Imperial Vermilion Avenue was designed to make visitors feel small, insignificant, and legally liable.
Stretching eight miles from the East Gate to the palace, the thoroughfare was eighty paces wide, paved with polished black fiery dark rock. Towering vermilion pillars lined the curb every fifty yards, enchanted to project shimmering dragon illusions above carriage traffic.
Down this monument of royal grandeur rolled Frank’s flatbed ox-cart.
The wooden wheels—clapped together with seasoned ash spokes and wrapped in rusted hoop-iron—emitted a rhythmic screech that echoed off luxury jade storefronts.
Screeech. Clack. Screeech.
From plush silk cushions in gold-trimmed coaches, high-born young masters peered through curtain slits with revulsion.
“By the ancestors, what’s that ugly contraption?”
“A timber heavy cart in the central express lane?”
“Look at the driver! Blue overalls and iron-toed boots! Is that a peasant chimney sweep?”
Frank sat calmly on the buckboard, scanning the dark rock pavers beneath the ox’s hooves. In his left hand, he held a wooden folding ruler. Behind his ear sat his red carpenter’s pencil.
“Shoddy grouting,” Frank murmured, shaking his head. “Look at those spreading joints. No silicone sealant. No backer rod. Just dry sand and prayer. The first frost-heave that hits this boulevard, these dark rock slabs will pop up like biscuits.”
Behind him, Shen Shitou sat atop a crate of zinc-coated nails. His twenty-pound sledgehammer was balanced across his knees.
Princess Jiang Ling’er leaned against the cart railing, yellow hard hat gleaming in the sun. She gazed down the bustling boulevard with a quiet, complex expression.
Eleven years ago, she had been carried out of this capital in an unmarked casket. She shivered with bone frost, abandoned by royal kin. Now, she was returning—not in silk, but in steel-toed boots. She carried brass valve-wrenches and a clipboard.
“Master,” Ling’er said, pointing toward a grand bronze pagoda rising above the rooftops ahead. “The Potion-maker Guild sits at the intersection of Vermilion Avenue and Pill Fire Lane. But traffic is backed up.”
“We’re in no rush,” Frank said. “The speed limit in a mixed-use commercial district shouldn’t exceed fifteen miles per hour anyway. Half these drivers are texting on spiritual jade slips while steering three-ton beasts.”
Just as Frank spoke, the ox took a heavy forward step.
CLUNK!
The left front wheel dropped six inches into a sudden depression in the roadbed.
The cart tilted wildly. Toolboxes slid across the deck. Copper wire rattled against sideboards. Frank’s enamel mug hopped out of its holder and splashed lukewarm tea across his apron.
The ox bellowed, planting its hooves as the axle groaned under sideways tearing force stress.
“Whoa!” Frank hauled back on the reins, bringing the cart to a halt.
Shitou stood up instantly, hand clamping around his sledgehammer’s grip. “Master! An ambush?”
“Worse,” Frank said, stepping down into the street. “Town neglect.”
Frank walked to the front wheel and crouched on his haunches.
Right in the middle of the Emperor’s sacred avenue sat a jagged, eight-inch-deep pothole.
Two massive dark rock pavers had snapped along their bedding planes, dipping into a hollow cavity. Water trickled continuously from beneath the curb, turning the foundation into soupy grey mud.
Frank’s DAO-QA screen flickered into life, painting the stones in neon warning stripes.
Frank poked the mud with his folding ruler.
“Zero aggregate base,” Frank said in skilled disgust. “They laid decorative dark rock directly over loose soil. And look at that water flow.”
He pointed toward the fancy storefront of the “Nine-Phoenix Immortal Teahouse” twenty feet away, where an elaborate fountain depicted nine jade carp spitting streams of spring water.
The fountain’s drainage pipe was unbonded terra-cotta, cracked in half, dumping five hundred gallons of graywater beneath the street every hour.
“Unpermitted water feature dumping into the town right-of-way,” Frank sighed. He pulled white chalk from his pocket. “No catch basin. No French drain. Just high-pressure erosion eating the highway.”
Frank turned to the cart. “Niu Mang. Safety markers. outer edge protocol.”
“Yes, Boss!”
Niu Mang hopped down, retrieved four bright orange painted timber stakes. Then it planted them around the pothole with military care.
Frank stood in the avenue with his chalk. He drew a neat four-foot square around the snapped pavers with dashed lines and a traffic diversion arrow.
Within sixty seconds, the bustling thoroughfare ground to a halt.
Carriages backed up for blocks. Wagon drivers shouted curses. Noble scions stuck their heads out of silk carriages, honking spiritual horns in shrill fury.
“What’s happening up there?!”
“Who dared block the Vermilion Express Lane?!”
Thundering hooves broke through the clamor.
Parting the carriage traffic came five mounted royal guards on armor-plated warhorses. Leading them was Captain Meng. A broad-shouldered officer clad in black-lacquer armor, a crimson horsehair plume dancing atop his helmet.
Captain Meng reined his mount in before the orange stakes, his saber rattling. His face was dark with disbelief.
“What in the nine hells is this?!” Meng bellowed, pointing his riding crop at the markers. “You insolent swine! You pitched wooden tent stakes in the Royal Way?! By whose royal decree do you obstruct the Emperor’s route?!”
Frank was on his knees, using a brass depth gauge to measure the void beneath the slab.
“Station forty-two plus eighty,” Frank said without looking back. “Eight-inch void beneath the wear course. Sub-grade has fully melted. If an eight-horse war wagon hits this section at full gallop, the front axle snaps, the carriage rolls into the teahouse. The Emperor wears his tea kettle as a hat.”
Captain Meng nearly choked on his spit.
“You... You insolent dog!” Meng roared, drawing six inches of polished steel with a sharp shing. “You dare mock royal public works?! Vermilion Avenue was laid by the founding ancestors eight hundred years ago!”
“Then your ancestors didn’t know how to install a sub-base,” Frank snapped back. He stood and brushing silt from his knees. “Stone doesn’t carry tension. The compacted aggregate beneath it does. You have three inches of washed-out gravel sitting on raw clay. Your compaction ratio is barely seventy-two percent. In my turf, I’d revoke your road builder’s license and sentence him to six months of hand-tamping trenches.”
Captain Meng stared, numbed by the unhinged confidence streaming from the man in overalls.
The surrounding crowd of fighters, shopkeepers, and drivers stared in stunned silence.
Nobody spoke to the Royal Road Patrol like this. People who complained about potholes were typically beaten with willow staves and assigned to clean sewers.
“Captain,” a junior guard whispered nervously from his saddle. “Look at his hands. Calloused, steady, fully empty of fear. He talks of ‘voids’ and ‘compaction ratios’ like an ancient Earth-Saint! Could he be a secret Royal Censor sent from the Ministry of Works?!”
Captain Meng’s throat went dry.
He looked at Frank’s apron, the yellow hard hat on Ling’er. Niu Mang, who was casually resting twenty pounds of solid hard dark metal iron against his shoulder like a toothpick.
“Even... Even if there’s a defect,” Meng stammered, his sneer softening into defensive panic, “road repairs need an official supply order from the Ministry of Works signed by three vice-ministers! It takes six months to mobilize a paving crew!”
Frank rolled his eyes. “Six months to tamp two square yards of stone? No wonder this empire runs a deficit.”
Frank turned to his third student.
“Niu Mang.”
“Here, Master!” Niu Mang stepped forward, eyes bright with enthusiasm.
“Trench shovel,” Frank instructed, pointing his pencil at the chalked square. “Low-hum high-pressure pulse. Settle the water table, consolidate the sub-grade, eighty-five blows per minute equivalent. Don’t crack surrounding pavers. Just compact the base.”
“Understood, Master! Packing the dirt!”
Niu Mang spat on his massive palms, grabbed the five-foot handle of his hard dark metal-iron shovel with both hands. Then it raised it eight inches off the ground.
He didn’t chant a magic chant. He didn’t summon a mystical dao-diagram.
He simply stomped his left boot into the dark rock, engaging his Ancient Earth-Tearing Primal Bull Constitution. Then he drove the flat back of the spade downward with heavy-duty force!
THOOM!
A low-hum sound blast wave rippled through the street.
The soaked mud beneath the pothole wildly shook. Trapped water vapor was forced upward through the seams. It hissed into the air in clean white steam as the loose soil specks locked together in dense, crystal-clear compaction!
THOOM! THOOM!
With two more casual taps, the void beneath the road vanished entirely.
Frank stepped into the square, wedged his pry-bar beneath the tilted dark rock slabs. Then he levered them back into place.
CLACK-FLUSH.
The two-ton fiery pavers dropped perfectly level with the surrounding street. Not a single tiny fraction of an inch of lip remained. The seam was so tight not even a strand of silk could be forced between the joints.
The avenue fell dead silent.
Captain Meng’s jaw dropped so low his helmet strap strained against his chin.
The dark rock pavers were not merely fixed. They radiated a faint, deep earthen deep ring. A harmonious posture of natural deep-rock forces that usually needed seven days of high-tier formation chanting.
“He healed the road with a shovel?” a merchant on the curb whispered, staring in disbelief. “Without magic charms? A single strike of his apprentice’s spade compacted the bedrock!”
Captain Meng swung down from his saddle, boots hitting the stone floor with a clatter. He bowed low, eyes wide.
“Senior! The Ministry of Works spent forty thousand spirit stones trying to level this spring-fed sector. You packed it in three breaths!”
Frank wiped chalk from his fingers and picked up his four orange wooden stakes, tossing them back into the cart.
“It’s not Earth-Dao. It’s standard soil mechanics,” Frank grunted, climbing onto the buckboard. “Now go into that teahouse and tell the manager to reroute his fountain overflow into a proper drainage ditch. If I see water ponding here when I come back, I’m citing the entire block.”
“Y-Yes, Senior! Right away!” Captain Meng barked, turning toward his trembling guards. “Raid the teahouse! Smash the unpermitted fountain! Secure the drainage ditch!”
Frank shook his head, released the handbrake, and flicked the ox’s reins.
The cart rolled smoothly across the freshly leveled pavers. Not a single rattle shook the axle. The ride was smooth as silk.
Ling’er leaned forward from the cart bed, looking at Frank with glowing admiration. “Master’s understanding of the Great Dao encompasses even the stones beneath our feet. Truly, heaven and earth are but an unfinished workshop in Master’s eyes.”
Frank took another sip of his tea and sighed.
“Ling’er, don’t romanticize bad civil building. If the people who built this city spent half as much time on stormwater management as they do on dragon banners, your father’s empire wouldn’t be sinking into a swamp.”
Frank pointed his whip toward the towering bronze pagoda at the end of the avenue.
“Now let’s get to that Potion-maker Guild. I need a piece of paper that says I’m legally qualified to tell Grandmaster Ouyang that his five-million-stone lawsuit is a crock of manure.”