The Grand East Gate of the Capital of Da-Qi was an over-engineered monument to town insecurity.
Rising three hundred feet, the gateway was carved from black dark rock. It was bound by molten bronze and five thousand linked runes. Above the central arch, a crimson dragon crest pulsed with the heartbeat of an ancient defensive array.
Beneath this towering symbol of majesty, a battered wooden flatbed ox-cart sat with a broken axle strap.
The cart was piled high with toolboxes, coils of copper wire, three wheelbarrows, and hickory hammer handles. Sitting on the buckboard in faded denim overalls, steel-toed boots. A canvas apron, Lu Zhen took a slow sip of cold mountain tea from an enamel mug.
To the sentries patrolling the castle walls, he was Lu Zhen, the quirky master of Classroom 404.
To himself, he was Frank. A veteran building builder, licensed checker. Then he fed up gamer trapped in the buggiest early-access sandbox ever coded.
“Sub-grade settling on the threshold,” Frank muttered, squinting at the stonework. “Thirty thousand tons of stone poured onto loose river silt. The left stone support prop has a tiny bending. Two rainy seasons, and the Emperor gets an open-air drive-through.”
Beside the cart, Shen Shitou stood like an iron piling. A twenty-pound forged sledgehammer was resting on his broad shoulder.
Behind Shitou, Princess Jiang Ling’er leaned against the sideboard in her yellow builder hard hat, brass valve-wrenches tucked into her tool belt and a clipboard clutched to her chest.
Behind them, Niu Mang squatted in the dust, resting his chin on a hard dark metal-iron trench shovel, watching an earthworm with deep philosophical fascination.
“Master,” Ling’er murmured, adjusting her hard hat. “The capital has ninety-nine defensive formation nodes. Border guards will demand registered travel visas.”
“We don’t need passports to fix a door,” Frank said calmly. “We have tools. A man with a ladder and a clipboard can walk into any secure work-yard. If anyone asks, we’re the HVAC upkeep crew.”
Before Ling’er could ask what HVAC meant, a shrill voice sliced through the cart traffic.
“Halt! Clear the road! Step away from the royal hall, you ragged vagrants!”
A dozen gate guards in steel scale-mail parted the wagons. Striding at their head was Toll Judge Wu. A portly official in a stitched plum-silk robe and a black gauze hat.
Judge Wu puffed his chest out, sneering at the battered ox-cart, Frank’s overalls, and Shitou’s hammer.
“What’s this filth?” Wu sneered, pinching his nostrils with a scented handkerchief. “A timber heavy cart parked in the Royal Dignitary Lane? Where are your cargo manifests?”
Frank didn’t blink. “The sign said ‘Commercial Freight.’ We’re hauling tools. If your gatekeeper can’t tell scrap iron from heat-softened hard dark metal steel, your procurement office needs an audit.”
Judge Wu’s mustache twitched wildly.
“Insolent dog!” the judge hissed. “By power of the Revenue Bureau, your entry toll is one thousand mid-grade spirit stones! Under Emergency Decree Section Seven, your cart and tools are impounded!”
Ling’er’s hand dropped toward her valve-wrench, internal boiler pressure climbing toward dangerous venting levels.
Frank raised a flat palm, signaling her to stand down.
He was staring directly at the grand runic arch overhead. There, a bright amber cursor flashed in his vision.
Frank looked back at Judge Wu, thoroughly deadpan.
“Friend, I wouldn’t worry about my toll,” Frank said, pointing above the judge’s desk. “I’d worry about that keystone. Your gate array has a direct ground-fault on circuit four. In twenty seconds, that junction is going to short through damp mortar and drop two tons of granite through your skull.”
Judge Wu stared, then brayed with laughter.
“Hahaha! A peasant cart-driver claims the Nine-Heavens Royal Ward is going to drop a rock on me!”
BZZZZZZZZZT!
A sharp spark hum rang through the archway.
The golden runes on the keystone flared violent violet. Molten bronze sparks rained onto the judge’s silk table. It set his ledger on fire with a sharp pfft.
The massive two-ton granite keystone shifted with a sickening grind, slipping three inches downward.
Judge Wu froze, blood draining from his face, knees turning to jelly beneath the dropping shadow of rock.
“Shitou,” Frank said calmly. “Padded crowbar. Pin the mortar joint.”
“Yes, Master!”
Shen Shitou moved with clean, steady care. He grabbed a four-foot six-sided pry-bar wrapped in rubber tape and drove it into the mortar joint with a single hammer blow!
THUUUUMP!
Frank stepped forward, pulled an eight-gauge copper bonding cable from his pocket, clamped one end to the bar. Then he drove the other into the roadbed with his boot.
CRACK-SNAP!
A blinding arc of blue electricity discharged down the cable, sinking deep into bedrock with an echoing thump.
Instantly, the violet sparks ceased. The chaotic shaking smoothed into a calm golden hum of perfect deep ringing hum. The slipping keystone locked flush with a crisp click.
The gateway fell dead silent.
Hundreds of incoming merchants and training masters sat frozen in their saddles.
Judge Wu sat flat on his rear in the dirt. He stared at the copper wire by his trembling nose.
“He... He balanced the Grand Imperial Defense Array with scrap iron and a crowbar?!” Wu stammered. “A wandering Saint Formation Master disguised as a ditch-digger?!”
Frank pulled a red carpenter’s pencil from behind his ear, tapped the scorched desk. Then he stamped his blank wooden board.
“Zero-pushback earth bond,” Frank muttered. “Tell your road commissioner to install a backup ground bus before the next storm.”
“Y-Yes, Senior!” Judge Wu scrambled up, wildly waving his guards aside. “Open the gates! Clear the VIP Boulevard for the Grandmaster’s cart!”
Before the cart could roll ten paces, however, the sky above the avenue darkened.
A piercing sound like chiming jade cut through the mist.
Swooping down from the clouds was a fancy palanquin of mutton-fat jade. It was drawn by four winged sky stags. Flanking the vessel were eight crimson-robed fighters bearing the crest of an ancient cooking pot wreathed in nine dragons.
The Royal Potion-maker Guild.
The palanquin landed with a blast of high-pressure wind, scattering dust and blowing Wu’s burnt ledger across the road.
A sharp-featured man stepped out in silver-trimmed robes. He held a gold-embossed scroll bound with scarlet cord.
His gaze locked onto Frank with disdain.
“Lu Zhen of Tianxuan!” the envoy proclaimed, his voice echoing like a brass gong. “I’m Legal Envoy Lu of the Great Da-Qi Potion-maker Guild! Grandmaster Ge Hong forwarded your insolent conduct in the south directly to our headquarters. Vice-Chairman Grandmaster Ouyang has ratified the country damages and escalated them into an Imperial Writ of Execution!”
Frank didn’t look up from checking his axle pin. “I don’t buy solar panels from door-to-door salesmen. Move your cart. You’re double-parked in a fire lane.”
Envoy Lu’s face tightened. With a flick of his sleeve, he unfurled the scroll, letting ten feet of dense calligraphy unroll.
“Insolent brute! You thought folding Grandmaster Ge’s summons into a paper dart in Tianxuan would erase your debt?” Lu sneered. “Forty days ago, during your unpermitted breakthrough at the border, the heat exhaust of your Dantian Cauldron boiled Spirit Carp Lake!”
The surrounding crowd gasped in horror.
“Indeed!” Envoy Lu shouted. “Five hundred acres of dragon-whisker grass were scorched! Three breeding shoals of spiritual carp were boiled alive! Total damages and restoration penalties amount to exactly five million mid-grade spirit stones!”
Envoy Lu leaned forward with hungry relish.
“Under Royal Law, if an unlisted vagrant can’t produce five million spirit stones, his estate is forfeited. His students shall be sold as fire slaves into our fiery sulfur mines for three thousand years!”
Shitou’s knuckles whitened around his sledgehammer. Ling’er stepped forward, gripping her valve-wrench.
Frank slowly straightened his back. He wiped his hands on a grease rag, took the gold scroll. Then he pulled out his red carpenter’s pencil.
“Five million spirit stones?” Frank asked mildly.
“Five million!” Lu barked. “Authenticated by our supreme appraisers! Pay within thirty breaths, or my guards clamp iron collars upon your necks!”
Frank ran his pencil over the itemized invoice as his DAO-QA screen flared to life.
Frank gave a low, dry chuckle, twirling the pencil in his fingers.
“Friend, who taught your accountants math? A drunken donkey?”
Envoy Lu sputtered. “What did you say?!”
“Line item four: ‘Complete vaporization of Spirit Carp Lake,’” Frank read, circling the text in heavy red graphite. “Spirit Carp Lake has twelve million cubic meters of water. Boiling that volume needs four point two billion megajoules. My breakthrough exhaust only raised surface water to sixty-eight degrees for fourteen minutes. In food processing, that’s standard low-heat pasteurization. If anything, I killed your leech-like lake algae for free.”
Frank slashed another red line through the parchment.
“Line item seven: ‘Heat withering of five hundred acres of dragon-whisker grass.’ I inspected country ground shape before crossing the pass. Your irrigation ditch has a negative two-point-four percent reverse grade. Water doesn’t flow uphill. Your under-road drains were blocked with silt, backing sewage into the soil beds. Your herbs died of anaerobic bacterial root rot because your ditch builder didn’t know how to use a spirit level.”
Frank handed the defaced scroll back, patting Lu’s silk chest with his dusty palm.
“Your claim is ninety-eight percent fraudulent padding,” Frank finished deadpan. “I’ll give you fifty copper coins for the dead fish. Take this garbage invoice back to your boss and tell him to hire a licensed land-mapper.”
The silence in the East Gate was total.
Envoy Lu’s hands shook so wildly the scroll rattled against his knees.
He had never seen a man pull out a red pencil and audit a depreciation schedule.
“You... You insolent animal!” Envoy Lu shrieked. “You dare deface an Imperial Writ with ditch-digger dialectics?! Under Royal Code Section Twelve, only a licensed Guild Potion-maker has legal standing to dispute a potion-made property debt claim in court! A zero-star mortal vagrant has no standing to speak!”
Frank paused, blinking. “Wait. You’re saying if I have a potion-maker license, this scam gets kicked to formal legal arbitration?”
“Of course!” Lu snarled arrogantly. “Only an approved Pill Master understands the mysteries of heaven and earth! But the 1-Star exam has a ninety percent failure rate, and walk-in testing is strictly—”
Frank turned his head, fully ignoring the envoy, and looked down at Shen Shitou.
“Shitou.”
“Yes, Master?”
“Where’s the nearest licensing office?”
Shitou pointed down the central avenue toward a nine-story bronze pagoda piercing the city smog. “Three miles west, Master. The Royal Potion-maker Guild Headquarters.”
Frank pocketed his red pencil and flicked the ox-cart’s reins.
“Good,” Frank said, steering the creaking cart straight past Lu’s jade palanquin. “Let’s go get a trade permit. I have a court case to throw out before lunch.”