The path leading back to Classroom 404 was overgrown with wild brambles and strewn with sharp limestone rubble.
By the time the four reached the edge of the abandoned quarry, the afternoon sun was sinking behind the jagged ridges. It cast long, bruised shadows across the valley.
Classroom 404 stood alone on a wind-swept granite ridge.
In the fading amber light, the timber shack looked less like an academic sanctum and more like an abandoned chicken coop that had survived a landslide. The cedar shingles were curling with dry rot. The eastern wall was tilted at three degrees, and the front door hung by a single rusted hinge.
Shen Shitou, Jiang Ling’er, and Niu Mang stopped at the threshold. She stared at the run-down shack in deep respect.
“Master...” Shitou murmured, his voice trembling with emotion. “This place... Isolated from the mortal world, atop barren bedrock... It’s a sacred Trial Mountain hut!”
“A sacred Trial Mountain hut,” Frank echoed deadpan, setting down his tool pouch. “Sure. If by ‘Trial Mountain hut’ you mean ‘Class-B load-bearing hazard scheduled for demolition by the town zoning board.’ Look at the roofline. Four-inch sag. If three inches of wet snow hit that ridge, we’ll be eating cedar shingles for breakfast.”
Frank turned to face his students, wiping grease from his knuckles with a rag.
“We have forty-eight hours before Vice-Principal Lu brings his check squad to audit this work-yard,” Frank said. “We don’t have time for poetry, quiet focus, or incense. Today’s training list is site preparation. Niu Mang, take the spade. Clear brambles along the eastern foundation trench. Create a drainage swale three feet wide so rainwater doesn’t pool against the doorstep plate.”
“Yes, Master!” Niu Mang bellowed, clutching his trench spade and charging toward the bramble patch like an eager draft horse.
“Ling’er,” Frank continued, pointing toward a stack of damp cedar logs. “Sort the dry firewood from the rotting sapwood. We need dry kindling for the fire bowl. Don’t exert your core. Keep your breathing steady and don’t hold in your chest heat.”
“Student obeys!” Ling’er whispered, bowing respectfully before heading toward the woodpile, her small hands moving with careful care.
“Shitou,” Frank ordered. “Grab the birch broom behind the door. Sweep the pine needles and rat droppings off the subfloor. Once the deck is clear, we begin your overhaul.”
“Student will sweep the sacred hall clean!” Shitou declared, marching inside with the religious fervor of a monk.
For the next two hours, the only sounds echoing across the lonely ridge were the rhythm of Niu Mang’s shovel slicing through shale, Ling’er sorting kindling, and Shitou’s broom scraping against pine planks. Frank checked the window casings with his tape measure, noting two loose header studs.
By the time twilight settled over the mountains, the shack was swept clean, brambles were cleared, and dry kindling sat beside the rusted iron stove.
A cold wind began to howl through the mountain gaps. Inside the shack, Frank lit a small animal fat candle, setting it on his leveled podium.
In the center of the clean floorboards, Shen Shitou sat cross-legged in the lotus position, hands resting on his knees in the traditional sword-fighter mudra.
Suddenly, Shitou’s body began to convulse wildly.
Gasp!
A painful wheeze tore from Shitou’s throat. His neck muscles bulged like thick ropes, his face turning an alarming shade of dark purple.
Beneath his skin, the 42mm channels in his chest began to throb with uneven spasms. The stale, hardened energy slammed repeatedly against the thick walls of lime-scale.
COUGH!
Shitou doubled over, vomiting a mouthful of thick, black clotted blood onto the floorboards.
“No...” Shitou cried, clawing at his chest with bloody fingernails. “Not now... Why won’t the qi flow?! The elders were right... I’m a useless cripple! Even after Master showed me mercy... My spirit veins are dead stone! I’m only dirtying Master’s floor!”
CLANG.
A heavy piece of drop-forged carbon steel landed on the floorboards six inches from Shitou’s knees, rattling the pine planks.
It was the twenty-pound demolition sledgehammer.
Frank stood over him, holding a small brass oil lantern and a piece of blue chalk.
“Stop crying and stop sitting in the lotus position,” Frank said flatly. “I told you three hours ago: you have a high-pressure lock caused by lime-scale encrustation. Sitting cross-legged won’t dissolve calcium deposits. Have you ever seen a plumber unclog a cast-iron drainage pipe by sitting next to it and humming a hymn?”
Shitou looked up through bloodshot eyes. “Plumber...? Hymn...?”
“You don’t meditate to clear stone scale,” Frank said, gesturing toward the door. “You use dynamic moving blast waves. Stand up. Bring the hammer.”
Shitou scrambled to his feet, picking up the heavy hammer and following Frank out into the chilly night air.
Jiang Ling’er and Niu Mang peeked out through the doorway, watching in tense silence.
Frank led Shitou around the back of Classroom 404, stopping in front of a huge slab of black dark rock that had tumbled from the upper cliffs decades ago.
The boulder was roughly ten feet wide, eight feet tall, and weighed at least ten tons. Its surface was black glass-black, dense, and cold as iron.
Frank tapped the rock face with the brass tip of his tape measure, listening to the ringing pitch.
Tock. Tock. Tink.
Frank stopped at a hairline fracture running across the eastern face at a forty-five-degree angle. He pulled out his blue chalk. Then he drew a bold six-inch ‘X’ directly over the natural cleavage plane.
“Here,” Frank said. “Dark rock has high crushing strength, but its shear pushback along this fault line is terrible. Line up your stance.”
Shitou blinked, staring at the huge boulder. “Master... You want me to... Hit this rock?”
“One hundred times,” Frank instructed. “Don’t channel a single drop of spiritual qi. If you try to force energy through locked channels right now, you’ll blow an internal seal. Plant your left heel. Pivot your hips. Let the hammer’s own mass do the work. Drive the blasting blast wave into the stone.”
Shitou swallowed hard. His chest burned with agony, but the steady calm in Frank’s eyes anchored his soul.
Master is testing my resolve, Shitou thought. He wants to see if I possess the unbending will to break through mortal limits! Even if my arms shatter, I won’t disappoint Master!
“Student obeys!” Shitou roared.
He planted his left boot into the shale dirt. He raised the twenty-pound hammer high above his shoulder, rotated his torso. Then he brought it down with all his strength.
CLANG!
The hammer struck the blue ‘X’. Sparks showered into the darkness. A violent blast wave traveled up the ash handle into Shitou’s wrists, elbows, and shoulders. The boulder showed no scratch.
“Strike one,” Frank said. He sat on an overturned bucket and pulling an enamel tea mug from his pocket. “Your wrist is too stiff. Loosen your grip by ten percent. Let the tool rebound naturally. Strike two.”
CLANG!
Ten strikes. Twenty strikes.
By the thirtieth strike, the skin on Shitou’s palms tore open, smearing dark blood across the ash handle. His lungs burned like hot coals, and sweat dripped into his eyes.
Yet, as impacts repeated, a rhythmic deep ring began to build.
Frank had lined up his stance with clean. Because of that, steady care, the moving recoil was forced directly into Shitou’s skeletal frame! The shaking traveled through his radius and into the 42mm channels along his collarbones.
Crackle...
Deep within Shitou’s chest, a sound like cracking ice echoed. The stubborn lime-scale encrustation had zero stretch against high-hum shaking!
At strike sixty, fine spiderweb fractures spread through the stone crust inside his veins.
At strike eighty, the dark rock boulder began to groan, deep cracks branching outward from Frank’s chalk ‘X’.
“Strike eighty-one,” Frank called out, sipping his tea. “Engage your lats. Ringing hum is peaking. Don’t let up now.”
Shitou didn’t feel pain anymore. His blood was boiling with an ancient heat. The air around him began to hum with metal deep ring.
Strike ninety!
Strike ninety-five!
Strike ninety-nine!
On the hundredth strike, Shen Shitou threw his head back and roared across the mountains:
“BREAK FOR ME—!”
The sledgehammer dropped like a falling star. He struck the blue ‘X’ with the full piled up heavy rush of a hundred tuned blows!
KRAAA-BOOOOOOOM!
An ear-splitting blast wave exploded across the ridge!
The ten-ton dark rock boulder didn’t merely split. The huge mass blew up from the inside out. It crumbled into fine black gravel that rained across the quarry!
At the exact same instant, the piled up blasting blast wave rebounded into Shitou’s chest with total, overwhelming force.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Every single ounce of hardened lime-scale inside his body shattered into tiny dust!
With the high-pressure blockage wiped out, the dormant power of his Ancient Star-Forged Iron Body roared awake.
A torrent of liquid star-steel surged through his 42mm channels like molten magma! His skin turned a radiant bronze. His bones hummed like tuned temple bells. And a blinding pillar of metal light erupted from the crown of his head, piercing the night clouds!
Tier 1 Layer 1... Layer 3... Layer 6... Layer 9!
In three heartbeats, Shen Shitou tore through the entire Body Tempering realm. It slammed straight into the total peak of Mortal Tier 1!
The blast wave knocked Ling’er and Niu Mang back three steps. Meanwhile, Frank covered his tea mug to keep the rock dust out.
Shen Shitou stood in the crater of crushed gravel. The torn skin and acid scars had fully vanished, replaced by smooth, iron-hard bronze flesh that gleamed with faint sky runes.
The choking agony was gone—replaced by limitless, roaring physical power.
Thud.
Shitou dropped to one knee, resting his forehead against the wooden handle of the sledgehammer.
“Master...” Shitou rasped, his voice echoing like ringing bronze. “Master cleared my channels with a single hammer. This student’s life belongs to Master.”
Frank blew a stray speck of dark rock dust off the rim of his mug.
A golden chime rang in his mind, and his HUD lit up with brilliant amber text.
Frank smiled faintly, tapping his mug against his knee.
“First customer satisfied,” Frank murmured, watching the glowing golden page settle into his system inventory. “Good. Now let’s see what kind of software patches we can compile with this.”