The outer edge boundary around the Cloud-Mist Colosseum had dissolved into a scene of utter, screaming bedlam.
Thirty yards from the northern entrance tunnel, a desperate squad of Royal Guards clad in black iron plate armor had hastily strung up a thick ritual cordon.
It was a braided silk cord dyed brilliant royal saffron yellow, adorned with red silk tassels and hanging bronze warning bells. The Nine Dragons Restricted Death Cordon.
Normally, this sacred cordon was erected only during royal executions or high-tier demonic incursions.
According to kingdom statute, crossing it without a royal decree carried an automatic penalty of immediate decapitation, the seizure of all family assets, and the banishment of three ages to the salt mines.
Three hundred years ago, an arrogant royal duke had accidentally allowed his warhorse to step three inches over the line during a martial review.
The Royal Guards had carried out both horse and rider on the spot before the gathered court.
The Enforcer Captain, his iron faceplate smeared with soot and his hands shaking wildly around the handle of a heavy execution blade, screamed at the stampeding crowds.
“Halt! By decree of the Ministry of War, this entire sector is chosen an Absolute Death Zone!” the Captain bellowed through his visor. “The Viridian Dragon-Hound has breached the inner sanctum! All civilians, scholars, and apprentices must retreat three hundred paces or be put to the sword!”
Panicked nobles and weeping merchants shoved past each other, scrambling away from the yellow silk cord like a wall of fire.
“Run! The beast is inside the check-in depot!”
“The beast masters are dead! The Crown Prince has fled!”
“Even the grand elders of the Master Teacher Pavilion can’t penetrate that toxic viridian mist!”
Through the wild, fleeing throng of scholars in torn silk and aristocrats covered in mud, a solitary figure walked in the exact opposite direction.
Frank strolled forward at a relaxed, unrushed pace.
His hands were casually tucked into the front pockets of his blue denim jacket.
A stubby yellow carpenter’s pencil was tucked behind his right ear. His dusty leather work boots crunched against the gravel with rhythmic, clockwork regularity.
Behind him, safely situated within their sledgehammer-driven iron rods outer edge, his three students watched with calm, rock-steady confidence.
Shen Shitou leaned on his twenty-pound demolition sledgehammer, Princess Ling’er sipped a cup of tea heated by her internal dragon boiler. Niu Mang was already digging into a second roasted sweet potato.
“Master walks the Path of Foundational Safety check,” Shitou observed with solemn pride. “When a site is compromised, the Chief Clerk enters alone to survey the damage.”
Niu Mang nodded, chewing enthusiastically. “Master said anyone touching our cart gets their dantian excavated. So we guard the timber.”
Frank reached the Royal Guards’ yellow silk cordon.
The Enforcer Captain’s eyes bugged out behind his visor. He saw the young man approach the restricted line without breaking stride.
“Halt, you fool!” the Captain shrieked, leveling his heavy execution blade at Frank’s throat. “Are you blind and deaf?! This is the Nine Dragons Death Cordon! Beyond this ribbon lies a half-step Rank Three ancient drake! Step back or I’ll sever your head!”
Frank didn’t even slow down.
He looked at the saffron yellow silk ribbon, then at the Enforcer Captain’s shaking blade.
“That’s not proper CIE-404 boundary tape,” Frank said, his voice entirely flat. “Silk cord has zero pulling breaking strength, and saffron yellow has poor contrast in smoky conditions. You should be using polyethylene barricade tape with bold black lettering. If a checker trips on those tassels, you’re looking at a major site safety fine ticket.”
Before the Captain could understand the words, Frank simply ducked his head.
He slipped smoothly beneath the sacred royal death cordon like a man ducking under a neighbor’s low-hanging clothesline.
The Captain froze, his blade hanging uselessly in mid-air.
The twenty armored guards stared in total, mind-shattering shock.
In eight hundred years of kingdom history, no mortal had ever ducked under the Sovereign Death Cordon.
To cross it was to declare war against Heaven and the Crown!
“He... He crossed the Death Cordon?!” a guard whispered in horror.
“Seize him! Kill him!” the Captain stammered, stepping forward.
Frank didn’t turn around. He just waved a shrugging hand over his shoulder.
“Relax, Captain. I’m not here for your dragon. I left my spare work boots and my twenty-five-foot magnetic steel tape measure in Locker 404. I’m not buying replacement tools at capital retail prices. Your trade guild markups are outrageous.”
Frank’s voice drifted back through the smoke, casual as a customer returning to a diner to fetch a forgotten umbrella.
From fifty paces away in the rubble, Crown Prince Chu Tianxiao crawled behind an overturned stone pillar. He grabbed his out-of-joint shoulder.
The Prince saw Frank casually duck under the royal death cordon. Then, his bruised face turned purple with outrage.
“Treason! Insolent, vulgar filth!” Chu Tianxiao hissed through gritted teeth. “He dares violate the Imperial Cordon?! When the royal guards regroup, I’ll have that peasant flayed alive! Let the dragon tear him to pieces!”
Tens of thousands of retreating spectators on the outer tiers stopped dead in their tracks.
The murmurs swelled into an ear-splitting wave of incredulous whispers.
“Did... Did that man say he’s going to fetch his boots?!”
“A pair of shoes?! He’s defying a royal death cordon to retrieve foot coverings?!”
“Look at his clothes! That blue weave... Could it be the legendary Sky-Thread Cloth recorded in the First Epoch?!”
“Yes! It must be! Look how the toxic dragon acid rolls off his shoulders without leaving a single burn mark! Only a peerless hidden immortal could craft such sky robes!”
Grand Elder Yan and Elder Mo stood on a high low roof wall. He watched Frank’s solitary blue figure stride through the toxic green fog.
Elder Mo stared down in shock.
“The Ancient Void Heart...” Elder Mo murmured. “To a being whose soul dwells in the unmoving infinite, a royal decree is mere ink. A raging dragon is but a passing gust of wind. He moves not for glory, not for gold, but for the sacred implements of his craft.”
Grand Instructor Song slumped against a broken stone railing, his eyes wide and vacant.
“Boots...” Song whimpered. “He’s risking his soul... For two pieces of leather...”
Frank continued walking.
As he entered the inner arena bowl, the surrounding heat surged past three thousand degrees.
everyone could feel the choking viridian smoke, smelling of boiling sulfur and melted brass.
The granite flat stone slabs under his feet were hot enough to cook an egg. It glowed with faint emerald veins of earth-heat stress.
Frank looked around at the stone-built layout of the underground holding depot. It shook his head at the horrific planning.
“Single hall. No cross-air-flow. Unsealed stonework joints,” Frank noted with disgust. “The exhaust fumes from the lower furnaces have nowhere to go but right into the public walkway. This entire town work-yard is a death trap.”
He reached into his pocket, confirming his locker key was still on its ring.
“A twenty-five-foot magnetic steel tape measure,” Frank muttered to himself. He felt a genuine surge of skilled protectiveness. “True-zero magnetic hook. Rigid standout up to eleven feet. bright blade with both metric and sixteenth-inch graduations. If that giant lizard bends the casing, I’ll personally dismantle its skeletal framework with a pry bar.”
Frank tapped his temple with his yellow pencil. His internal HUD flickered with amber diagnostics:
Frank looked at the amber warning, shrugged, and kept walking.
Deep within his lower belly, the tiny star-fire spark residing in his Sea of Qi pulsed with calm, golden-white heat.
The 10,000-Degrees of star-heat micro-core effortlessly absorbed the surrounding 3,000-degree blasting heat, circulating a cooling magnetic buffer around his denim jacket that kept his skin at a comfortable seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit.
Fifty paces ahead, the forty-foot Viridian Dragon-Hound was in the middle of tearing apart the bronze check-in counter.
Its massive, jade-scaled claws were raking through the metal lockers. It looked for anything that smelled of spirit meat or fresh blood.
CRUNCH! SNAP!
A bronze locker was bitten in half. Its jagged edges spat sparks as the beast chewed the metal into scrap and spat it out.
Then, the beast paused.
Its nostrils flared, picking up a scent that didn’t belong in this arena of blood and terror.
It wasn’t the scent of trembling fear.
It wasn’t the scent of arrogant royal bloodline qi.
It was the scent of cheap black coffee, seasoned cedar sawdust, piercing solvent oil, and unwashed denim.
The huge titan stopped its rampage.
Slowly, heavily, the forty-foot monster turned its massive horned head around.
Its six-foot-wide draconic snout lowered to within five feet of the ground.
Two glowing, blood-red eyes—each the size of carriage wheels, burning with homicidal fury—locked directly onto the lone figure in the blue denim jacket approaching through the smoke.
The beast curled its upper lip, exposing three rows of serrated, dagger-sized fangs dripping with hissing green acid.
A low, underground growl rattled the broken locker doors like dry corn stalks in an autumn squall.
Frank stopped ten yards away.
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t reach for a weapon.
Instead, his builder’s eye right away noticed three critical living defects.
The hound’s left ear was folded flat against its skull, twitching wildly. Its hind legs were trembling with reflex muscle spasms. And its lower belly was swollen and taut like an over-inflated truck tire.
Frank let out a quiet, sympathetic sigh.
“Good,” Frank muttered, looking past the beast at Locker 404, which was still intact. “The locker door is untouched. Now move your tail, big guy. You’re blocking the hallway. We need to have a serious talk about your ear hygiene and your stomach fiber intake.”