from Hongwu Academy won’t last ten breaths against an elite royal student!”
“Look at them down there,” another chuckled with cruel satisfaction. “Linen aprons, heavy iron implements, and dirt under their fingernails. They belong in an agricultural supply store, not a martial dueling ring!”
On the upper gallery balcony, a young fighter in shimmering azure silk stepped forward to the stone railing.
He was tall and lithe, with sharp, arrogant cheekbones and eyes that flickered like hunting hawks.
Slung across his waist were twin matching daggers forged from Thousand-Year Wind-Ripping Steel. It hummed with faint, razor-sharp gale currents that rustled his silk sashes.
On his left lapel gleamed the golden falcon crest of the Capital Academy’s elite students.
Zhao Feng.
Eighteen years old, Qi Sea Peak Layer 9, and the undisputed top junior swordsman of the Royal Capital.
“Grand Elder Yan,” Zhao Feng spoke, bowing with crisp, high-born elegance. “This student is willing to enter the ring. I shall personally test the foundational training of these country laborers and expose their charlatan master before all under Heaven.”
The examinees cheered enthusiastically.
“Zhao Feng! The Gale-Dagger Prodigy!”
“He mastered the Gliding Falcon Plum-Blossom Footwork at age sixteen! His movement is like wind slipping through autumn reeds—intangible and lethal!”
“Those country bumpkins are doomed. Zhao Feng will slice their linen aprons into confetti before they can even raise their shovels!”
Down in Ring Four, Frank didn’t even turn his head toward the balcony.
He was busy packing his crescent wrench back into its leather tool loop. That made sure the jaw shift screw was properly seated.
“Another combat proof cutscene,” Frank muttered. He shook his head with the weary patience of an overworked site work boss. “They really love padding out the runtime on these sign-off quests. Can’t we just skip to the wholesale tax exemption form?”
Frank walked over to the edge of the ring. There, his three students were waiting by the stone barrier.
Shen Shitou right away straightened up, his knuckles white around his demolition sledgehammer. “Master! Allow this student to shatter that falcon boy’s ribs into powder!”
Princess Ling’er’s palms warmed with faint, high-pressure steam. “Master, my overload steam cutter can trim his topknot and his daggers at the same time.”
Frank looked at the two of them, then looked past them to Niu Mang.
Niu Mang was sitting on an overturned nail keg. He held half of a cold steamed sweet potato in his left hand, happily chewing with rhythmic bovine contentment.
His hard dark metal digging spade was propped between his knees, its sharp spade edge resting against the granite floor.
Frank tapped his carpenter’s pencil against his chin.
“Shitou has too much moving follow-through. He’ll break the floor tiles,” Frank reasoned calmly. “Ling’er’s steam will strip the paint off the ceiling. Mang, put your food down.”
Niu Mang swallowed his mouthful, wiped his mouth with his forearm. Then he looked up with wide, innocent brown eyes. “Master? You want me to dig something?”
“Take your ditch-digging spade,” Frank said, pointing at the hard dark metal tool. “Step into the ring. Standard site grading protocol.”
Niu Mang’s face lit up with pure joy. He carefully wrapped the leftover half of his sweet potato in a clean greaseproof leaf, tucked it securely into his apron pocket. Then he lifted his heavy spade.
“Digging the royal ring!” Niu Mang grinned. “Submitting to the Master’s foundational earthworks!”
Niu Mang vaulted over the copper boundary support post, landing in the center of Ring Four with a heavy, flat-footed THUD.
The granite floor shivered under his huge, unbending mass.
From the high balcony, Zhao Feng looked down at Niu Mang. His lips curled into an expression of pure disgust.
“A farm boy in a dirt-stained canvas apron?” Zhao Feng scoffed, resting his slender palms on the pommels of his twin wind daggers. “Holding a gardening spade? You dare send a manure shoveler to face the Gale-Dagger of the Capital?!”
Zhao Feng leaped from the sixty-foot gallery balcony.
SWOOSH.
He didn’t plummet like a stone. He circulated the high-tier Gliding Falcon Plum-Blossom Footwork, his body floating downward with the eerie, weightless grace of a falling autumn leaf.
Cerulean wind eddies coiled around his boots. That let him glide across fifty feet of empty air before landing soundlessly on the granite flat stone slabs inside Ring Four.
The gallery erupted into ear-splitting cheers.
“Amazing! That’s true royal martial refinement!”
“Look at that stance! Weightless as a crane, sharp as a gale!”
Grand Elder Yan nodded in satisfaction. “Zhao Feng, don’t kill the boy. A broken limb and a shattered dantian will suffice to prove the lesson.”
“This student obeys,” Zhao Feng replied with a cold sneer.
In the ring, Frank stood five paces behind Niu Mang.
Frank looked at Zhao Feng’s footwear—soft stitched silk slippers with smooth leather soles—and sighed.
“No steel-toe protection. No tread pattern. Zero slip pushback on polished granite,” Frank noted dryly. “The kid is practically begging for a total traction failure.”
Frank tapped his temple with his yellow pencil. His HUD flared with pale amber shape.
Frank looked at the amber projection, then at Zhao Feng’s fluttering silk boots. Then he let out a soft, amused snort.
“Look at that gait,” Frank muttered under his breath. “All toe-spring, zero heel support. He’s landing on his lateral metatarsals without stabilizing his ankle tendons. One uneven surface joint. The kid’s driving force will do all the demolition work for us.”
Frank leaned forward, speaking into Niu Mang’s ear in a low, deadpan whisper.
“Mang. Pay attention.”
Niu Mang nodded vigorously. His massive grip tightened around the ash-wood shaft of his hard dark metal spade. “Listening, Master!”
“See the third granite tile along the inner radius? The one with the small chipped corner?” Frank asked, pointing his yellow pencil at the stone floor.
“I see it, Master! Four paces north-northeast!”
“He’s going to execute a high-speed forward dash on an outward plum-blossom vector,” Frank explained calmly. “He thinks he’s floating on wind, but his balance point is pitched forward at forty degrees. He has to plant his left foot to initiate his dagger thrust.”
Frank tapped the shoulder of Niu Mang’s spade with his pencil.
“When his shadow crosses the boundary of the second tile, don’t swing at his daggers. Don’t look at his face. Just drive your spade two inches left of your own lead boot, catch the edge of the third tile, and lever it up.”
Niu Mang blinked. “Just... Lift the tile, Master?”
“Lift the tile one and three-quarter inches,” Frank confirmed. “Standard frost-heave test model. Let civil mechanics handle the rest.”
Niu Mang grinned, his large teeth gleaming. “Understood, Master! Simulating the winter frost heave!”
Across the ring, Zhao Feng drew his twin Thousand-Year Wind-Ripping Daggers with a lethal hiss of hardened steel.
SHINNNG!
Cerulean wind blades swirled around the eight-inch daggers, slicing the air with shrill, whistling shrieks.
The spiritual pressure streaming from Zhao Feng’s Sea of Qi swelled. It sent gusts of sharp wind whipping across the cavernous testing vault.
The air turned cold as the Gale-Dagger intent sharpened into needles of high-pressure wind.
“Country insect,” Zhao Feng sneered, dropping into a hungry, forward-leaning combat stance. “You have three breaths to drop your shovel and kowtow. Otherwise, my daggers will sever your hamstrings before you can blink!”
Niu Mang didn’t answer.
He didn’t draw a blade.
He simply rested the flat edge of his hard dark metal spade against the seam between two granite floor tiles, his stance relaxed. His thoughts drifted back to the delicious roasted sweet potato waiting in his apron pocket.
“Arrogant death-seeker!” Zhao Feng roared.
BOOM!
The granite beneath Zhao Feng’s boots shattered as he blew up his Qi Sea!
He blurred into motion.
The Gliding Falcon Plum-Blossom Footwork activated at maximum output!
Zhao Feng’s body dissolved into an uneven cascade of azure afterimages, darting across the ring in jagged bursts of speed.
The speed was breathtaking—nearly forty miles per hour across twenty paces of stone!
“Die!” Zhao Feng’s voice echoed from six directions at once as his true body came together directly toward Niu Mang’s throat. His twin wind daggers swept forward in a cross-shaped guillotine arc!
The exam guards on the dais held their breath in rapt tension.
Grand Instructor Song leaned over the railing with a sadistic, expectant grin.
Niu Mang didn’t look up.
He watched the grey shadow stretch across the stone floor.
The shadow crossed the second tile.
Niu Mang dropped his balance point, adjusted the angle of his spade to exactly forty-five degrees. Then he drove the hardened hard dark metal blade into the granite seam with a heavy, flat-footed stomp of his right boot!
THUD!