The Grand Banquet Hall of the Nine-Cauldron Crucible Tower gleamed with the blinding, showy wealth of three mortal empires.
Suspended three hundred feet above the capital on huge cantilevered stone beams, the hall was paved in polished white jade and lit up by thousand-year glowing night-pearls the size of melon gourds. Along both sides of the banqueting pavilion, thirty-six raised circular altars of carved black lacquer held the continent’s most legendary pill cooking pots on public exhibition.
Crowded around the display altars were hundreds of high-born prodigies and sect elders, dressed in shimmering robes of silver, crimson, and sky violet.
Among them, Young Master Han Yun of the Thunder Fire Sect stood proudly beside his “Eight-Dragon Violet Gold Fire”—an Earth-Tier masterpiece valued at two million spirit stones, its surface pulsing with purple lightning arcs. Nearby, Fairy Bai of the Pure Cloud Pavilion delicately adjusted the silk veil covering her “Moon-Mist Jade Cauldron,” its semi-clear walls streaming a calm, sub-zero vapor.
Frank walked through the double doors. Then, the collective laughter of the banquet hall died down into stunned, derisive silence.
Frank wore clean, freshly pressed denim overalls, heavy steel-toed boots, and a canvas work apron. Tucked beneath his left arm was a battered wooden toolbox. In his right hand, he held a fine china mug of cold tea.
Flanking him was Shen Shitou in a clean grey work tunic, Princess Jiang Ling’er wearing her yellow hard hat with a clean clipboard clutched to her chest, and Niu Mang carrying his hard dark metal-iron trench shovel across his shoulder like a walking crane.
“By the heavens,” Young Master Han Yun sneered, swirling amber spirit wine in a jade goblet. “Has the guild begun hiring peasant carpenters to sweep the banquet floors during the grand festival?”
“Worse,” Fairy Bai murmured with an amused smirk behind her silk sleeve. “That’s Lu Zhen, the 1-Star tester from the borderlands. They say he cleared the Nine-Phoenix Monolith with a piece of scrap wire and singed Grandmaster Ouyang’s beard to the bone.”
Mocking chuckles rippled through the assembled prodigies.
Frank didn’t pay them the slightest attention. He strolled past the thirty-six display altars. Then, his eyes flicked casually from cooking pot to cooking pot. His internal DAO-QA engine ran at maximum scanning speed.
Frank stopped, took a sip of his tea, and turned to Niu Mang.
“Niu Mang.”
“Here, Master!”
“Don’t lean against these tables,” Frank instructed deadpan. “None of these vessels are rated for more than fifty pounds of pressure. Wall castings are uneven. Seams are soldered with toxic lead. Half of them have unannealed heat stress fractures from improper cooling. It isn’t an exhibition hall. It’s an unlicensed scrap yard waiting for an over-pressure event.”
Young Master Han Yun’s face flushed bright crimson.
“You insolent, ignorant ditch-digger!” Han Yun barked, slamming his jade goblet onto the table. “You dare call my Eight-Dragon Violet Gold Fire a ‘shrapnel hazard’?! This sacred vessel was forged by seven ages of Thunder Fire ancestors! It has absorbed three thousand bolts of sky lightning!”
“Then your ancestors didn’t know how to normalize alloy steel,” Frank replied mildly. “You have severe work-hardening along the base fillet weld. Tap the bottom left leg with a butter knife and the whole pot will ring like a cracked chamber pot.”
Before Han Yun could draw his sword, a sharp, metal strike silenced the hall.
CLANG!
Stepping onto the central raised dais was Grandmaster Ouyang.
The Vice-Chairman of the Potion-maker Guild had discarded his burnt crimson brocade for formal black robes stitched with the nine golden cooking pots of the Royal Trial. His chin—fully bald and smeared with cooling jade ointment where his two-foot beard had once lived—was clenched in murderous, bitter tension.
Beside Ouyang stood Legal Envoy Lu, holding the five-million-stone Royal Execution Writ.
Grandmaster Ouyang raised his arm, his voice echoing off the vaulted jade ceiling with chilling malice.
“Distinguished competitors! Honored elders of the three kingdoms!” Ouyang proclaimed, his gaze locking onto Frank like a pair of poisoned crossbow bolts. “This afternoon, tester Lu Zhen claimed before our guild gates that the Potion-maker Guild’s five-million-stone outside damages lawsuit is fraudulent! He claims our legal accountants are drunken donkeys and our contracts are invalid!”
The hall gasped in collective outrage.
“To defame the sacred Potion-maker Guild before the royal court is an offense punishable by the severing of limbs!” Ouyang continued, his voice rising in dramatic theatricality. “Yet, as a grandmaster of the empire, I’m a man of supreme mercy and boundless sportsmanship! Lu Zhen, do you dare settle this debt on the tournament stage?!”
Frank leaned his elbow against the banquet railing. “What kind of bet, baldy? Make it quick. The food at the buffet is getting cold.”
Grandmaster Ouyang’s eye twitched at the word ‘baldy,’ but he forced a cold, cruel smirk.
“Tomorrow morning begins Round One: The Blindfolded Ten-Thousand-Herb Identification Blitz!” Ouyang announced, projecting a royal contract scroll into the air with spiritual qi. “Five hundred master alchemists from three empires shall compete! If you fail to take First Place in Round One, you forfeit your life right away! Plus, your three students shall be permanently branded and delivered to the guild’s fiery sulfur mines as lifelong fire slaves to pay off the five million stones!”
The entire banquet hall gasped in horror.
First place over five hundred land-wide masters?! In an exam with ten thousand ancient herbs?! It was an impossible, suicidal wager!
Frank pulled his red carpenter’s pencil from behind his ear and ran the numbers.
Frank looked up at Ouyang, his expression fully flat.
“And if I win First Place?” Frank asked.
Ouyang sneered arrogantly. “If you take First Place, the five-million-stone lawsuit is voided on the spot with the full power of the Royal Trial!”
“Not enough,” Frank said, shaking his head. “Tearing up a fake debt is just breaking even. If I take First Place, you tear up the lawsuit, write a formal public apology admitting you filed a fraudulent claim, and deliver five hundred sacks of high-grade high-pressure lime, sixty tons of load-bearing steel iron rods, and fifty spools of heavy copper grounding wire directly to my cart.”
Frank raised his chin. “Deal or no deal, baldy?”
Grandmaster Ouyang let out a booming, derisive laugh that echoed through the hall.
“Hahaha! High-pressure lime and copper wire! Truly the ambitions of a country ditch-digger!” Ouyang sneered, biting his thumb and pressing a bloody seal onto the glowing contract scroll. “Agreed! The Royal Blood Contract is sealed! Tomorrow morning at sunrise, your doom shall be witnessed by the Emperor himself!”
The contract flashed crimson and vanished into the void of the Heavenly Dao.
Frank nodded, turned to his students, and picked up a plate of roast duck from the buffet table.
“Good,” Frank said. “We have materials secured. Let’s go home and prep the cooking gear.”
---
Midnight in the Great Da-Qi Royal Capital.
Across the city’s luxurious five-star inns, the five hundred tournament contestants were engaged in wild, desperate preparation.
Young Master Han Yun was bathing in bowls of spirit-fire essence, praying to his ancestors for botanical insight. Fairy Bai sat cross-legged on a block of ice-slow jade, swallowing calming soul pills to prepare her senses for the ten-thousand-herb blitz.
Meanwhile, in the small rented dirt courtyard of a third-class tavern in the western carriage district, Classroom 404 sat around a small charcoal fire bowl.
Frank was sitting on an overturned wooden nail keg, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
Between his knees sat a heavy, seasoned, sixteen-inch carbon-steel flat-bottomed cast-iron skillet. The deep, rounded vessel that doubled as a heavy-duty wok.
Beside Frank sat a baked-clay tub of rendered pork lard, a bottle of cold-pressed peanut oil, and a stack of clean cotton rags.
“Master,” Princess Ling’er whispered, holding a clean wooden spatula in both hands with respectful care. “Is this truly the sacred ‘Ancient Pan-Cosmic Vessel’ spoken of in ancient First Epoch scriptures?”
“It’s a sixteen-inch carbon steel wok, Ling’er,” Frank said patiently. He rubbed a thin layer of lard across the smooth black iron inside with a rag. “Sixteen-gauge cold-rolled carbon steel. Stamped in a factory press, seasoned with five coats of polymerized oil.”
Frank placed the heavy iron skillet over the glowing red coals of the fire bowl.
Tssssssssssssssss.
A thin wisp of clean, blue smoke rose from the iron. The oil broke down at four hundred degrees Fahrenheit, cross-linking into a slick, mirror-black, naturally non-stick polymer glaze that coated every tiny pore of the metal.
Shen Shitou leaned in, his dark eyes wide with awe. He watched the metal turn from dull grey into a lustrous, black glass mirror.
“Zero friction,” Shitou whispered, his voice trembling with deep realization. “Master is sealing the pores of the iron so the spiritual herbs won’t suffer adherence to the vessel’s boundary layer!”
“It keeps the eggs from sticking, Shitou,” Frank muttered. He wiped the skillet with another clean rag. “If you don’t season a carbon steel pan properly, your pill waste scum caramelizes and scorches the surface, creating carbon hotspots that ruin your heat transfer.”
Frank picked up a round, fine-mesh stainless steel wire grease screen from his toolbox. He clipped an eight-gauge braided copper bonding jumper to the outer stainless rim. He tested the spring tension with his thumb.
Snap.
“Grease screen is lined up,” Frank noted. “Keeps hot oil from spitting onto the worker. The copper wire provides a zero-pushback path to ground if the arena has dirty line voltage.”
Princess Ling’er’s amber eyes glowed with fierce, rock-steady confidence. She set her light metal clipboard on the cart bed, adjusting her yellow hard hat with pride.
“Master,” Ling’er said softly, looking up at the starry sky above the capital. “Tomorrow, the entire empire will watch you enter the arena. The Grandmaster, my royal family, the Divine Sword Clan... They all believe you’re a mortal laborer destined for their mines.”
Frank took the seasoned skillet off the fire bowl, set it onto a clean wooden block. Then he tapped the mirror-black iron surface with the flat of his pencil.
TINK.
The sound was pure, clear, and ringing—like a bell struck at the dawn of time.
Frank looked at his three students, a faint, deadpan smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.
“Seasoning is everything, kids,” Frank said softly. “Tomorrow morning, we show these aristocrats how to cook.”