The grand spiraling stairs of white jade felt heavier with every step as Grand Elder Yan climbed back to the Master Teacher Pavilion’s main hall.
His hands, which had held the royal seal of pedagogical power for forty years, were trembling like autumn leaves in a gale.
Beside him walked Elder Mo, clutching a heavy, gold-embossed silk scroll with white-knuckled intensity.
Behind them trailed sixty high-born examinees, walking in a dazed, funeral silence.
Not a single noble youth waved their painted silk fan.
Not a single scholar whispered about clan lineages or old family legacies.
Their minds were still reeling from the sight of the capital’s top prodigy skidding thirty yards across the floor on his nose.
Grand Instructor Song stumbled along at the rear of the procession. His shredded crimson robes were held together with a borrowed hemp belt, his eyes glazed and vacant.
In the center of the grand marble lobby, bathed in the afternoon light filtering through the stained-glass dome, stood Frank and his three students.
Frank had put his denim jacket back on.
He was holding a stubby yellow carpenter’s pencil. He leaned against a gold-trimmed pillar, and casually checking the time on a small pocket compass.
Beside him, Shen Shitou had his demolition sledgehammer resting across his broad shoulder.
Princess Ling’er stood with hands neatly folded inside her linen sleeves. She watched the elders with calm amusement.
Niu Mang was finishing the last bite of his sweet potato, happily wiping his sticky fingers on his canvas apron.
Grand Elder Yan stopped behind the grand dark wood ritual desk.
On the desk sat the heavy Golden Grading Stamp of the 1-Star Master Teacher Pavilion. A solid block of purple-gold engraved with the nine-dragon crest of the Great Da-Qi Dynasty.
Yan looked at Frank.
His throat felt dry, his voice raspy.
“Teacher Lu Zhen,” Grand Elder Yan began, his voice hoarse and strained. “In eight hundred years of this Pavilion’s history... No tester has ever accomplished what occurred in the underground vault today.”
The scribes and exam guards gathered around the dais, heads bowed in respectful silence.
“You shattered the eight-hundred-year-old Heart Hearing Mirror by manifesting the impossible to understand Ancient Void Heart,” Yan continued. His voice shook slightly. “You awakened the ancient sword-spirit of a dormant hardwood iron-puppet with... With an iron implement and divine unguent. And your third student subdued the premier prodigy of the capital using only the unmoving weight of the earth.”
Grand Elder Yan picked up the heavy golden stamp. His hand shook so wildly that the purple-gold metal clinked against the vermilion inkpad.
“By the sovereign power vested in me by the Great Da-Qi Master Teacher Pavilion...”
THUD!
The heavy golden stamp came down onto the thick, sheepskin parchment certificate.
A dazzling pillar of golden light erupted from the document!
Lines of sky runes spiraled upward toward the vaulted ceiling. It scattered golden sparks across the marble floor as the Pavilion’s old family array recorded the verdict:
A collective, shuddering gasp rippled through the lobby.
A perfect score.
One hundred out of one hundred points!
In the history of the entire Bounded Cloud Prefecture, only three individuals had ever achieved a perfect score. Each had gone on to become land-wide Patriarchs whose names were worshipped in old family shrines!
Elder Mo stepped forward, presenting a cushioned velvet tray with trembling hands.
Resting on the velvet was a gleaming medallion forged from starlight silver, adorned with a single, brilliant diamond star that spun slowly on its own axis.
Beside it lay a stitched robe of nine clouds, woven from thousand-year sky silk.
“Teacher Lu,” Grand Elder Yan said, bowing his head at a ninety-degree angle—a stance of total, total submission from a senior elder to a peerless master. “The 1-Star Master Teacher Medallion and the Robe of Nine Clouds are yours. May your sky wisdom light up the mortal realm.”
The examinees held their breath, expecting Frank to cry in thanks, to fall to his knees, or to deliver a deep poetic soliloquy on the burden of the Master Teacher Dao.
Frank didn’t look at the silk robes.
He reached out, grabbed the silver star badge, tossed it into his coat pocket like a loose copper washer. Then he pointed his yellow pencil at the parchment certificate.
“Great,” Frank said flatly. “Now where’s the builder tax exemption endorsement form?”
Grand Elder Yan blinked, freezing in mid-bow. “The... The what?”
“The wholesale tax exemption form,” Frank repeated. His voice carried the weary impatience of a man who had waited three hours at the town planning office. “The fine print in your exam bylaws states that approved 1-Star Master Teachers receive a hundred percent exemption on country tariffs for load-bearing raw materials and freight transit.”
Frank tapped the dark wood desk with his knuckle.
“I need that stamped right away. I’m buying forty sacks of Portland cement, five bundles of hard dark metal iron rods, and eighty cedar rafters at the South Market trade guild. If the clerks close before I get there, I’ll have to pay retail markup. My quarterly renovation budget won’t balance.”
Grand Elder Yan’s mouth hung open.
Elder Mo stared at Frank with glazed, blank eyes.
The sixty high-born examinees swayed on their feet, their minds fully failing to process what they had just heard.
He had attained the highest academic honor in the kingdom!
He had achieved a legendary score that would be recorded in the annals of the empire for ten thousand years!
And his sole concern was saving eight silver coins on bags of mortar and cedar timber?!
“Such boundless calm distance...” an elder whispered in awe. “He views the highest honors of Heaven as mere vanity! To him, the supreme Dao is found only in the humble craft of shaping raw stone and timber!”
Grand Elder Yan nodded solemnly, moved by what he saw as Frank’s impossible to understand humility.
“Quickly!” Yan barked at Clerk Han. “Affix the Royal Seal of Commercial Exemption! Grant Teacher Lu unlimited wholesale clearance across all guilds in the Bounded Cloud Prefecture!”
Clerk Han scrambled forward. It slammed the red commercial seal onto Frank’s document four times, bowing until his nose nearly brushed the desk.
Frank picked up the stamped papers, checked the red ink seals with a satisfied nod. Then he folded them neatly into his leather tool pouch.
“Appreciate it,” Frank said, turning toward his students. “Shitou, go hitch the mule. Mang, bring the toolboxes. We’ve got two hours of daylight left to load the cart.”
“Yes, Master!” Shitou roared with glowing pride.
Before Frank could take three steps toward the grand double doors of the Pavilion, the sky outside the high stained-glass windows turned a violent shade of toxic viridian green.
BOOM!
The entire marble floor of the Pavilion jolted upward by three inches!
Dust showered down from the vaulted ceiling. The crystal chandeliers swung wildly on their brass chains, chiming in wild sour note.
From the southern district of the capital, a sound erupted that turned the blood of every listener cold.
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR—!
It wasn’t the roar of an ordinary mortal beast.
It was a bone-shaking blast wave of sound, grating like grinding earth-shaking plates and screeching with metal fury.
Right away following the roar, a piercing, world-ending siren began to wail across the capital.
WOOOOOOOO-WAAAAAAAAA! WOOOOOOOO-WAAAAAAAAA!
The high-pitched wail of the Kingdom’s Scarlet Emergency Formation echoed from every defensive watchtower in the city!
The cerulean defensive array above the capital flickered erratically as backup alarm horns sounded along the castle walls.
The massive dark wood doors of the Pavilion were wildly kicked open from the outside.
A royal beast-tamer guard, his silver-scaled armor torn to shreds, his chest dripping with steaming, acid-burning green draconic blood, collapsed head-first onto the marble lobby floor!
“Grand Elders! Save us!” the guard shrieked, coughing up a mouthful of black blood. “The Cloud-Mist Beast Taming Ridge! The 2-Star Cold-Iron Chains have snapped!”
Grand Elder Yan’s face drained of all color. “What did you say?! The Cold-Iron Chains snapped?!”
“The Viridian Dragon-Hound!” the dying guard cried in sheer, mind-breaking terror, clawing at the marble tiles. “It has gone berserk! Half-Step Rank Three! It shattered the underground holding wards and broke into the Royal Colosseum! It’s slaughtering the royal beast tamers! The entire southern district is drowning in dragon fire!”
BOOM!
Another massive blast wave rippled through the capital bedrock, rattling the teeth in Frank’s skull and cracking the decorative stained glass above the doors.
Through the shattered doors, a five-hundred-foot pillar of blinding emerald draconic fire shot into the clouds above the southern horizon. It burned to ash the sky into a boiling sea of viridian flame!
In the grand lobby, examinees screamed in frantic panic. It scattered toward the rear exits like frightened mice.
Frank stopped three paces from the doorway, looking up at the sky.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his yellow carpenter’s pencil. Then he tapped his temple as the ear-splitting sirens screamed into his ears.
Frank winced, shaking his head with deep, plain annoyance.
“Who engineered this emergency siren system?” Frank muttered, rubbing his ear. “The audio signal is clipping at ninety decibels. Fully untuned sound distortion. Total ear torture.”
Frank tucked his pencil behind his ear, looked toward the burning southern horizon. Then he let out a deep, exhausted sigh.
“And now somebody snapped a heavy-duty cold-iron chain? Unfit metalworking heat treatment. If they ruin the South Market before I get my cement, I’m going to have a few words with their upkeep manager.”