The wide marble plaza in front of the Potion-maker Guild became an open-air killing ring within thirty seconds.
Forty swordsmen in iron-grey robes stepped forward in silent, military care. Their boots locked against the flat stone slabs. Each man wore a stitched crest over his left breast. Two crossed broadswords forged from sky iron, dripping stylized drops of blood.
The Divine Sword Shen Clan.
One of the four founding noble sword clans of the Great Da-Qi Empire, notorious for their ruthless obsession with blade purity, bloodline inheritance, and genetic supremacy.
At their head stood Clan Elder Shen Kuo.
Shen Kuo was fifty years old, with skin the color of weathered limestone and a face etched with cruel, high-born pride. At his hip hung the “Azure Frost Greatsword”—a five-foot heavy blade forged from thousand-year ice-slow iron, streaming an icy mist that caused the surrounding autumn air to crystallize into falling flakes of frost.
His eyes, cold and sharp as needles, locked onto Shen Shitou with gut-deep, hungry disgust.
“Shen Shitou,” Shen Kuo’s voice was like two rough millstones grinding against dry bone. “The crippled discard of the old family line dares drag his disgraced body back to the royal capital?”
Beside the flatbed cart, Shen Shitou didn’t move an inch.
His calloused hands rested on the hickory handle of his twenty-pound forged hard dark metal-steel sledgehammer. His stance was unmoving, like a heavy-duty foundation pile driven deep into bedrock. But the dark metal veins across his forearms began to pulse with a faint, dangerous amber heat.
Frank leaned his elbow against the cart’s sideboard. He took a slow sip of mountain tea from his enamel mug.
“Family reunion?” Frank asked mild-manneredly. “I hope they didn’t bring fruitcake. The cart is already at maximum gross vehicle weight.”
Shen Kuo’s flint-like eyes flicked to Frank’s denim overalls, then to the silver 2-Star Master Teacher medallion pinned to his chest. The elder’s lips twisted into an ugly, shrugging sneer.
“A 2-Star Master Teacher from the backwater borderlands,” Shen Kuo spat, his hand resting casually on the handle knob of his ice-slow sword. “Do you think a teacher’s medallion grants you the right to harvest clan property, peasant? This beast standing beside you isn’t a human being. He’s the discarded melted rock waste of the Divine Sword Clan.”
Shen Shitou’s jaw clenched so hard the muscle bulged like a steel cord.
Behind them, Princess Jiang Ling’er stepped forward. Her yellow hard hat shone in the cold sunlight, her hand resting firmly against her brass valve-wrench. Her eyes burned with righteous fury.
“Elder Shen Kuo,” Ling’er said, her voice sharp as glass. “Shen Shitou was abandoned by your clan five years ago. He’s a free citizen of the empire and a registered student of Classroom 404. Under Imperial Law—”
“Imperial Law doesn’t cross the threshold of the sword clans, little girl,” Shen Kuo barked, his cold aura flaring. “His father, Patriarch Shen Canghai, gave him life. So his flesh, his blood. His marrow belong to the clan until the end of time.”
Shen Kuo took two heavy strides forward, the frost streaming from his boots cracking the dry marble flat stone slabs beneath his feet.
“Five years ago,” Shen Kuo said, his voice dripping with sadistic arrogance, “we tested his spirit veins in the Ancestral Sword Pavilion. The divine sword qi couldn’t circulate through his veins. His channels were dense, hard, and coarse—unbending as pig iron. We underwater him in baths of boiling spiritual acid for forty-nine days to dissolve the hardened dirt in his blood. Yet the trash only screamed, refusing to yield a single drop of sword intent.”
Shen Shitou’s breathing remained slow and heavy. But the air around his boots began to shimmer with dry, white-hot distortion.
“A sword fighter needs veins like supple silk, flowing like spring water,” Shen Kuo continued with vicious contempt. “This trash had channels like iron sewer pipes! A disgrace to our bloodline! Patriarch Canghai personally dragged him to the western melted rock waste ravine and kicked him into the toxic tailings ditch to be burned up by wild wolves.”
Shen Kuo’s gaze swept over Shitou’s broad shoulders and the thick, iron-like cords of muscle rippling across his chest.
“Yet rumors reached the capital that the cripple survived,” Shen Kuo hissed, his eyes glinting with avarice. “Not only did he survive. But he walks without a limp, wielding a common blacksmith’s mallet with anomalous physical force. The Patriarch has decreed: the acid baths didn’t destroy his body. They merely condensed his bone marrow into Primordial Star-Forged Iron!”
The forty grey-robed swordsmen drew their greatswords at the same time.
SHIIIING!
Forty blades of cold-rolled steel caught the midday sun, creating a blinding wall of lethal, humming sword qi.
“Kneel, discard!” Shen Kuo commanded, his voice shaking the plaza pillars. “Surrender your stolen hammer! You’ll return to the old family sword dungeons willingly. Your bones will be pulled out by our master ancient object forgers and melted down in the clan’s old family crucible to forge an Earth-Tier spirit blade for your younger brother, the true heir, Young Master Shen Tianchen!”
Shen Shitou’s knuckles turned white around the hickory wooden handle.
He didn’t tremble with fear. He trembled with the choking, burning memory of forty-nine days spent chained inside a vat of smoking acid, screaming for a father who watched from a high marble balcony with cold, dispassionate eyes.
“Master,” Shitou’s voice was a low, cracked rasp. “May I... Clear the site?”
Frank set his enamel tea mug on the flatbed cart with a soft clink.
He stepped around the cart, planting himself directly between Shen Shitou and forty drawn swords, his hands shoved casually into the deep front pockets of his denim overalls.
“Wait your turn, Shitou,” Frank said calmly. “A good builder always surveys the demo zone before swinging the hammer.”
Frank tilted his head, his eyes narrowing as he looked Shen Kuo up and down.
In Frank’s eyes, the DAO-QA screen flared to life, overlaying the elder’s imposing figure with a glowing grid of dynamic body-leverage tracking data.
Frank let out a slow, disappointed whistle through his teeth.
“Fifty years old and you’ve never had an ergonomic consultation in your life,” Frank murmured. He shook his head with deep skilled pity. “Look at that stance. Forward head tilt of forty tiny fractions of an inch. Lower-back spine hyperextended by fifteen degrees. And that right shoulder looks like an old water pump that hasn’t seen grease since the last dynasty.”
Shen Kuo’s face twisted into an expression of sheer, blank rage.
“You insolent dog!” Shen Kuo roared, his sword qi wildly churning the air. That turned the surrounding flat stone slabs into a field of white frost. “You dare stand before the Divine Sword Clan and babble nonsense about shoulders and pumps?!”
Frank ignored the elder fully. That turned his back on the forty drawn blades to look directly at Shen Shitou.
“Shitou. Pay attention.”
“Yes, Master!” Shitou snapped to attention, his eyes locking onto Frank’s face.
“Look at his right arm,” Frank instructed. He pointed his red carpenter’s pencil toward Shen Kuo’s shoulder. “See how his right elbow drops three inches below his collarbone when he assumes his high-guard stance? That’s chronic bursitis and severe tendon turning to stone caused by thirty years of over-torquing an unweighted two-handed sword. He swings entirely from his traps instead of driving through his hips.”
Shen Kuo’s left eye began to twitch wildly.
Around them, several senior sword students exchanged uneasy, sneaky glances. They stared at their elder’s locked right shoulder, their eyes widening in sudden, uncomfortable realization. Elder Shen Kuo was infamous within the clan for complaining of acute shoulder agony every time the autumn rains arrived!
“Because his shoulder is locked up,” Frank continued in a calm, pedantic rhythm, “his overhead cleave suffers from a total moving recovery delay. It takes him one point eight seconds to reset his blade after a full downward stroke. In a high-speed production environment, that kind of cycle time would get a worker fired on his first day.”
Frank tapped Shitou’s broad shoulder with the pencil.
“When he swings, Shitou, don’t try to block that six-foot iron butter knife. Steel carries moving shock. Why strain your joints? Just take one half-step inside his forward sweep, let his driving force carry the tip into the dirt, and tap his right funny bone with the flat face of your hammer.”
Frank pocketed his pencil, walked back to the cart, and picked up his tea mug.
“Ten pounds of lateral impact directly onto the ulnar nerve will cause an instant neuromuscular short-circuit,” Frank finished. “His grip will fail, his spirit vein breath flow will backfire like a clogged toilet. His stance will collapse into the dirt. Simple workplace ergonomics.”
The marble plaza plunged into stunned, choking silence.
The forty sword students stared at Frank as if he were an escaped lunatic who had wandered out of an asylum during an earthquake.
A mortal handyman... Was giving remedial combat instructions to a crippled discard... On how to defeat a peak Tier-3 Sword Elder... With a tap to the funny bone?!
Shen Kuo’s limestone-colored face turned a mottled, apoplectic purple. The veins along his temples bulged so hard they threatened to burst through his skin.
“Die! Both of you, die!” Shen Kuo howled, his sanity fully snapping under the weight of the humiliation.
He seized the handle of the Azure Frost Greatsword with both hands, channeling forty years of bitter, ice-slow training into the blade!
CRACK-BOOOOOOM!
A terrifying thirty-foot wave of razor-sharp, sub-zero sword energy erupted from the steel, freezing the air and shattering the marble flat stone slabs beneath his boots into thousands of jagged ice shards!
“Mountain-Cleaving Dragon Strike!” Shen Kuo shrieked, leaping ten feet into the air. His blade dropped toward Frank’s flatbed cart like an avalanche of pure, murderous frost!
Shen Shitou took a single step forward, his sledgehammer lifting from his shoulder.