The golden soul brand on Frank’s left boot pulsed with a gentle, rhythmic warmth that seeped into the granite beneath his feet.
Beside him, the Viridian Dragon-Hound lay sprawled in total contented tiredness, resting its chin on his instep like an overgrown emerald rug.
Across the outer edge of the ruined colosseum, fifty thousand fighters stood frozen in an eerie, total silence.
It was the kind of silence usually reserved for ancient old family mausoleums or the moments right away following a divine lightning strike.
Nobody dared to take a step.
Nobody dared to whisper.
Even the royal guards standing near the collapsed royal balcony held their pikes at half-mast, their eyes darting nervously between the peaceful dragon and the mortal youth in denim overalls.
Across the entire northern outer edge, royal noblemen and high-ranking military commanders stood in numbed confusion.
For three hundred years, the Royal Family had kept their monopoly on war-beasts through iron-fisted coercion, expensive blood-binding elixirs, and secret royal enslavement arrays.
Now, in less than thirty minutes, an itinerant rural educator had showed that their entire multi-million-coin military doctrine was built upon a foundation of gross working fault.
“Is this... The true path of the Sage?” a high-ranking border general murmured, slowly removing his spiked iron helmet. “We spent eighty thousand gold coins per year on crushing weight magic charms to keep our war-wyverns from rebelling during the winter border patrols... When all they needed was fresh water and clean bedding?”
The general looked toward his fellow officers, all of whom hung their heads in silence, unable to utter a single word of rebuttal.
Near the collapsed royal gallery, Crown Prince Chu Tianxiao was hauled to his feet by his personal retainers.
His face was streaked with drying mud and dragon mucus, his royal robe torn at the hem, his breath ragged with fury.
“Traitors! All of you!” Tianxiao spat venomously at his own royal guards, who stood with lowered heads and lowered weapons. “Why do you not arrest him?! Why do you listen to this peasant’s mad ramblings?!”
The captain of the Royal Guard swallowed hard, not daring to look his prince in the eye.
“Your Highness...” the captain whispered in dread. “The beast is awake. If we draw a blade within thirty paces of that young master, the dragon will reduce us to hot cinders before our swords clear their sword sheaths.”
Tianxiao choked on his own bile, his trembling fists clenching so hard that fresh blood dripped from his palms onto the stained sand.
Then, the quiet was broken by the wet, choking sob of a broken man.
Plop.
Hall Master Han, the supreme power of the Bounded Cloud Prefecture Beast-Taming Guild, dropped to his knees in the gray dust.
His hands shook so wildly that the gold-trimmed handle of his ritual beast-taming whip—a sacred 2-Star ancient object woven from the sinews of a shadow manticore—slipped from his grasp.
The whip clattered against the jagged flat stone slabs with a dull, hollow thud.
Tears cut clean, pale channels through the soot and ash coating Han’s aged face.
“Seventy years...” Han cried, clutching his chest with both hands as his shoulders heaved in bitter, soul-crushing grief. “Seventy years I have studied the Three Thousand Tomes of Beast Subjugation! I branded their hides with scorching iron! I lashed their flesh with spirit-suppressing whips! I bound their souls with cold-iron chains until their spirits bled!”
He looked at his calloused, trembling hands, then looked toward the dragon-hound happily resting its head on Frank’s boot.
“And for seventy years, I was blind!” Han cried out, his voice cracking with overwhelming anguish. “I was a blind fool striking a jade carving with a pig-iron hammer! We called ourselves Beast Grandmasters... But we were nothing more than cruel butchers who knew nothing of the Dao!”
Behind Han, sixty senior beast instructors and apprentice tamers slowly lowered their heads.
One by one, the sound of dropping whips, spiked collars, and crushing weight magic charms echoed across the stone floor.
Clang. Clatter. Thud.
Dozens of instructors fell to their knees. Their faces were flushed with deep shame and enlightened realization.
Frank, who was still trying to scrub the glowing golden residue off his work boot with a clean cotton rag, glanced over at the kneeling elders with a frown.
“Great,” Frank muttered in annoyance, squinting at the leather tongue of his boot. “Now I’ve got a glowing tattoo right over the steel-toed work logo. Does this stuff wash out with saddle soap, or am I stuck looking like a walking billboard for a fantasy renaissance fair?”
He looked up as Hall Master Han approached across the crushed stone, head lowered, stopping three paces from Frank’s boots with his hands pressed flat in formal greeting.
“The Primordial Beast Heart...” Han stammered, his voice trembling. “Senior has showed up the supreme, lost realm of ‘Formless Empathy’ recorded in the First Epoch chronicles!”
Frank paused his scrubbing, the cotton rag held mid-air. “The what now?”
“The First Epoch chronicles!” Han repeated, looking up with genuine respect. “Where it’s written that the True Masters of Creation didn’t conquer through violence or spiritual subjugation! They understood the inner harmony of all living vessels! They healed the broken, cleared the obstructed spirit veins, and spoke to the ancient beasts not as conquerors, but as kind shepherds!”
“Senior’s four-ounce acupressure touch! His mastery of osmotic vegetable medicine! His disdain for iron chains!” Chief Elder Wu said, stepping forward to stand beside Han. “Every action of the Senior Master was a masterclass on the Dao of Spiritual Stewardship! We blind mortals mistook a Sovereign Grandmaster for an ordinary teacher!”
“Please!” Han said, bowing low. “Allow our Beast Guild to discard our shameful past! We beg Senior Master Lu to accept our guild’s repentance! Instruct us in the true Dao of Beast Care!”
Murmurs swelled into scattered shouts across the arena stands:
“Master Lu!”
“A true master of the living arts!”
Frank stared at the kneeling elders with a blank, exhausted expression.
He looked at the sixty grown men weeping over their dropped whips.
He looked at the fifty thousand students bowing toward his boots.
He looked down at the dragon-hound. It had let out another contented snort and turned its head so Frank could scratch its other ear.
“Look, guys,” Frank said, his voice flat and weary. “You don’t need a lost divine scripture. You just need basic common sense and a decent upkeep manual.”
He pointed a finger at the pile of dropped spiked collars.
“If you build a dog kennel with jagged scrap iron, the animal is going to get tetanus,” Frank said plainly. “If you feed thirty tons of muscle nothing but dried crackers, its stomach tract is going to seize up. And if an animal has a tick in its ear, screaming battle incantations at it isn’t going to fix the problem. You clean the kennel, you balance the diet. You inspect the moving parts once a week. That’s not a Dao. That’s basic work-yard management.”
The screen in Frank’s field of vision chimed with a crisp, office pop-up alert:
To the listening fighters, Frank’s words were not building codes or animal husbandry guidelines.
They were divine pearls of transcendental wisdom.
“‘Inspect the moving parts once a week’!” Grand Elder Yan repeated from the upper terrace, writing furiously on his jade tablet with trembling fingers. “He means the weekly self-glow of one’s own inner flaws! A fighter must inspect his own spirit veins like a master inspecting temple foundations!”
“And ‘clean the kennel’!” a potion-maker master gasped, striking his thigh. “Purge the heart-demons from the spiritual sea before cultivating higher realms! Such deep, layered allegory! The Master speaks in the plain tongue of the common folk, yet his every syllable holds the depth of the Eastern Ocean!”
High in the eastern stands, Princess Jiang Ling’er leaned back against the stone railing. She crossed her arms with a quiet, triumphant smirk.
“Master’s standard training list,” Ling’er remarked to Shen Shitou. “Deconstruct ancient, inefficient traditions, replace them with systematic working protocols, and let the results speak for themselves.”
Shen Shitou nodded firmly, holding his sledgehammer with both hands. “When Master arrived at Ironwood Peak, the roof was leaking, the stairs were rotted. The students were meditating on empty stomachs. Now the roof is slate, the footings are poured. The students know how to swing a hammer. These elders were just like us before Master picked up his tape measure.”
Niu Mang smiled broadly, watching Big Green roll onto its side to catch a stray sunbeam. “Told you. That dog knows good people when it smells ’em. Even dogs hate bad landlords.”
Down in the pit, the air of respectful awe deepened with every passing second.
The Beast Guild instructors began gathering their discarded whips and chains, stacking them in a massive, ritual heap in the center of the arena to be melted down into civilian farm tools.
Frank tucked his cotton rag back into his back pocket, shaking his head.
“Well,” Frank muttered to himself, checking the sun. “At least the dog isn’t screaming anymore. If I hurry up and get that tax exemption stamp, I can still hit the lumber yard before they close the gates for the evening.”
He took a step forward, intending to head toward the Pavilion.
Suddenly, a ghostly, crystal-clear chime rang out directly inside his skull.
DING—!
It wasn’t the alarm bell of a hostile entity.
It was the ringing, harmonious chime of the Heavenly Bug Tracker completing a major test milestone!
A warm, golden light erupted directly in Frank’s field of view. It stretched into an amazing, glowing screen that floated before his eyes.