The silence in the Cloud-Mist Colosseum was so complete that the hiss of cooling melted rock waste sounded like escaping steam from a punctured boiler.
Fifty thousand fighters sat frozen in the stone tiers, their eyes glued to the center of the smoking pit.
Nobody cheered. Nobody shouted in triumph. Nobody even dared to blink.
It was the stunned, breathless total numbness of a populace that had just witnessed a man walk up to a falling thunderbolt, catch it barehanded, and tuck it behind his ear like a spent cigar.
Down in the glass-fused crater, the Viridian Dragon-Hound lay sprawled across the shattered bedrock.
Its massive, armored tail. It had leveled half the lower grandstands just ten minutes prior, gave another sluggish, rhythmic thump against the loose sand.
Thump.
A cloud of pale granite dust rose from the impact. It drifted lazily through the afternoon sunlight.
The beast’s huge snout, lined with dagger-sharp teeth that had crushed iron chains like brittle pretzel sticks, remained resting placidly on the ground, less than six inches from Frank’s steel-toed work boots.
“Is it... Dead?” a young student in the outer ring whispered, his voice trembling so wildly his teeth clicked.
“Fool! Look at its chest!” his senior brother choked out, grabbing him by the shoulder. “The beast’s lungs expand and contract with the steady rhythm of a resting mountain! It’s not dead! It’s... Resting!”
“Resting?!” another fighter shrieked in hushed horror. “The Calamity of the Bounded Cloud Prefecture... Resting at the feet of a mortal youth?!”
In the royal pavilion, Crown Prince Chu Tianxiao’s fingernails dug into the gold-trimmed armrests of his throne until the lacquer cracked.
His face was an unreadable mask of crimson humiliation and boiling envy.
Just moments ago, he had announcedthat the beast could only be subdued by the sovereign bloodline of the royal house.
He had blown his golden horn, only to have his royal chariot crushed into kindling and his dignity trampled into the arena mud.
Now, a wandering carpenter who had entered the restricted zone merely to look for his work boots had brought the monster to its knees with a single four-pound touch.
If word of this reached the Royal Court, Tianxiao’s claim to the Crown Prince’s seal would become the laughingstock of the twelve commanderies.
“Captain!” Tianxiao hissed, his eyes flashing with desperate, murderous madness.
The commander of the Royal Dragon Guard stepped forward, his silver-plated breastplate still dented from the beast’s earlier blast wave. “Your Highness?”
“The monster is incapacitated!” Tianxiao snarled, pointing a shaking finger toward the pit. “The sky beast’s dantian is numbed! Advance with the Heaven-Rending Halberds! Decapitate the beast and extract its Rank-2 Peak core in the name of the Royal Household!”
The captain blinked, stunned. “Your Highness... The young master is standing right beside its jaws—”
“Did I stutter?!” Tianxiao barked, his voice rising to an ugly screech. “The royal court claims all spoils of war within the capital outer edge! Anyone who interferes is guilty of high treason! Move!”
A squad of twenty elite royal guards, clad in gleaming cold-iron plate and carrying ten-foot dragon-slaying pikes, vaulted over the fractured retaining wall.
Their boots clattered loudly against the glassy tiles as they formed a spearhead formation, surging toward the prone dragon-hound with killing intent streaming from their weapons.
Down in the pit, the Viridian Dragon-Hound’s ears flattened against its skull.
A low, underground rumble began deep within its chest. A warning shaking that rattled the pebbles on the crater floor.
Frank didn’t even turn his head.
He raised his right palm and casually slapped the side of the dragon’s leathery, scaled snout.
Thwack.
It was the exact sound of a veteran framing carpenter checking whether a sheet of outside plywood was securely nailed to a two-by-four stud.
The massive beast blinked its huge jade eyes, let out a confused snort that blew a small vortex of dust across Frank’s jeans. Then it settled back down onto the sand.
“Knock it off, big guy,” Frank said calmly. “Nobody asked for your input.”
He turned slowly toward the charging royal guards, his brow furrowed with deep, skilled irritation.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up!” Frank shouted, raising both hands like a traffic flagger halting a line of concrete mixers on a single-lane bridge. “Stop right there! What do you think you’re doing?”
The captain of the Royal Guard skidded to an awkward halt fifteen paces away, his pike trembling. “Stand aside, mortal! By decree of the Crown Prince, the Imperial Guard shall execute this demonic beast and secure its core for the kingdom!”
Frank looked at the squad of twenty armored fighters with utter, weary disbelief.
He looked at their gleaming iron plate. He looked at their silk cloaks. He looked at their open-faced helmets.
“Are you out of your minds?” Frank snapped, his voice carrying clearly across the silent tiered arena. “Look at the ground you’re marching on! That’s three inches of glass-fused quartz dust over fractured bedrock! The entire solid strength of this pit has a safety factor of zero point four!”
The guards froze, blinking in blank confusion.
“Safety... Factor?” the captain stammered.
“Do any of you have approved steel-toed boots?” Frank demanded, pointing a finger at their decorative iron shin guards. “No! You’re wearing high-gloss parade armor with zero ankle support! If one of those fractured glass shards catches your instep, you’ll sever a tendon before you take two steps!”
The captain opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
“And where is your eye protection?” Frank continued mercilessly, stepping between the armed guards and the dragon’s snout. “I’m about to conduct a high-pressure high-pressure extraction. There will be high-speed fluid expulsion, chemical residue, and sharp living debris. Do you have safety goggles? Do you have ear protection?”
“We... We possess defensive spiritual Qi shields—”
“Defensive Qi shields don’t stop hot oil from splashing in your eye surface, buddy!” Frank scolded, waving his hands to shoo them backward. “Get behind the yellow ribbon! This is an active repair zone! Clear the outer edge until the work order is signed off. Or I’m reporting this entire site to the town works commission!”
Across the colosseum, fifty thousand fighters felt their souls leave their bodies.
To the fighters, Frank’s words were not mortal safety regulations.
They were an impossible to understand ancient decree.
Grand Elder Yan leaned forward in respectful awe.
“Did you hear that?” Yan whispered. “‘The solid strength has a safety factor of zero point four’... He’s reading the divine fault lines of the earth itself! He warned them that stepping upon the glass-fused glass would sever their footing!”
“And ‘hot oil from the heavens’!” Hall Master Han gasped, trembling in terror. “He speaks of the ancient dragon essence! If ordinary mortals gaze upon the sacred healing rite without divine eye wards, their mortal eyes will be burned!”
“He’s defending the beast!” Chief Elder Wu said, his voice trembling. “The ancient Dao of Ancient Stewardship! A true Beast Emperor doesn’t slaughter an injured sky creature—he commands the heavens to grant it safe hall while he cleanses its ailment!”
On the royal terrace, Crown Prince Chu Tianxiao’s face turned from red to an ashen, sickly white.
The royal guards in the pit looked at Frank, then looked at the resting dragon-hound, then looked back at Frank’s cold, unbending glare.
Not a single soldier dared to take another step forward.
The captain swallowed hard, slowly lowered his pike, and bowed ninety degrees from the waist.
“We... We heed the Senior Master’s decree,” the captain stammered, his armor rattling with fear. “We shall withdraw beyond the outer edge!”
The squad of twenty elite guards pulled back in orderly, wild haste, scrambling back up the retaining wall like men escaping a cave-in.
On the royal terrace, Chu Tianxiao slumped back into his gold-trimmed chair, his eyes glazed and hollow.
His power had been dismissed with a single wave of a mortal builder’s hand.
And not a single person in the fifty-thousand-strong crowd thought the mortal was in the wrong.
In the eastern gallery, Princess Jiang Ling’er gently closed her leather notebook with a satisfied click of her brass latch.
“Clear comms of hazard zones,” Ling’er noted admiringly. “Master never allows untrained personnel on an active site. It reduces debt and prevents cross-contamination.”
Shen Shitou rested his forged sledgehammer on his shoulder, nodding with solemn pride.
“If an apprentice walks onto the casting floor without leather gaiters, Master takes a birch switch to his shins,” Shitou remarked. “Those royal soldiers were lucky Master only used words.”
Niu Mang chuckled, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “They thought they were gonna poke that dog with pitchforks. If they woke it up before Master got the tick out, that dog would’ve swallowed all twenty of ’em like pickled quail eggs.”
Down in the crater, Frank let out a long, weary sigh.
The system display in his vision updated with crisp, glowing green runes:
“Right,” Frank muttered to himself, unfastening the heavy brass buckle of his leather builder tool belt. “Level one steadied. Now let’s get the junk out of your ears so we can both go home.”
He reached his hand into the deep side pocket of his tool pouch.
His fingers brushed past his steel framing hammer, past his spare rolls of chalk line, and past his magnetic stud finder.
He located the custom leather tool sleeve on his left hip.
With a smooth, practiced flick of his wrist, Frank pulled out a pair of ten-inch, medical-grade, stainless-steel long-reach clockwork tweezers.
The polished steel prongs gleamed brightly in the midday sun, perfectly lined up with serrated, non-slip care tips designed to retrieve dropped lock washers from deep inside diesel engine blocks.
In his other hand, Frank produced a small, two-ounce glass bottle filled with clear, low-thickness stone lubricating oil. The kind used to grease air-powered nailer pistons and sewing machine shuttles.
Frank popped the cork of the oil bottle with his thumb. He held the tweezers loosely between his fingers like a surgeon preparing for a clean cut.
He looked down at the dragon-hound’s massive, twitching left ear.
Underneath the jade scales, the dark purple swelling pulsed with a faint, irritable rhythm.
“Stay still, big guy,” Frank said softly, stepping closer to the massive temple horn. “This is gonna tickle, but it beats having a demon bug drilling through your skull.”
The forty-foot dragon-hound closed its eyes, let out a soft canine sigh. Then it rested its chin even deeper into the sand.