The rapid-fire popping sounds beneath Frank’s metal wok lid gradually slowed. It faded into a gentle, sizzling hiss.
Across the Imperial Pill Plaza, one hundred thousand spectators held their breath in stone-hard silence. Forty-eight competing masters stood frozen before their bubbling cooking pots, their eyes glued to Station One.
Up in the Grand Judge Box, Grandmaster Ouyang sneered with vicious, desperate triumph. He grabbed the marble stone railing with his fingernails.
“It’s over!” Ouyang’s screech cut through the tense silence. “He has burned up the medicine! Those explosive sounds were the violent rupture of herbal cellular matrixes! He has produced nothing but five pounds of blackened, oily charcoal!”
Young Master Han Yun, nursing his burned hands in the ruins of his exploded Eight-Dragon Cauldron, joined in with mocking laughter: “Peasant scum! You thought you could fry the sacred Five Elements like common dough cakes?! Open the lid! Let the empire witness your ruined sludge!”
Down on the platform, Frank didn’t bother replying.
He grabbed a clean blue shop rag, wrapped it around the wok’s wooden lid handle. Then he lifted the domed cover with an unrushed, clockwork motion.
PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHH!
A clean, glowing plume of five-colored healing vapor surged out of the pan.
It wasn’t gray soot. It wasn’t bitter smoke.
The steam radiated a blinding, rainbow-bright rainbow of emerald green, molten gold, crimson scarlet, deep-sea azure, and radiant royal yellow.
As the vapor billowed upward, it carried an aroma so intensely crisp, so fragrant, and so profoundly intoxicating that everyone in the first twenty rows of the tiered arena felt their dantians wildly pulse with renewed life-force! Three elderly fighters whose spirit veins had been hardened for forty years let out sudden gasps as their blood breath flow cleared on the spot!
Frank picked up a sheet of clean brown butcher paper from his toolbox, spread it flat across the stone testing table. Then he tilted the sixteen-inch wok forward.
Clack-clack-clack!
A cascade of golden orbs poured from the seasoned carbon-steel pan. It rolled across the butcher paper like an avalanche of glowing marbles!
They weren’t charred lumps. They were thirty perfectly ball-shaped, mirror-polished, tiny pills. It glowed with an internal five-colored halo that swirled beneath a crystal-clear, glass-like outside finish!
Not a single speck of waste scum. Not a single tiny pore. Thirty flawless, divine spheres resting on common packing paper.
In Frank’s eyes, the DAO-QA screen flared with blinding gold text:
Frank looked at the glowing pills, reached down, picked one up between his calloused thumb and forefinger. Then he tossed it into his mouth.
He chewed twice.
Crunch. Chew.
Frank swallowed, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and nodded thoughtfully.
“Good chew,” Frank said deadpan. “A little crunchy on the outside, nice tender center. The Maillard browning locked in the sugars without scorching the core. Very solid snack.”
The three-square-mile tiered arena plunged into a silence so total that the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings would have sounded like an earthquake.
He... He ate one?!
A Grade-5 Flawless Pill—a treasure capable of buying a country city, a legendary relic that could allow a crippled fighter to break through to the Golden Core realm instantly—eaten like a roasted peanut?!
Pill King Dan Kui, watching from the VIP railing, clutched his heart, his eyes rolling back in his head as he fainted clean onto the floor!
Two senior exam guards scrambled to catch him, wildly jamming emergency acupressure needles into the old master’s temples.
Gasp!
Dan Kui revived with a violent shudder, scrambled to his hands and knees. Then he pressed his face against the balcony bars, weeping tears of pure spiritual hysteria:
“Thirty pills! Thirty Flawless Pills from a single batch! And it... It’s not Grade-4! The rapid sky flash-frying has transmuted the elemental balance! It has evolved into Grade-5 Flawless! It’s a Heaven-Defying Creation!”
Dan Kui pointed a trembling hand toward the sky: “Look at the heavens! The Heavens can’t tolerate such perfection!”
Before anyone could understand Dan Kui’s words, the bright midday sun vanished.
A terrifying, unnatural shadow swallowed the royal capital in a fraction of a heartbeat.
The clouds above the Nine-Cauldron Crucible Tower wildly churned into a world-ending vortex of pitch-black ink. The heat in the arena plummeted by thirty degrees as the surrounding air was sucked upward into a huge sky empty pocket.
CRACKLE-BOOOOOM!
Deep within the swirling black clouds, three jagged, spiral bolts of terrifying purple lightning began to cohere.
Heavenly Pill Sky-trial.
The legendary divine punishment let loose by the Heavenly Dao whenever a potion-maker produces a mortal medicine so flawless that it violates the laws of natural mortality! The sky lightning was locking onto the twenty-nine leftover pills resting on the butcher paper, preparing to wipe out the platform and everyone within five miles!
“Run!”
“It’s the Heavenly Sky-trial Lightning!”
“The Wrath of the Heavens has dropped! Clear the plaza!”
One hundred thousand spectators screamed in blind, stampeding panic, scrambling toward the exit gates. Exam guards abandoned their ledgers. Guards dropped their spears. Grandmaster Ouyang ducked beneath his dark wood desk, whimpering like a beaten dog.
Down on the platform, Frank looked up at the world-ending purple vortex in the clouds.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t summon an old family protective shield.
He simply frowned, shaking his head in deep, fed up builder annoyance.
“Typical open-air town venue,” Frank grunted. “No indoor shielding, zero lightning arresters, and unbonded load-bearing framing. An CIE-404 class-one spark safety hazard.”
Frank reached into his canvas tool bag with unrushed, clockwork rhythm.
He pulled out a sixteen-inch round stainless-steel wire grease-splatter screen—the fine-mesh splatter guard used in kitchens to keep frying oil from spraying onto countertops.
Frank stepped over to the testing table, placed the fine stainless-steel wire mesh screen directly over the sheet of butcher paper, fully covering the twenty-nine glowing golden pills.
Then, from his bag, Frank pulled out a heavy eight-foot copper-clad grounding rod and a length of four-gauge braided copper bonding cable.
He clipped the brass alligator clamp of the cable to the stainless-steel rim of the grease screen.
He took the eight-foot copper rod in his right hand. He set the pointed steel tip against a seam in the granite flat stone slabs. Then he raised his steel-toed leather boot.
STOMP!
With a single, easy downward kick powered by his bone-crushing pressure Dantian Cauldron, Frank drove the eight-foot solid copper rod straight through eight feet of granite, eight feet of sub-grade gravel, and deep into the damp, stone-rich land-wide bedrock beneath the capital!
He clamped the other end of the braided copper cable to the top of the rod.
“Bonded to earth,” Frank said, dusting his hands on his denim apron. “Path of least pushback established.”
The moment the final clamp snapped shut, the sky ripped in two!
KRAAAAAA-CHOOOOOOOM!
Three huge, world-shattering bolts of purple sky-trial lightning plunged from the vortex like divine spears of pure total ruin, aiming straight for the butcher paper!
The moving roar tore through the stadium, shaking the foundations of the three-hundred-foot Crucible Tower!
CRACKLE-BZZZZZZZZZZZT!
The three blinding bolts of sky fury struck the fine stainless-steel wire grease screen dead-center!
Did the screen turn to steam?
Did the pills turn to dust?
No.
The fine, tightly woven stainless-steel wire mesh acted as an instant Faraday cage!
The millions of volts of heavenly sky-trial energy were fully captured by the wire surface, funneled smoothly along the braided copper bonding cable, and channeled straight down the eight-foot copper grounding rod into the deep, infinite mass of the land-wide earth-shaking plate!
Thump.
A muffled, low-hum sound shaking rumbled five miles beneath the city streets.
A tiny, harmless puff of white ozone mist curled from the corner of the wire screen. It drained away into the breeze with a faint, cheerful bzzzt-pop.
The world-ending sky-trial clouds above—deprived of their spark discharge and having closed their circuit into the ground—paused in mid-swirl.
The black vortex flickered, paused. Then evaporated into thin blue air, as if thoroughly confused by what had just occurred.
The sun shone down upon Station One once more, warm and bright.
Beneath the wire grease screen, the twenty-nine Grade-5 Flawless Pills rested on the unburned butcher paper, fully unharmed, streaming a calm, golden sky glow.
The silence that blanketed the Imperial Pill Plaza was total.
Thousands of fleeing fighters stopped in mid-stride, their mouths hanging open, their eyes bulging as they stared at the kitchen splatter screen and the eight-foot copper rod standing in the flat stone slabs.
“He... He caught the Wrath of the Heavens with a kitchen grease strainer?” a royal elder whispered, clutching his chest in catatonic terror. “He captured sky-trial lightning... And dumped it into the sewer?!”
Up in the judge box, Pill King Dan Kui hurried down the stone steps without pause.
The four-hundred-year-old master strode across the arena floor, his sapphire robes fluttering, stopping before Frank’s station with both hands held out with deep awe.
He presented a heavy, shimmering white-gold token adorned with three blazing golden cooking pots and a royal dragon-crest—the Official 3-Star Grandmaster Potion-maker Token!
“Master Lu!” Dan Kui bowed deeply from the waist. “You have tamed the elements with iron and wood, and bound the lightning with copper! Please accept this 3-Star Grandmaster Token—and if you ever need someone to help in your workshop, this old man stands ready!”
Frank picked up the wire grease screen, unclipped the bonding wire, and picked up another warm golden pill.
He tossed it over to Shen Shitou, who was standing by the platform edge. “Catch, Shitou. Eat this before your channels cool down.”
Shitou caught the Grade-5 pill in his massive calloused palm, popped it into his mouth without pause. Then he swallowed it whole.
Instantly, the dark metal veins across Shitou’s neck flared with liquid star-steel light, his Primordial Star-Forged Iron Body absorbing the flawless elemental essence with zero stomach pushback. Shitou’s stance swelled by two inches as his joints emitted crisp, high-pressure clicks of huge power.
“Good batch, Master,” Shitou rumbled, his eyes glowing like lanterns. “Channel friction dropped to zero.”
“Told you,” Frank said. He looked at Dan Kui. “Thanks, old man. Just don’t touch the pan yet. Carbon steel holds heat for twenty minutes. You’ll blister your palms.”
Frank took the white-gold 3-Star token and tossed it into his canvas bag alongside his measuring tape.
Before Frank could wipe down his cutting board, however, the heavy iron drop-gate at the arena exit slammed shut with an ear-splitting crash.
A squad of sixty heavily armed Imperial Golden Dragon Guards in gold-trimmed plate mail marched onto the platform, their axe-spears lowered in lethal all at once.
Flanking them was Patriarch Shen Canghai. They were flanked by Third Prince Jiang Feng, brandishing a gold-sealed royal court summons!