The underground hall felt as if the entire weight of the nine-story pagoda had settled onto Deacon Yan’s shoulders.
Envoy Song stood in the center of the flat stone slabs, his sapphire-blue scholar robes rustling softly. His piercing gaze moved between the soot-stained ceiling duct and Frank’s calm, calm expression.
Deacon Yan stepped forward, his hands trembling with wild desperation.
“Envoy Song!” Yan pleaded, his voice thick with unctuous flattery. “Don’t be deceived by this charlatan’s dramatic gibberish! He’s an uncredentialed vagrant from the outer marches! He deliberately brought a vulgar kitchen teapot into our sacred testing safe hall to mock the Pill Saint! He speaks of ‘ductwork’ and ‘boilers’ merely to distract from his blasphemy!”
Frank sighed, resting his knuckles against his tool belt.
“The only thing vulgar in this room is your upkeep budget,” Frank said. “If you don’t believe the chimney pipe is choked, open the cleanout port.”
Frank walked over to his ox-cart’s supply pile, pulled out a four-foot steel chimney brush attached to five linked spun-glass extension rods. Then he handed it to Niu Mang.
“Niu Mang. Station Seven exhaust hatch. Run the wire brush up twelve feet. Clear the creosote.”
“Right away, Master!”
Niu Mang gripped the steel rod with his massive calloused hands. He stepped up to the square cast-iron check hatch located at the base of the copper chimney pipe, unlatched the rusted butterfly nuts with a single twist of his fingers. Then he shoved the circular wire brush up into the upright chimney pipe.
SCRRRRRR-CRUNCH!
A sound like tearing sandpaper echoed down through the hollow metal pipe.
THUD! WHOOSH!
Before Deacon Yan could protest, an avalanche of black, oily, tar-like creosote soot poured from the open hatchway!
Bushel after bushel of greasy black carbon crashed onto the flat stone slabs with heavy, wet splats, piling up four feet high around the iron hatch. The air was instantly filled with the choking, bitter stench of unburned thick tar, sulfur melted rock waste, and half-calcined bitter pine-resin.
Nineteen testers scrambled backward in horror, coughing and covering their faces with their silk sleeves.
Deacon Yan stood frozen. He stared at the small mountain of toxic black sludge sitting on the sacred floor of the Potion-maker Guild.
Envoy Song walked slowly toward the pile. He knelt down, extended a manicured finger. Then he scooped up a thimble of the greasy black residue. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger.
The senior Master Teacher closed his eyes, his breathing growing shallow and irregular.
“Fifty years of piled up burning poisons,” Envoy Song whispered. His voice shook with deep academic horror. “Trapped within the very lungs of the building. And we... We breathing mortals have dwelled within its throat.”
Frank leaned against his shovel handle, looking down at the white-haired scholar with deadpan honesty.
“It’s basic heat laws, old man,” Frank said. “When your exhaust chimney pipe is clogged with three inches of creosote, your heat draft collapses. Without draft, your fire starves of oxygen, burning cold and dirty. And when burning runs cold and dirty, the toxic backdraft doesn’t just vanish into the sky. It fills the living quarters.”
Frank pointed his red carpenter’s pencil directly at Envoy Song’s chest.
“Same thing as your own internal plumbing, friend. You’ve been coughing up black, tarry thick spit every morning at five o’clock for the last ten years, haven’t you? Your chest feels tight, your third chest vertebra aches like a toothache, and every time you circulate spiritual qi through your upper lung spirit vein, you get a sharp stabbing pain between your shoulder blades.”
The six senior exam guards flanking Envoy Song gasped all at once.
Deacon Yan sneered, preparing to shout another accusation. But he was silenced by a sudden, violent gasp from Envoy Song himself.
The white-haired Master Teacher slowly rose to his feet. His face had turned the color of parchment. His eyes were blown wide with an expression of existential, cosmic shock.
“How... How could you possibly know that?!” Envoy Song choked out, clutching his chest with both hands. “For twelve years, I have consulted the greatest royal physicians across three dynasties! They diagnosed it as ‘Nine-Yin Internal Sky-trial’ and ‘Spiritual Decay of the Upper Dantian’! They fed me sixty jars of Jade-Bone Nectar, yet the agony only worsened with every passing winter!”
Frank rolled his eyes. “You don’t have a Nine-Yin Sky-trial. You live on the fourth floor of the Master Teacher Pavilion across the plaza, directly downwind from this guild’s unvented chimney. You’ve been inhaling sulfur-dioxide and unburned carbon soot every night while you sleep. Your lung tubes are coated in the exact same creosote that just came out of that pipe.”
Frank tapped his own throat.
“The macrocosm and the microcosm,” Frank added casually. “A chimney is just a stone throat. A lung is just an organic radiator. Clear the soot, improve the air-flow, and stop sleeping with the windows shut facing a smoke stack. It isn’t a heavenly curse. It’s an outside hazard.”
Envoy Song stood in the center of the hall, numbed.
In the old scholar’s mind, those simple, plain builder words exploded like a sky-high strike from the heavens!
The macrocosm of the chimney is the microcosm of the Dantian!
The physical world doesn’t merely reflect the Dao—it IS the Dao!
By observing the coarse, mundane soot within an unwashed chimney pipe, this young master has dismantled five thousand years of philosophical vanity and laid bare the total, physical truth of existence!
“The Dao... Is in the chimney!” Envoy Song whispered, tears of sudden, overwhelming enlightenment flooding his eyes. “The Dao is in the soot!”
BOOOOOOM!
A brilliant, dazzling pillar of sapphire-blue light erupted from Envoy Song’s crown, piercing through the underground ceiling vaults and shooting straight into the autumn sky!
The heavy, choking pressure that had choked the old scholar’s chest for twelve years wildly shattered.
Song threw his head back and coughed wildly—not with pain, but with deep, liberating force!
SPLAT!
A fist-sized clot of black, foul-smelling turbid qi and hardened thick spit expelled from his lungs. It struck the stone wall thirty paces away with enough force to crack the stonework!
Right away, the churning spiritual aura around Envoy Song smoothed out.
The silver stars stitched on his sapphire robes flared with blinding soft glow. A second brilliant star ignited beside the first, blazing with the pure, ringing power of a breakthrough!
The six senior exam guards stood in respectful shock.
“Envoy Song... Has broken through!”
“A twelve-year bottleneck... Dissolved in three sentences!”
“He attained the 2-Star Master Teacher realm by observing a pile of chimney dirt!”
Envoy Song took a deep, clean breath. The first zero-drag, painless breath he had drawn in over a decade. His eyes shone with crystal-clear clarity as he turned to face Frank.
Envoy Song clasped his hands and bowed deeply from the waist, his expression filled with deep respect.
“Senior!” Envoy Song said, voice steady with thanks. “Your words cut straight through five thousand years of empty theory to the physical core of existence. Song owes you his life and his breakthrough!”
Frank blinked down at the old scholar, scratching his cheek in mild embarrassment.
“Friend, don’t worry about it,” Frank muttered. “Just get out of that soot before you ruin your silk robes. That stuff doesn’t come out without stone spirits.”
Envoy Song rose swiftly, his expression glowing with fierce, righteous determination.
He turned toward Deacon Yan, whose knees were now shaking so wildly that his teeth chattered like dice in a cup.
“Deacon Yan!” Envoy Song’s voice boomed with the crushing spiritual power of a 2-Star Master Teacher. “By the sovereign power of the Continental Master Teacher Pavilion and the Royal Charter of Jiuzhou, I hereby ratify the sign-off of Tester Lu Zhen!”
Envoy Song reached into his robes, pulled out a velvet-lined case, and withdrew a heavy, solid-white-gold medallion adorned with two blazing silver stars and a royal dragon-seal.
“For peerless pedagogical insight, flawless theoretical mastery, and the heroic preservation of public safety,” Envoy Song proclaimed, pinning the double-starred medallion onto Frank’s denim overalls alongside his silver token, “I formally confer upon Lu Zhen the rank of 2-Star Master Teacher by Imperial Reciprocity!”
Song turned his glare toward Elder Cui. “Proctor Cui! Deliver the tester’s Potion-maker badge right away, or face the immediate revocation of your guild’s academic charter!”
Elder Cui scrambled forward like a scared rabbit.
With both hands trembling wildly, the old chief judge presented Frank with an exquisite, three-inch bronze medallion depicting a cooking pot wreathed in a single golden star.
“The 1-Star Potion-maker Token,” Elder Cui stammered, handing it forward with both hands. “Authenticated... And logged into the royal register!”
Frank took the bronze token, tossed it into his canvas bag alongside his measuring tape. Then he patted the 2-Star Master Teacher medallion on his chest.
“Two stars in teaching, one star in pot-boiling,” Frank said, giving Deacon Yan a relaxed, deadpan smirk. “Under Royal Commercial Code Section Twelve, a 2-Star Master Teacher holding trade sign-off possesses total sovereign standing in all contract arbitrations. Your uncle’s five-million-stone execution writ is officially stayed. Tell him I’ll see his fraudulent accounting books in small-claims court.”
Deacon Yan collapsed against the wall. He grabbed his chest. He stared at Frank as if he were an ancient, ancient horror that had walked out of the deep pit wearing blue denim.
Frank adjusted his tool belt, turned on his heel, and waved to his students.
“Shitou, Ling’er, Niu Mang. Pack the cart. Let’s go find a noodle shop. All this arguing about chimney soot has made me hungry.”
“Yes, Master!” the three students chorused in perfect all at once.
Classroom 404 strode out of the underground hall like a victorious construction crew. That left behind nineteen weeping prodigies, a pile of black soot, and a shattered guild administration.
Ten minutes later, Frank pushed open the grand bronze double doors leading out onto the sunlit marble plaza.
The cool autumn air hit his face, refreshing and clean.
Frank was about to reach for his ox-cart’s reins. Just then, a sudden, heavy chill dropped over the marble steps.
The bustling chatter of the central plaza died instantly. Pedestrians, merchants, and carriage drivers fled in all directions, scrambling behind stone pillars and into shop doorways in sheer, panicked terror.
Blocking the grand marble stairs stood forty tall, cloaked fighters dressed in iron-grey robes stitched with the crossed-sword crest of the Divine Sword Shen Clan.
Across their backs were strapped massive six-foot greatswords that hummed with cold, murderous intent.
At their head stood a middle-aged man with eyes like chipped flint and a face carved from bitter granite. His gaze bypassed Frank entirely, locking onto Shen Shitou with vicious, hungry hatred.
“Shen Shitou,” the elder sneered, his voice cutting through the silence like an iron blade. “The crippled discard of the Shen Clan dares show his disgraceful face in the royal capital?”