The Imperial Pill Plaza was cleared of four hundred and fifty testing desks within thirty minutes.
Only the top fifty surviving contestants from the botanical blitz remained on the vast arena floor, their raised stone platforms spaced thirty paces apart to prevent heat cross-contamination and runaway explosive blast waves. The air inside the stadium was taut as an unstrung composite bow. The autumn sun beat down upon one hundred thousand spectators who refused to vacate their stone benches.
Round Two of the Tri-Kingdom Grand Prix had arrived: The High-Tier Pill Concoction Trial.
Around the outer edge, elite students and venerated clan elders began unveiling their sacred refining vessels with grand dramatic ceremonies.
At Station Two, Young Master Han Yun of the Thunder Fire Sect slammed his palms onto his runic altar, summoning his legendary “Eight-Dragon Violet Gold Fire.” The three-ton cooking pot, forged from pure purple meteorite bronze, touched the flat stone slabs with an ear-splitting BOOM, streaming crackling violet lightning arcs that made the hair of nearby spectators stand on end. Han Yun knelt upon a golden cushion, burning nine sticks of dragon-marrow incense to appease the vessel’s resident weapon spirit.
At Station Three, Fairy Bai of the Pure Cloud Pavilion delicately chanted a seven-verse water sutra. Her “Moon-Mist Jade Cauldron”—carved from a single boulder of ten-thousand-year ice-slow mutton-fat jade—hovered three feet off the ground, cloaked in swirling white frost that caused the stone platform to freeze into semi-clear ice sheets.
Other contestants summoned old family relics of black iron, red stone clay, and gold-trimmed red copper, each vessel valued at hundreds of thousands of spirit stones.
Up in the royal box on the fifth tier of the Crucible Tower, Third Prince Jiang Feng sat beside his mother, Consort Rong. The prince swirled cold pear wine in a golden goblet, his sneer sharp as a dagger.
“Look at the ragged dog at Station One, Mother,” Jiang Feng whispered, his eyes gleaming with malicious amusement. “He survived Round One through blind luck and pedantic book-memorization. But Round Two needs a consecrated spirit vessel. Without a cooking pot, his internal qi will backfire and scorch his lungs into cinders.”
Consort Rong smiled behind her jade-beaded veil, her voice smooth and poisonous: “Let him burn, Feng’er. When he fails, we’ll seize Jiang Ling’er and the peasant’s entire cart before sunset.”
Down on the arena floor, Chief Proctor Elder Cui walked down the central lane. He was followed by a procession of six inspectors carrying official ledgers to verify the safety and authenticity of each contestant’s cooking pot.
Elder Cui reached Station One.
The old judge stopped in his tracks, blinking through his round brass glasses in total disbelief.
Frank’s station was fully bare.
There was no dragon-inscribed bronze fire. There was no levitating ice-slow jade urn. There were no silk prayer mats, no sandalwood incense sticks, and no protective magic charm banners fluttering in the autumn breeze.
There was only a standard cast-iron three-ring spirit gas burner bolted to the center of the flat stone slabs, connected to the underground magma line by a flexible braided steel hose that Frank had installed himself with a crescent wrench.
Elder Cui swallowed hard, looking at Frank in his denim overalls.
“Tester Lu Zhen,” Elder Cui said nervously, clutching his check scroll to his chest. “Under Grand Prix Tournament Regulation Article Seven, every contestant must present their official pill cooking pot for metalworking and spiritual check before the starting gong. Where... Where is your vessel?”
Frank wiped his hands on a clean blue shop rag, turned around. Then he bent over his canvas duffel bag.
“Right here,” Frank said mildly. “Just had to let the travel dust settle.”
Frank unzipped the heavy brass zipper of his bag.
He didn’t pull out a glowing ancient object. He didn’t pull out an ancient treasure wrapped in yellow silk.
With a heavy, ringing metal CLANG, Frank hoisted a seasoned, sixteen-inch, heavy-gauge carbon-steel flat-bottomed cast-iron skillet out of the bag and slammed it firmly down onto the gas burner’s iron trivet.
The black vessel sat solidly on the iron ring. Its outside was jet-black. Its inside was coated in a deep, lustrous, mirror-like polymerized oil glaze that reflected the afternoon sun like dark water.
From the duffel bag, Frank then produced: 1. A twelve-inch flat stainless-steel cooking spatula with a riveted rosewood handle. 2. A sixteen-inch round stainless-steel wire grease-splatter screen with a copper grounding clip. 3. A half-gallon baked-clay jug of cold-pressed peanut oil. 4. A small wooden salt cellar filled with coarse white sea salt.
Frank pulled a small brass torpedo spirit level from his tool belt, set it across the rim of the black pan, adjusted the trivet’s front leveling screw with his thumb. Then he nodded in satisfaction.
“One hundred percent level,” Frank muttered. “Zero oil pooling. Good heat bed.”
Elder Cui’s mouth dropped open. The inspectors behind him nearly dropped their inkstones.
The entire three-square-mile stadium plunged into an eerie, choking silence.
One hundred thousand people stared down at Station One.
Apprentices rubbed their eyes. Noble patriarchs dropped their tea cups. Young Master Han Yun stared across the arena, his mouth hanging open so wide a sparrow could have built a nest inside.
Then, like a dam bursting under forty thousand tons of water, the tiered arena erupted into ear-splitting, frantic jeers and mocking laughter!
“A frying pan?!”
“He brought a common kitchen skillet to the Tri-Kingdom Grand Prix?!”
“Look at the wooden spatula! Is he going to scramble eggs for the Emperor?!”
“Sacrilege! Blasphemy against five thousand years of old family alchemy!”
Young Master Han Yun threw his head back, braying with laughter until tears streamed down his cheeks. “Hahaha! Hear this peasant! He intends to refine high-tier spirit medicine in a kitchen wok! He thinks the Grand Prix is a night market noodle stall!”
Grandmaster Ouyang, watching from the judge box with his bald, salve-smeared chin, let out a poisonous cackle: “The insolent fool has doomed himself! Even if he knows herbal theory, pill concoction needs three-space-folding spiritual deep ring! A flat frying pan has no holding chamber! The healing essence will fade into the wind within three breaths!”
However, down in the front row of the VIP trial, one man didn’t laugh.
Pill King Dan Kui leaned over the stone railing. His eyes were wide, his knuckles white as he stared at the simple black iron pan. He had abdicated his title but remained seated as an honored guest.
“Wait...” Dan Kui whispered, his voice trembling with deep, mystical awe. “Look at the sacred shape of that vessel!”
A nearby elder scoffed: “Sacred shape? Grandmaster Dan Kui, it’s a peasant skillet!”
“Ignorant fools!” Dan Kui hissed, his eyes burning with fanatic intensity. “Open your spiritual eyes and look! The rounded outside curve mirrors the ball-shaped dome of the Nine Heavens! The perfectly flat circular base anchors firmly into the square foundation of the Earth! That’s the ancient cosmological principle of ‘Round Heaven and Square Earth’!”
Dan Kui pointed a trembling finger at the seasoned black surface.
“And look at the mirror-like black glaze on the iron!” Dan Kui gasped, his breath hitching. “Deep, lustrous, dark as the Ancient Chaos before the birth of the sun! Could that be... The lost, legendary Ancient Pan-Cosmic Vessel spoken of in the ancient First Epoch fragments?! A vessel that doesn’t trap the medicine with crude bronze walls, but communes directly with the open air of heaven and earth?!”
The elders around Dan Kui stared at him, then down at Frank’s skillet, their mockery faltering into uneasy, scared confusion.
Over by Classroom 404’s flatbed cart at the edge of the plaza, Shen Shitou and Princess Ling’er stood watching with calm confidence.
Niu Mang leaned on his shovel, scratching his chin. “Sister Ling’er, why do the fancy people use those giant three-ton bronze pots? They look heavy to carry.”
Ling’er adjusted her yellow hard hat, tapping her clipboard with a brass wrench. “Because they don’t understand heat laws, Niu Mang. A three-ton bronze cooking pot has massive heat heavy rush. It takes forty-five minutes just to heat the walls. Once the internal heat spikes, they can’t cool it down, causing the vessel to explode. Master’s carbon steel wok has near-zero heat mass. Heat transfers in a heartbeat into the oil. It’s a masterpiece of moving smooth speed.”
Down on the arena floor, Frank was currently inspecting the official ingredient tray delivered by two nervous exam guards.
The challenge for Round Two had just been unveiled on the grand jade scoreboard:
The Grade-4 Five-Elemental Revolving Core Pill was notorious across the continent as a “cooking pot-breaker.”
It needed fusing five wildly opposing elemental roots at the same time. Because of that, the internal heat rough churning inside a sealed bronze cooking pot was total. If a potion-maker’s spiritual crushing weight slipped by a fraction of a percent, the pressure spike would blow the heavy bronze lid through the roof, showering the platform in molten melted rock waste.
Surrounding contestants were already sitting in deep quiet focus, performing seventy-two fine, detailed hand seals, praying to old family spirits, and lighting protective magic charms around their furnaces.
Frank didn’t pray. He pulled a three-inch folding work knife from his overalls pocket, grabbed the five elemental roots. Then he began slicing them into uniform half-inch medallions on a clean wooden cutting board.
Chop. Chop. Chop. Chop.
“Uneven cuts cause uneven heat penetration,” Frank muttered, tossing the sliced roots into five separate enamel bowls. “If your pieces vary in mass, your extraction times don’t align. Elementary kitchen prep.”
Frank reached down, cracked the valve on his spirit-gas line, and struck a flint.
FWHSSSHHH!
A clean, roaring ring of blue flame blossomed beneath the bottom of the sixteen-inch wok.
Frank grabbed the bottle of cold-pressed peanut oil, poured three tablespoons into the center of the pan. Then he picked up his wooden spatula.
He glanced across the arena at the trembling judge standing with the countdown flag.
“Whenever you’re ready, flag-boy,” Frank said deadpan. “High-heat stir-fry. Five minutes tops.”