The Royal Observation Balcony collapsed with an ear-splitting screech of snapped bronze and splintering cedar beams.
A cloud of golden sawdust and crushed marble erupted eighty feet above the arena, raining powdered gold leaf onto the screaming spectators below.
Crown Prince Chu Tianxiao hit the tiered stone seating thirty feet below his shattered chariot, tumbling down four flights of granite stairs like an unstrung puppet.
His pearl-tasseled jade crown was crushed flat under his own hip.
His nine-dragon silk robes were shredded into dirty rags, caked in soot, ash, and scared sweat.
He scrambled across the broken flat stone slabs on his hands and knees. He clawed wildly at the boots of his retreating Golden Dragon Guards.
“Human shield!” Chu Tianxiao shrieked, his royal dignity fully discarded in frantic panic. “Form a human shield around this Prince! You dogs! Stand in front of me! I command you by royal blood! If a single dragon fang touches my skin, I’ll have your nine ages boiled in oil!”
The guards didn’t even look back.
Facing a berserk, forty-foot half-step Rank-Three dragon beast whose breath melted stone, royal rank meant nothing.
The guards dropped their silver axe-spears, shoved the Prince into a puddle of dirty rainwater. Then they joined the wild stampede toward the high exits.
Perched atop the shattered balcony rim, the Viridian Dragon-Hound let out another ear-splitting roar.
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR!
The beast reared back on its hindquarters, its massive emerald chest expanding with boiling fire heat, and slammed both huge forepaws into the Tier-2 Granite Retention Wall!
KABOOM!
The four-hundred-year-old town retention wall, built from massive ten-ton blocks of solid grey granite, fractured like dry sugar.
A total landslide of twenty granite boulders, each the size of a hay wagon, broke loose from the upper gallery, tumbling downward toward the arena floor with thunderous driving force!
Down in the sand pit, Hall Master Han and Chief Elder Wu shut their eyes in despair.
“The retention wall has breached...” Han groaned, coughing blood into the dirt. “The stonework is collapsing into the lower ring! The entire southern tier is folding inward!”
Frank stood by his cart, calmly tightening the velcro on his work gloves.
He watched the twenty-ton granite boulders bounding down the sixty-degree slope. He tracked their moving trajectories with calm, unblinking counts.
One massive, five-ton slab of jagged granite bounced off the lower low roof wall, arcing directly toward the yellow outer edge tape protecting Frank’s wooden mule cart.
“Debris vector incoming,” Frank called out, pointing his yellow pencil at the tumbling rock. “Shitou, brace the top door beam. Don’t let that rubble scratch our seasoned pine. We paid good silver for that lumber, and drying times for green timber take three months.”
Shen Shitou stepped across the yellow tape, his boots sinking two inches into the arena gravel.
His face was deadpan. His breathing was slow and rhythmic.
Deep within his chest, Shitou’s Star-Forged Iron Body circulated striking force through 108 silver-steel-heavy dark metal bone channels.
He didn’t raise a shield. He didn’t invoke a defensive earth-wall magic charm.
He simply gripped the hickory handle of his twenty-pound demolition sledgehammer with both hands, dropped his hips into a wide, grounded stance. Then he raised the hammer behind his right shoulder.
The five-ton granite boulder hurtled downward at fifty miles per hour. It roared through the air like a meteor.
Ten feet away.
Five feet away.
Shitou swung.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!
The moving crash sounded like two land-wide earth-shaking plates slamming together at faster-than-sound speed!
A blinding blast wave of white moving light erupted from the point of impact!
The five-ton granite slab didn’t ricochet. It didn’t deflect.
The sheer, unbending thickness of Shitou’s Star-Forged strike crushed the boulder’s internal crystal-clear matrix in less than two split seconds!
The massive stone block blew up in mid-air. It dissolved into a harmless, cascading curtain of fine gravel and grey sand that settled softly onto the outer edge flat stone slabs!
The surrounding fleeing examinees froze on the staircases, their eyes bulging out of their sockets.
“He... He smashed a five-ton mountain stone barehanded?!” an examinee screamed in sheer disbelief.
“With a single hammer swing?! That youth is only a mortal apprentice! What kind of monster trains such laborers?!”
Grand Teacher Song, shivering behind a shattered pillar, dropped to his knees, his jaw hanging open. “That strike... That was pure physical material total ruin! No qi fluctuation at all!”
Shen Shitou lowered his sledgehammer. He tapped the steel head against his boot heel to knock off the stone dust.
“outer edge intact,” Shitou reported calmly. “Zero scratch damage to the master’s cargo. Ground base bending was under one tiny fraction of an inch.”
Meanwhile, a boiling river of viridian dragon-fire was cascading from the shattered upper balcony. It spread across the arena sand toward the timber depot.
The emerald melted rock waste was burning at nearly three thousand degrees, melting bronze support posts into green puddles and hissing as it ignited wooden benches.
Frank pulled his yellow pencil from behind his ear and tapped his temple.
Frank pointed his pencil at the advancing line of emerald fire.
“Mang! Fire line trenching protocol!” Frank shouted, his voice cutting through the roar of flames. “The melted rock waste is tracking down the natural grade toward the storage lockers! Cut a three-foot-wide trapezoidal ditch across the northern flank! Maintain a one-to-one slope on the trench walls so they don’t cave in! Pile the spoil on the south side to form a nonstop holding berm!”
Niu Mang grinned, spitting on his large palms. “Excavating the fire-break trench! Maintaining the angle of repose! Submitting to the Master’s heat diversion!”
Niu Mang charged forward with his hard dark metal digging spade.
He didn’t need a backhoe. He didn’t need high-pressure excavators.
With sixty thousand pounds of Primal Bull torque, Niu Mang’s hard dark metal spade bit into the solid mountain stone of the arena floor.
CHUNCK-RIP! CHUNCK-RIP! CHUNCK-RIP!
Stone and gravel flew into the air in a nonstop, rhythmic fountain.
In less than forty-five seconds, Niu Mang carved a clean, eighty-foot-long trench across the arena floor. Four feet deep, three feet wide, with perfect forty-five-degree beveled banks.
The boiling river of green draconic melted rock waste reached the edge of the ditch, poured harmlessly over the lip. Then it pooled into the deep granite trench, fully arrested by the raised earth berm.
Princess Ling’er stepped up to the edge of the berm, extending her slender palms.
FSSSSSSSSSH!
A nonstop sheet of high-pressure cooling steam blasted over the molten melted rock waste, dropping its surface heat by eight hundred degrees and crusting the magma into harmless black dark rock melted rock waste!
The fleeing Beast Guild elders watched from the rubble in stunned disbelief.
“Trenching the earth to divert sky dragon fire...” Hall Master Han stammered. “Using physical shape and soil mechanics to stop ancient flames! This is the long-lost Earth-Severing Dao of the First Epoch!”
Frank didn’t care about the Earth-Severing Dao.
He was busy checking his pocket notebook, ticking off his equipment checklist with his carpenter’s pencil.
“Lumber secured. Iron rods stakes holding. Fire line contained,” Frank murmured, scanning the lines.
Suddenly, Frank’s eyes widened. His pencil froze in mid-air.
He looked up at the lower exit tunnel beneath the northern stands—the public check-in depot of the Colosseum.
“Wait a minute,” Frank muttered, a sudden realization stopping him cold.
Beside him, Shen Shitou blinked. “Master? What’s wrong? Has a heavenly demon showed up?!”
“Worse,” Frank said, his voice dropping into a flat, deadly serious builder register. “When we checked in at the front desk, the guild attendant made me leave my spare pair of steel-toed work boots and my twenty-five-foot magnetic steel tape measure in Locker 404.”
Shitou and Niu Mang looked at each other, sensing their Master’s huge inner perturbation.
“Those boots had custom high-thickness gel insoles,” Frank said, his jaw tightening. “They provide arch support for twelve-hour concrete pours. And finding a tape measure with both metric and royal markings that doesn’t buckle at eight feet is exactly impossible in this entire plane. Local cobblers only make cloth slippers with zero puncture pushback.”
“Master!” Shen Shitou gripped his hammer with ferocious loyalty. “Allow this student to charge the tunnel and retrieve your sacred measurement implement!”
“No,” Frank said, holding up a calm palm. “You two stay behind the yellow tape. You don’t bring heavy demolition equipment into an active dog holding zone. You’ll just excite the animal and raise its blood pressure.”
Princess Ling’er frowned in deep concern. “Master, the beast radiates three thousand degrees of draconic fire. The solid strength of the tunnel lockers is failing rapidly.”
“Which is a major town code rule-break,” Frank added coldly. “Placing personal storage lockers directly beneath a beast holding pen without a two-hour fire-rated separation assembly. Whoever approved this stone-built blueprint was clearly taking kickbacks from the stonework builder.”
Up on the shattered retention wall, the forty-foot Viridian Dragon-Hound let out a deep-throated, hungry snarl.
The beast leaped from the high balcony, landing with an earth-shattering THUD squarely in front of the lower exit tunnel—directly in front of Locker 404!
Its massive, spiked tail swished wildly, crushing three bronze storage lockers into crumpled foil.
Frank’s eyes narrowed into icy slits.
“Nobody crushes my tape measure,” Frank said softly.
He rolled up the sleeves of his denim jacket. He tucked his yellow pencil behind his ear, ducked under the yellow safety tape. Then he began walking directly toward the forty-foot monster.
From the surrounding spectator ruins, hundreds of retreating fighters stopped dead in their tracks.
Their eyes widened in sheer, disbelieving horror. They watched a lone figure in blue canvas overalls walk calmly into the blazing bright green death zone.
“Is that man insane?!” an elder screamed, clutching his head. “He has no spiritual armor! He carries no sacred sword! He’s walking straight toward a dragon disaster in mortal cloth!”
Frank’s heavy work boots crunched against the scorched sand with steady, unrushed, clockwork rhythm.
His eyes were locked not on the flashing claws or the razor horns, but on the dented metal door of Locker 404.