The air inside the Cloud-Mist Colosseum tasted of ozone, charred granite, and hot motor grease.
High above the arena floor, on the fancy Royal Observation Balcony, the heavy golden chariot of Crown Prince Chu Tianxiao came to a halt with a screech of dry, ungreased bronze.
A squad of eighty Golden Dragon Guards lined the balcony low roof wall, their axe-spears angled outward in a gleaming hedgehog formation.
Behind them, court nobles, royal academy tutors, court astrologers, and sycophantic scribes peered over the gold-trimmed stone railing. They gasped in horror at the forty-foot scaled titan pacing across the bloodied arena sand.
Crown Prince Chu Tianxiao stepped to the front of the balcony, his nine-dragon golden robes billowing in the hot updrafts.
In his left hand, he held a massive ten-foot war banner woven from sky silver silk and stitched with ancient crimson dragon runes—the Nine-Heavens Beast-Locking Banner.
In his right hand, he clutched a curved war-horn forged from pure royal gold, decorated with spiraling sonic formations and set with glowing blue deep ring crystals.
The Prince looked down at Hall Master Han and Chief Elder Wu lying broken in the sand, his handsome face twisting with high-born disgust.
“Useless, senile fools!” Chu Tianxiao’s amplified voice boomed across the tiered arena. “The Beast Taming Guild has disgraced the dignity of the Tianxuan Kingdom! You rely on vulgar iron chains, failing to understand that wild beasts can only be tamed through the sovereign bloodline mandate of the Royal House!”
The nobles on the balcony nodded vigorously, clapping their hands in sycophantic praise.
“His Highness is wise beyond the ages!” the Royal Court Astrologer proclaimed, stroking his wispy beard. “The stars have lined up in the house of the Vermilion Bird! The Ancestral Dragon Banner will compel this rebellious beast to bow its neck in submission!”
“See the true majesty of the Imperial Clan!” another tutor cried. “The feral hound will tremble before the Nine-Heavens Dharma!”
Down on the arena floor, forty yards from the growling beast, Frank stood beside the remains of the broken Cold-Iron chains.
He wasn’t looking at the dragon-hound.
He was looking at the wooden mule cart where his students had parked near the lower tunnel archway.
“Shitou,” Frank called out. He pointed his yellow carpenter’s pencil toward the edge of the sand pit. “This area has zero outer edge holding. If that dog starts thrashing its tail, forty pounds of loose aggregate will fly directly into our cart.”
Shen Shitou straightened up, his twenty-pound demolition sledgehammer resting against his collarbone. “Master, how shall we establish the outer edge?!”
Frank pulled six heavy hard dark metal steel iron rods stakes from the back of the cart, tossing them onto the gravel with a metal clatter.
“outer edge fencing protocol,” Frank instructed calmly. “Drive these iron rods stakes three feet into the granite ground base at eight-foot centers. String the yellow warning tape between them. Mark off a thirty-foot clearance envelope around the lumber. I don’t want flying gravel denting our seasoned pine planks.”
“Establishing the Divine Sledgehammer Ward!” Shitou roared with fierce dedication.
Niu Mang jogged over with a bundle of bright yellow marker tape, unrolling it with practiced ease. “Master, should I slope the boundary line for emergency rainwater runoff?”
“Keep it level with the datum line,” Frank said, checking the plumb of the first stake with his pocket spirit level. “We just need a visual safety barrier so nobody wanders into the swing radius. Any worksite without clear outer edge demarcation is a lawsuit waiting to happen. An unflagged hazard invites total debt.”
Shitou grabbed the first three-foot hard dark metal stake. He planted the pointed tip against the solid granite foundation of the lower balcony. Then he swung his sledgehammer with terrifying, rhythmic driving force.
CLANG!
With a single strike, the steel stake sank two feet into solid granite, fracturing the rock with laser-precise outward squeezing.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Within twenty seconds, Shitou had driven six heavy steel stakes into the arena bedrock. That created a flawless six-sided outer edge.
Princess Ling’er swiftly laced the bright yellow marker tape through the loops, securing the safety boundary with crisp, skilled knots.
Up on the royal balcony, the examinees and nobles sneered down at the spectacle.
“Look at that country idiot!” a young noble laughed, pointing at Frank. “A half-step Rank Three dragon beast is breathing fire ten paces away. He’s driving fence posts to protect a wooden cart!”
“He’s numbed by fear!” Grand Teacher Song spat, clutching the balcony rail. “He knows his charlatan tricks have run out! He hides behind a yellow ribbon like a frightened tortoise!”
Crown Prince Chu Tianxiao glanced down at Frank’s yellow outer edge fence with utter contempt.
“Ignorant peasant,” the Prince sneered. “Watch closely from your little pen. Witness how a true Son of Heaven tames an ancient disaster!”
Chu Tianxiao raised the golden war-horn to his lips.
Down on the sand, Frank’s vision suddenly flashed with violent, strobing amber warning triangles.
Frank looked at the amber warning, looked at the beast’s twitching left ear. Then looked up at the Prince on the balcony.
Frank cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted up at the golden chariot.
“Hey! Crown Prince!” Frank’s voice cut through the arena with the sharp power of a construction building boss stopping a crane lift. “Put the horn down! Don’t blow that horn!”
The entire Colosseum fell dead silent.
Crown Prince Chu Tianxiao lowered the horn by half an inch, his eyes bulging in utter disbelief. “What did you say, peasant?!”
“I said don’t blow it,” Frank said flatly, pointing his yellow pencil at the war-horn. “Your sound hum is at four hundred and thirty-two hertz. That’s in direct ringing phase with the skull nerve seizure the dog is already suffering from. You blow that horn, you’re poking a hornet’s nest with a high-voltage cattle prod.”
A collective gasp of horror sucked the air from the balcony.
“Treason! Defaming the Royal Subjugation Horn!”
“He dares command the Crown Prince?!”
Chu Tianxiao’s face flushed with royal anger.
“Insolent worm!” the Prince roared, his voice shaking with furious arrogance. “This is the Golden Horn of Ancestral Harmony! Its sacred tone purges demonic madness and forces all beasts to submit to royal decree! You dare question the wisdom of the Founding Dynasty?!”
Frank sighed, shaking his head with the weary resignation of a man watching someone smoke a cigarette next to an open gasoline tank.
“I’m not questioning your dynasty,” Frank said. “I’m questioning your understanding of constructive wave interference. When the horn blows, don’t say I didn’t flag the safety hazard.”
“Die in your own ignorance, dog!” Chu Tianxiao bellowed.
The Crown Prince threw his chest back, raised the golden horn to his lips. Then he channeled his entire Peak Qi Sea training into the instrument!
HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN—!
An ear-splitting, echoing golden sonic wave blasted from the bell of the horn.
Ripples of visible sound pressure distorted the air, washing downward across the arena sand like a blast wave of golden lightning.
The nobles cheered. “The Voice of the Dragon Sovereign!”
On the arena sand, the Viridian Dragon-Hound didn’t bow.
It didn’t kneel.
It didn’t submit.
The moment the a deep hum sound wave struck the beast’s left hearing canal. There, the leech-like nether-ear mite was already digging into the skull nerve, the pain multiplied by three hundred percent!
The constructive sonic interference rang inside the beast’s skull like a white-hot drill bit piercing its brain!
SKKKKKKRRRRRRAAAAAAA!
The dragon-hound’s pupils tightened to tiny needles.
Its eyes transformed from glowing jade into pools of blinding, world-ending, blood-red madness!
The emerald scales along its spine flared outward like thousands of jagged razor blades.
The air within sixty feet of the beast instantly reached three thousand degrees. That turned the arena sand into bubbling, blazing bright green magma!
The beast slowly turned its huge head away from Frank.
It looked up at the Royal Observation Balcony eighty feet above.
It looked directly at Crown Prince Chu Tianxiao.
The Prince’s triumphant smile instantly froze on his lips.
The golden war-horn slipped from his trembling fingers, clattering against the chariot floorboards with a dull metal clink.
“Wait...” Chu Tianxiao stammered, his blood running cold as his knees shook. “Why... Why is it looking at me like that?!”
The Viridian Dragon-Hound coiled its massive hindquarters like two high-pressure squeezing springs.
BOOM!
The solid mountain stone of the arena floor shattered into a crater forty feet wide as the beast launched itself into the sky!
The huge, forty-foot titan soared eighty feet straight up. It crossed the distance in a split second. It blotted out the green sun above the Royal Balcony!
“Protect the Prince!” the Golden Dragon Guards shrieked in total terror, throwing up their axe-spears.
The dragon-hound didn’t even use its jaws.
It simply raised its massive, four-toed right paw, tipped with twelve-inch black glass talons, and swatted downward with forty tons of moving fury.
KABOOM-CRASH!
The amazing three-tiered royal chariot of dragon-bone gold—the supreme symbol of royal power—was struck like a cheap tin can under a steam hammer.
The solid gold axle pins, exactly as Frank had predicted, snapped instantly under dynamic lateral load.
The chariot folded in half, exploding into a shower of twisted gold leaf, shattered wood, and flying rubies.
The six sky stallions were blasted through the balcony stone railing, tumbling eighty feet down into the spectator stands below.
Crown Prince Chu Tianxiao was launched through the air, his golden jade crown flying off his head and his nine-dragon robes shredding against the stone. It screamed at the top of his lungs:
“MY CHAAAARIOT! GUARDS! SAVE MEEEEE!”
A shower of mangled gold spokes and crushed carriage paneling clattered into the arena sand in a spray of glittering metal.
Frank raised a pine plank to shield his head. He watched the debris clatter against his yellow warning tape with an impassive shake of his head.
“Told him,” Frank muttered. “Zero sideways tearing force margin. Now they’ve got three tons of scrap gold contaminating the work site.”