The Imperial Pill Plaza was a roaring sea of fifty thousand spectators, silk pavilions, and towering banners of scarlet and gold.
Spread across three square miles beneath the huge Nine-Cauldron Crucible Tower, the plaza was the spiritual heart of Jiuzhou’s alchemy community. Every five years, the Tri-Kingdom Potion-maker Grand Prix gathered the greatest pill masters and medical scholars from Great Da-Qi, Dayue, and the Jiuzhou Divine Domain.
The prize for the champion was legendary: ten million high-grade spirit stones, a royal tax-free trade charter, and sixty royal transport barges of priority construction materials.
To high-tier fighters, the tournament was the ultimate arena of potion-made glory.
To Frank, leaning against the wooden sideboard of his ox-cart, it was a government public works grant waiting to be collected.
“Ten million stones,” Frank murmured, jotting numbers on his notepad with his red carpenter’s pencil. “At current bulk rates, that’s twenty-four thousand tons of hot-rolled load-bearing steel I-beams, fifty thousand sacks of high-pressure lime, and enough copper grounding wire to wrap around Ironwood Peak three times.”
Beside him, Princess Jiang Ling’er looked up at the Crucible Tower with shadowed eyes, fingers resting against the valve-wrenches on her tool belt.
“Master,” Ling’er whispered, her voice tightening. “The royal box sits on the fifth tier of that tower. My half-brother, Third Prince Jiang Feng, and his mother, Consort Rong, are present. If they see me alive—”
“If they see you, they’ll see an approved safety checker in an CIE-404-compliant hard hat,” Frank said. He tapped the brim of her helmet with his pencil. “You work for Classroom 404 now. If your brother gives you lip, hand him a rule-break notice for failing to maintain backup way out routes on that tower.”
Ling’er let out a soft breath, shoulders easing as she adjusted her belt. A faint smile touched her lips: “Yes, Master.”
Behind them, Shen Shitou carried a wooden bucket of axle grease. Meanwhile, Niu Mang held his trench shovel across his shoulders, chewing serenely on a dried turnip slice.
Frank led the way through the parted crowds toward the central registration pavilion.
The pavilion was carved from solid white marble. It was surrounded by ninety-nine fire bowls burning fragrant ambergris. Behind the high teak desk sat three dozen senior test judges in purple robes.
Seated dead-center in the highest armchair of carved dragon-wood was Grandmaster Ouyang.
The Vice-Chairman of the Great Da-Qi Potion-maker Guild looked like an ancient crane wrapped in gold-threaded crimson brocade. His silver beard reached his belt, his eyes glinted with sharp cunning. Across his chest hung the four-starred medallion of a 4-Star Potion-maker Master.
When Frank stopped before the desk in denim overalls and steel-toed boots, Grandmaster Ouyang didn’t even look at the form.
“Lu Zhen,” Ouyang’s voice carried the deep pressure of a high-tier master, silencing the surrounding chatter. “My nephew Yan sent word of your circus tricks in our cellar. You think manipulating chimney soot gives you the right to enter the Grand Prix?”
Frank reached into his bag, pulled out his newly minted 1-Star token. Then he tossed it onto the teak desk with a light clatter.
“Registration slip, fee paid, 1-Star badge logged into the royal ledger,” Frank said flatly. “Assign me a booth in Sector Four. I prefer a corner station with good cross-air-flow.”
Grandmaster Ouyang picked up the bronze token with two manicured fingers, sneering with contempt.
“A 1-Star badge is for apprentices who boil tea, Lu Zhen,” Ouyang said coldly, tossing the token into a waste bin. “The Grand Prix is an arena for masters. Under Tournament Regulation Article Four, any tester holding only a 1-Star credential must prove Grade-4 spirit flame capacity before stepping onto the stage!”
Ouyang raised his arm. He pointed toward a massive black monolith standing fifteen paces away in the center of the platform.
“The Nine-Phoenix Spirit Flame Monolith!” Ouyang proclaimed, his voice echoing across fifty thousand spectators. “Forged from star-fallen star-iron during the founding era, inscribed with the nine ancient flame runes of the Vermilion Bird!”
The crowd leaned forward with murmurs of awe.
The monolith was fifteen feet tall, three feet thick, and jet-black, covered in dense crimson phoenix engravings. At the base sat an ancient stone hearth with a shallow circular depression.
“To qualify,” Ouyang sneered, eyes glittering with malice, “a tester must channel their core flame into the hearth and ignite at least three phoenix runes! If you can’t ignite three runes, you’re disqualified. My nephew’s guards will execute the five-million-stone debt writ before sundown!”
Surrounding prodigies smirked and shook their heads.
“Three runes? Even 2-Star masters struggle to ignite two!”
“Young Master Han Yun spent thirty minutes chanting to light four runes earlier today!”
Frank looked at the black iron slab, then down at his enamel mug of tea.
“You want me to light that rock?” Frank asked.
“If you dare, bumpkin!” Ouyang barked. “Let’s see if your ‘heat laws’ can wake up the sacred Primordial Flame!”
Frank sighed, walked over to the monolith, and set his tea mug on the circular hearth ledge.
He didn’t sit in the lotus position. He didn’t meditate or perform hand mudras, nor did he chant the Vermilion Bird Sutra.
Frank simply bent at the waist, rested his right hand against the base of the pillar. Then he tapped the cold metal with his index finger.
TAP.
His DAO-QA screen flared to life, painting the inside channels of the monolith in see-through blueprint wireframes.
Frank let out a short, incredulous laugh through his nose.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Frank muttered to the monolith. “A star-fallen star-iron sacred relic? It’s just a giant outdoor gas fireplace with a decorative cast-iron chimney.”
Beneath the shallow stone bowl was a tiny quarter-inch bronze nozzle designed to draw high-pressure spirit-gas from the earth-heat vein running beneath the capital. But over three hundred years of alchemists dumping raw sandalwood powder, blood offerings, and aromatic resins into the bowl, the gas jet had become fully gummed up with hardened black varnish and spiderwebs.
Only a tiny fraction of gas was seeping through. It needed testers to burn their own dantian energy to produce a pitiful little blue flame.
“Three hundred years of grandmasters chanting at a clogged gas jet,” Frank murmured. “Nobody thought to check the pilot tube.”
Frank reached into the front pocket of his overalls.
He pulled out an eight-inch piece of stiff, twelve-gauge bare copper wire. He bent the tip into a sharp forty-five-degree hook.
Before the horrified eyes of Grandmaster Ouyang and fifty thousand spectators, Frank knelt on one knee, leaned over the hearth. Then he shoved the copper wire down into the main gas orifice!
Scrape. Poke. Twist.
“Stop! What’s that maniac doing?!” an elder shrieked. “He’s sticking scrap wire into the Mouth of the Phoenix!”
“Sacrilege! Blasphemy!” Ouyang roared, leaping up. “Guards! Drag him away from the sacred—”
POOOOF!
A soft, hollow pop echoed from beneath the stone floor.
A chunk of stone-hard resin popped free from the bronze jet.
Let loose from three hundred years of blockage, high-pressure underground spirit gas from the land-wide magma vein surged upward into the venturi tube with the faster-than-sound roar of an uncapped oil well!
HSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
A stray spark from Frank’s Dantian Cauldron core—idling inside his chest at bone-crushing pressure—passed through his fingertips into the combustible vapor.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The entire three-square-mile plaza wildly bucked as if struck by an earthquake!
A blinding hundred-foot pillar of pure, blazing bright crimson phoenix fire erupted from the monolith, tearing through the clouds and piercing the upper stratosphere!
The sky above the capital turned deep, world-ending blood-red in broad daylight!
The heat was so intense that marble pavers within fifty paces began to melt into glassy melted rock waste!
DONG! DONG! DONG! DONG! DONG! DONG! DONG! DONG! DONG!
All nine ancient bronze deep ring bells on the monolith chimed at the same time, ringing shakes shattering every glass wine cup in the VIP pavilions!
One phoenix rune lit up.
Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight.
NINE.
All nine ancient runes blazed with blinding solar bright glare. He projected the four-hundred-foot ghostly phantom of a golden sky phoenix that spread its wings across the clouds. That let out a world-shaking cry!
Fifty thousand spectators froze in stunned disbelief, mouths agape at the sky!
“The Nine Phoenixes have showed up!”
“All nine runes... Lit with a piece of copper wire?!”
At the registration desk, Grandmaster Ouyang was hit directly by the heat backdraft.
His four-thousand-stone silk brocade caught fire with a sharp whoosh. His splendid two-foot silver beard was instantly burned up down to the skin. That left his face soot-stained, red, and fully bald from the lip down!
Ouyang fell backward out of his chair, shrieking and slapping his burning chest: “Fire! Put out the fire! My beard! My old family beard!”
Frank, standing right beside the roaring pillar of flame, didn’t have a single singed hair.
The heat was drawn into the geodesic diamond pressure vessel in his dantian, cycling into heat storage baffles without leaking into his clothes.
Frank reached out, grabbed his enamel mug from the hearth ledge, and took a sip.
“Perfect,” Frank said, nodding. “Right at eighty-five degrees. Ideal steeping heat.”
Frank pocketed his wire, stepped past puddles of molten marble, and walked to the trembling desk.
He looked down at Grandmaster Ouyang, who was lying flat on his back, patting his scorched chin with soot-covered hands, eyes bulging in terror.
Frank dropped his tournament entry slip onto Ouyang’s chest.
“All nine runes lit,” Frank said deadpan. “Fuel-air mixture is restored to factory spec. You owe me twenty copper coins for clearing the nozzle. Now stamp my registration token, baldy. I have a tournament to win.”
Grandmaster Ouyang’s hands shook so wildly he could barely hold the royal jade seal.
With tears of humiliated terror leaking down his scorched cheeks, Ouyang slammed the seal onto the parchment, issuing Tester Token #01 to Lu Zhen.
Frank took the stamped token, waved to Shitou, Ling’er. Niu Mang, and strolled toward the contestant staging area.
From beneath the shadowed roof edges of the pavilion, an eunuch dressed in the dark silk of the palace slipped quietly up to the shivering Ouyang.
Ouyang clutched the eunuch’s sleeve, his voice trembling with poisonous, half-mad hatred:
“Inform Consort Rong... The girl is with him. Prepare the tournament herbs... He must not leave the arena alive.”