The Great Da-Qi Potion-maker Guild Headquarters smelled of scorched cinnamon, boiling sulfur, and academic nepotism.
Rising nine stories above the central plaza, the headquarters was forged from cast bronze and firebrick, shaped like a three-legged cooking pot. Great copper chimney pipes vented plumes of fragrant smoke from the upper roof edges, showering the marble entryway in a mist of unburned spirit charcoal.
Frank parked his flatbed ox-cart in front of the marble stairs, wedging a wooden chock beneath the rear wheel.
“Shitou, stay with the cart,” Frank said, unclipping his messenger bag. “Keep an eye on the wheelbarrows. In a neighborhood with this many stitched robes, petty theft is usually outsourced to apprentices.”
“Understood, Master,” Shen Shitou rumbled. He folded his arms while resting his boot on the twenty-pound sledgehammer.
Frank adjusted his denim overalls, tucked his red carpenter’s pencil behind his ear. Then he smoothed his canvas apron. Flanked by Princess Jiang Ling’er in her yellow hard hat and Niu Mang carrying his trench shovel, Frank strode up the steps.
The grand entrance hall was thirty paces high, lined with columns of polished white jade.
Hundreds of apprentices and pill masters bustled across the mirrored floor in robes of violet silk. In the center, a bronze statue of the First Ancestor Pill Saint held a glowing jade pestle toward the ceiling.
Frank’s steel-toed boots clapped against the polished jade floor. Then, the dignified murmur died instantly.
Apprentices stopped mid-stride. Scented fans froze before high-born noses.
“What in the heavens is that?”
“Is that... Denim canvas? With brass eyelets?”
“Look at the girl behind him! She’s wearing a painted yellow iron dome on her head!”
A senior reception clerk with powdered cheeks stepped out from behind a high rosewood desk. He waved an ivory tablet.
“Halt, tradesman,” the clerk said, his voice laced with acid. “The freight loading dock is in the western service alley. Public service personnel are strictly forbidden from entering the Grand Safe hall.”
Frank didn’t stop. He walked directly to the desk, dropped his canvas bag with a dull metal clatter. Then he pulled out two silver coins.
“I’m not delivering coal,” Frank said flatly. “I’m here to sit for the 1-Star Potion-maker Walk-In Exam. Sign me up and point me to the testing room. I have a court case to dismiss before noon.”
The clerk let out a sharp, incredulous screech.
“You? A 1-Star tester?!” The clerk sneered. “The walk-in fee is five hundred mid-grade spirit stones! Plus, the written exam has five hundred esoteric questions covering five thousand years of herbal temperaments! It has a ninety-two percent failure rate!”
“Five hundred stones?” Frank pulled out his 1-Star Master Teacher token and tapped the desk twice. “Land-wide Treaty of Guild Reciprocity, Section Nine. Certified Master Teachers holding valid state licenses are exempt from backup craft application surcharges. Two silver processing fee, standard town rate. Read your employee handbook.”
The clerk looked at the silver medallion, his jaw twitching wildly.
Before the clerk could sputter an excuse, a silky voice chimed from the fancy balcony above.
“Accept his registration, Clerk Zhao.”
Dropping the sweeping stairs was Senior Examiner Deacon Yan—the favored nephew of Vice-Chairman Grandmaster Ouyang.
Deacon Yan stepped onto the hall floor, a cruel smile playing across his thin lips. His gaze swept over Frank with poisonous satisfaction.
“So,” Deacon Yan purred, flicking his silk sleeves. “The country bumpkin from Tianxuan actually showed his face. My uncle told me Envoy Lu served you with the five-million-stone execution writ this morning. Did you truly believe you could evade royal seizure by taking our licensing exam?”
Frank looked at Deacon Yan’s manicured nails. “I don’t evade scams. I audit them. Your uncle’s invoice has a ninety-eight percent fraud rate. Under Royal Code Section Twelve, once I hold a 1-Star badge, your collection writ is stayed pending formal arbitration.”
Deacon Yan let out a cold, sharp laugh.
“A 1-Star badge? From our guild?” Yan stepped within an arm’s reach, eyes gleaming. “You think our craft is child’s play? Very well! Clerk Zhao, issue him tester token seven hundred and twelve! Let him sit in the Grand Theory Hall!”
Deacon Yan leaned in, whispering with venom: “The written exam begins in ten breaths. If you fail by a single mark, your Master Teacher license will be flagged. My uncle will seize your students before sunset!”
“Keep dreaming,” Frank said. “Just make sure your pencils are sharp.”
---
The Grand Theory Hall was a massive tiered arena carved from gray dark rock.
Two hundred young prodigies sat at single desks, trembling with nervous tension. Sandalwood incense burned in copper fire bowls. Many were desperately reciting rhyming sutras, clutching expensive jade brushes.
Frank took his seat at desk seven hundred and twelve.
He pushed the wolf-hair calligraphy brush aside, reached into his bag. Then he placed his red carpenter’s pencil on the desk alongside a brass sharpener and a wooden ruler.
The judge struck a bronze gong.
CLANG!
“The check has began! Five hundred questions! You have four hours! Any whisper or spiritual signal results in immediate expulsion and twenty years of mining hard labor!”
Heavy leather-bound scrolls unrolled before each tester.
Surrounding contestants groaned as their eyes scanned the dense calligraphy. The questions were notoriously hidden, filled with poetic metaphors designed by ancient eccentrics.
Frank picked up his red pencil and scanned the first page.
His DAO-QA screen flared behind his eyes, parsing the poetic nonsense into clean building data.
Frank gave a faint, fed up sigh.
“Who wrote these questions?” Frank muttered. “A romantic poet with a head injury?”
He looked at Question Forty-Two:
‘When the Crimson Vermilion Fire wails like an orphaned infant and billows with orange sorrow, how does the pious potion-maker appease the wrath of the flame spirit to preserve the sacred fire?’
Frank didn’t hesitate. His red pencil scratched across the parchment:
‘The flame is running rich due to inadequate main aeration. Increase burning air intake by fifteen percent to achieve stoichiometric fuel-to-oxygen ratio. Orange smoke indicates unburned carbon fine dust. Clean soot buildup from your intake damper and sweep your chimney.’
Frank flipped to Question One Hundred and Eight:
‘Why does the divine medicine cry tears of black despair against the sacred walls of the earthen vessel during the third moon of extraction?’
Frank scribbled:
‘Dirty glassware. The vessel walls have sticky organic residue from last unwashed batches. Sugars are caramelizing against uncleaned baked-clay hot-spots. Wash your crucible with skin-burning lye and hot water before firing.’
He moved to Question Two Hundred and Fifteen:
‘What causes the spirit-qi of the Nine-Cold Orchid to rebel into violent tempests when wedded to the tears of the Golden Sun Root?’
Frank answered:
‘Phase separation caused by too much heat differential. You’re dumping a freezing aqueous solution into boiling rich fat solvent without an emulsifier. Lower solvent heat to sixty degrees and agitate continuously at ninety RPM.’
While other testers cried, chewed their jade brushes, and chanted mantras, Frank worked like a self-running laser printer.
Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
His red carpenter’s pencil flew across the paper with heavy-duty driving force. Pages turned every fifteen seconds.
By minute twelve, Frank reached the final page.
Question Five Hundred:
‘What is the supreme principle governing the union of all ten thousand herbs under the sky dome?’
Frank wrote:
‘Conservation of mass and energy. What goes into the pot must equal what comes out, minus heat venting losses. If your mass balance doesn’t close, check your rubber rings for steam leaks.’
TAP.
Frank set his pencil down, neatly lined up the parchment edges with his wooden ruler. Then he closed the scroll.
The entire hall had only finished Question Forty.
Frank stood up, grabbed his canvas bag, walked down the tiered steps. Then he slapped his completed scroll onto the Chief Judge’s dark wood podium.
THWACK.
Chief Proctor Elder Cui—an eighty-year-old 3-Star Potion-maker with a beard down to his belt—nearly jumped out of his slippers.
“C-Tester!” Elder Cui sputtered. “Only fourteen minutes have elapsed! Are you forfeiting the exam?!”
“Finished,” Frank said deadpan. “Five hundred questions answered. Your questions are eighty percent flowery fluff. You could reduce the lesson plan to thirty pages of basic heat laws and save twenty tons of paper a year.”
Elder Cui’s mouth opened and closed like a dying carp.
Up on the watching balcony, Deacon Yan spilled his hot tea across his silk robes.
“Preposterous!” Deacon Yan shouted down. “He scribbled random gibberish! Proctor Cui, inspect the scroll right away! Fail him on the spot!”
Elder Cui, hands trembling with anger, unrolled the scroll. He prepared his vermilion brush to slash failing marks across the insolent work.
Then, Elder Cui read the first answer.
The old man froze.
He read the second answer. His eyes widened.
By the tenth answer, the vermilion brush slipped from Elder Cui’s fingers, clattering onto the desk.
“This...” Elder Cui stammered, staring at the page. “The Vermilion Fire’s sorrow... Explained as inadequate air intake? The weeping black tears... Unwashed sugar residue? Mass and energy... Conserved?”
Fifty years of dogmatic alchemy collapsed in his head like dry timber. The poetic fog was stripped away, replaced by cold, total physical logic.
“He bypassed five thousand years of verse,” Elder Cui muttered, hands shaking over the paper. “What’s this power he calls Stoichiometry?”
Elder Cui grabbed the official grading stamp and brought it down on the scroll with all his might!
BANG!
“One hundred points!” Elder Cui cried out, his voice cracking. “A flawless score! The highest mark in the history of the Great Da-Qi Imperial Guild!”
The Grand Theory Hall erupted into stunned murmurs and dropped brushes.
Deacon Yan clutched the balcony railing so hard the varnished wood cracked. His face was the color of moldy cheese.
“Impossible!” Deacon Yan shrieked. “He cheated! He stole the answer key!”
“I didn’t steal your key,” Frank said, looking up with a bored expression. “Your questions are just middle school physical science. Now stamp my permit so I can get to arbitration.”
Deacon Yan gnashed his teeth, eyes narrowing into slits of pure venom.
“Not so fast, Lu Zhen!” Yan hissed, his voice echoing. “Theory is cheap! Any parrot can memorize words! The true soul of a potion-maker lies in the fire! To receive a 1-Star badge, you must refine a Grade-1 Qi-Nourishing Pill in our testing chamber!”
Deacon Yan pointed a trembling, malicious finger toward the heavy iron doors at the rear of the hall.
“Assign Tester Lu Zhen to Test Station Seven!” Yan sneered with a cold, murderous smirk. “Let’s see if his ‘middle school science’ can survive the wrath of sacred flames!”
Frank watched Deacon Yan’s smirk and let out a soft, tired sigh.
“Test Station Seven,” Frank muttered, picking up his canvas bag. “Let me guess. Another uninspected boiler with a plugged pressure relief valve.”