The mention of Contract Number Four Hundred and Forty-One struck Patriarch Shen Canghai like a sledgehammer to the temple.
The sovereign leader of the Divine Sword Shen Clan, whose sword qi had terrorized the western provinces for forty years, took half a step backward. His knuckles whitened around the handle of his spare broadsword, his breath hitching behind his iron-needle beard, his high-born arrogance faltering into cold dread.
Third Prince Jiang Feng looked between Shen Canghai and Frank, his arrogant sneer faltering into sudden, paranoid irritation.
“What nonsensical contract are you babbling about, Lu Zhen?” Jiang Feng demanded, waving his gold-stamped scroll. “We’re here to adjudicate your battery of Elder Shen Kuo and the seizure of your students! Don’t try to evade the High Aristocratic Court with town scrap-metal rumors!”
Frank didn’t even look at the prince. He reached into his tool belt, pulled out an official light metal-faced wooden clipboard. Then he tapped the brass clip against his palm.
“I’m not evading anything, prince clipboard,” Frank said flatly. “I’m exercising legal counter-claim discovery. Under Royal Commercial Code Section Eighty-Eight and the Master Teacher Land-wide Treaty, when a licensed 2-Star Master Teacher identifies an active total collapse hazard in a public civic monument, he has sovereign power to issue an immediate Emergency Court order of Physical Evidence.”
Frank pulled his red carpenter’s pencil from behind his ear and began scribbling across a fresh sheet of white parchment clipped to the board.
Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
“Article Fourteen: Forced Forensic Impoundment of Suspect Materials,” Frank announced in a crisp, pedantic rhythm that echoed across the quiet arena. “I hereby issue Imperial Form 404-Court order upon the Great Da-Qi Potion-maker Guild and the Divine Sword Shen Clan.”
In Frank’s eyes, the DAO-QA screen flared with blinding amber text.
Frank ripped the completed court order sheet from his clipboard and slapped it directly against Patriarch Shen Canghai’s clean silk chest.
THWACK.
Shen Canghai looked down at the red-inked parchment, his eyes bulging as if a live scorpion had landed on his throat.
“You... You dare court order the Divine Sword Clan’s old family foundry?!” Shen Canghai roared, his aura flaring in desperate, cornered fury. “A mortal handyman dare inspect our smelting records?! The Shen Clan has forged blades for the founding emperors for six hundred years! Our strength is etched into the very history of Great Da-Qi!”
“History doesn’t carry load-bearing pulling loads, Patriarch. Metalworking does,” Frank replied deadpan. “You used zinc-diluted scrap iron to cast the load-bearing foundation shoes of that three-hundred-foot Crucible Tower. If a size-four ground-shaking tremor hits the capital, the shear pins will snap, the tower will tilt twelve degrees to the north, and two hundred thousand tons of bronze and hot coal will pancake the royal market.”
Frank turned to Chief Arbiter Pill King Dan Kui and the newly arrived Imperial Chief Magistrate Meng, who had rushed down from the high court box with twenty court guards in black scholar robes.
“Chief Magistrate Meng,” Frank called out, pointing his pencil toward the bronze tower. “Under Royal Public Safety Code, when an approved 3-Star Potion-maker and 2-Star Master Teacher flags an active collapse hazard on a royal monument, who has jurisdictional priority? A petty prince’s family lawsuit, or the coming soon load-bearing collapse of the city center?”
Chief Magistrate Meng—a sixty-year-old jurist with a flawless reputation for strict constitutional adherence—looked at Frank’s double-starred white-gold Master Teacher badge, then at the white-gold Pill King token in Frank’s bag.
“The law of the empire is total,” Magistrate Meng proclaimed, his voice echoing with court gravitas. “Public safety and solid strength supersede all private civil claims. If Master Lu Zhen has identified a material flaw in the Crucible Tower’s foundation, the Royal Trial is bound by law to conduct an immediate on-site careful check!”
Grandmaster Ouyang, still shivering on the balcony above, shrieked in sheer terror: “No! You can’t enter the underground fire! The fire is our sacred old family safe hall! Outsiders are forbidden on pain of death!”
Shen Canghai stepped closer to Magistrate Meng, whispering through clenched teeth: “Magistrate Meng, consider the consequences! The Divine Sword Clan controls thirty percent of the military blades supplied to the northern border army! If you humiliate our clan over a wandering peasant’s slander, the border guard posts will remember who insulted their weapon-smiths!”
Magistrate Meng’s expression turned icy cold: “Patriarch Shen, are you threatening an officer of the Royal Trial? Suborning justice in matters of civic defense carries the penalty of nine-clan extermination under the Founding Sovereign’s statutes. Step aside!”
Beside Ouyang, Third Prince Jiang Feng’s face turned mottled purple.
Jiang Feng knew that his mother, Consort Rong, had received three hundred thousand spirit stones in kickbacks from the Shen Clan to approve Contract Number 441 without check. If Frank opened that underground vault, the entire corrupt financial pipeline funding his royal faction would be burned up before the Emperor’s eyes!
“Guards!” Jiang Feng roared, unsheathing his royal broadsword with a violent, murderous shriek. “Lu Zhen is an enemy spy attempting to sabotage the royal defenses! I order you in the name of the Royal Court: kill him! Kill his students! Slay anyone who approaches the fire doors!”
The sixty Golden Dragon Guards, torn between royal law and the direct order of a royal prince, leveled their poleaxes and surged forward with drawn steel!
Shen Shitou stepped forward to swing his sledgehammer, and Princess Ling’er reached for her valve-wrench. But Frank held up a single, flat palm.
“Stand down, crew,” Frank said calmly, checking his wrist watch. “No need to scuff your boots. Niu Mang.”
“Here, Master!”
The massive, broad-shouldered third student stepped forward, chewing placidly on a dried turnip slice, holding his five-foot hard dark metal-iron trench shovel upright in his calloused hands.
“Soil compaction check, Niu Mang,” Frank instructed. He pointed his pencil at the flat stone slabs three feet in front of Jiang Feng’s charging guards. “The paving around this entrance looks loose. Settle the grade. Make sure the foundation hasn’t shifted.”
“Understood, Master! Tamping the ground!”
Niu Mang smiled warmly, took a deep breath, and stepped forward with the calm, unmoving driving force of an earth-shaking plate.
He didn’t draw a sword. He didn’t unleash an ancient war cry.
Niu Mang simply raised his plain hard dark metal-iron trench shovel six inches off the ground. It planted his back heel, engaged the dormant world-size force of his Ancient Earth-Tearing Primal Bull Constitution. Then it brought the flat back of the iron spade downward against the granite stone floor!
THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The sound was not an explosion. It was the terrifying, deep-hum groan of the earth itself being tightly packed under a billion tons of land-wide mass!
A nearby five-hundred-gravity sound blast wave rippled horizontally across the plaza floor!
The heavy granite flat stone slabs beneath the charging guards didn’t shatter—they were in a heartbeat tightly packed three inches downward into the bedrock!
KER-THUMP!
All sixty Golden Dragon Guards were hit by an invisible, crushing downward gravity shear!
Their polished plate mail groaned under the sudden, huge weight. Their knees wildly slammed into the tightly packed granite with loud, bone-jarring cracks. Their poleaxes were ripped from their numbed fingers and pinned flat against the stone as if held by giant electromagnets!
Third Prince Jiang Feng was caught right in the epicenter of the compaction wave.
SPLAT!
The arrogant royal prince was driven face-first into the soupy gray mud of the arena floor like an iron tent stake!
His golden dragon cape was buried in silt. His stitched boots kicked feebly in the air. His nose was pressed flat against the cold dark rock, fully unable to lift his head under the crushing weight of Niu Mang’s shovel stroke!
“Mmph... Glub... Mmph!” Jiang Feng thrashed in the mud, spitting silt and broken teeth, his pride crushed into the dirt.
Princess Jiang Ling’er walked up to where her half-brother was pinned in the mud. She looked down at him through the clear visor of her safety glasses. Her yellow hard hat shone in the autumn sun.
“Brother,” Ling’er said, her voice cool and steady as a winter brook. “Eleven years ago, you had the palace guards drag my mother into the cold pavilion to die of sickness. You thought power belonged to those who whispered poisons behind silk curtains. But true power belongs to the craftsmen who lay the foundations of the world. Enjoy the mud. You’ll be eating it for a very long time.”
The forty thousand spectators in the tiered arena sat frozen in stone-hard, jaw-dropped horror.
A farm shovel.
A simple, plain iron ditch-digging spade... Had discharged a gravity blast wave that flattened sixty elite royal guards and pinned a royal prince to the mud like an annoying beetle!
Niu Mang lifted his shovel, rested the five-foot handle against his shoulder, and inspected the dirt: “Grade is level now, Master. Soil is very tight. No more movement.”
“Good job, Niu Mang,” Frank said, patting his student’s broad shoulder. “Nice compaction ratio. The sub-grade won’t settle now.”
Frank reached into his ox-cart, pulled out two yellow hard hats and a pair of clear safety goggles, tossing them to Chief Magistrate Meng and Pill King Dan Kui.
“Put these on,” Frank instructed. “Entering an uninspected underground boiler vault without personal protective equipment is an automatic class-two safety fine ticket. If a high-pressure steam valve blows, I don’t want to fill out paperwork for your funeral.”
Pill King Dan Kui put on the yellow hard hat with earnest care. Meanwhile, Magistrate Meng strapped on the safety goggles, his jaw set in fierce determination.
“Magistrate Meng. Chief Arbiter Dan Kui,” Frank said, waving his red carpenter’s pencil toward the heavy bronze double doors leading down into the Crucible Tower’s underground vault. “The site is secured. Let’s head down to the basement and inspect this fraud before the whole tower falls on our heads.”
Magistrate Meng stepped over the numbed guards, his voice ringing with royal justice: “By order of the Imperial Court of Jiuzhou... Unseal the Grand Melting Fire!”