Fifty feet beneath the flat stone slabs of the Imperial Pill Plaza, the air tasted of scorched brimstone, charcoal, and stale grease.
The spiral granite stairs was narrow and choking. Heavy iron torches mounted in sconces cast orange shadows across damp stone walls, lighting up an underground maze of hissing copper pipes and sweating valves.
At the front walked Frank, his yellow builder hard hat glowing in the gloom. His heavy work boots stepped over puddles of black machine oil, an eight-ounce brass testing hammer twirling between his fingers.
Behind him walked Chief Magistrate Meng, clutching the Royal Writ of Court order. Behind Meng came Pill King Dan Kui, safety goggles cinched over graying eyebrows. His silver beard was tucked into a canvas work apron.
Following them at sword-point were Patriarch Shen Canghai, Elder Shen Kuo, and Grandmaster Ouyang. The three high-born leaders were flanked by ten court guards and Classroom 404’s students, their swagger dissolved into clammy dread.
“Master Lu,” Magistrate Meng murmured, stepping around an open trench of bubbling gray runoff. “The Royal Court was told this work-yard was engineered by grandmasters. Why does it smell like an open sewer?”
“Because it’s an open sewer, Judge,” Frank said. “An stuffy Class-4 dangerous boiler room operated with zero regard for town drainage codes. That puddle is condensed nitric ether mixed with high-pressure lime.”
Dan Kui sucked in a sharp breath: “Nitric ether?! The volatile byproduct of refining Fire Essence! Exposed to an open flame, a cup of it could level a castle wall!”
“Which is why leaving it next to a live torch is a twenty-thousand-stone safety fine ticket,” Frank muttered. “Whoever runs work-yard upkeep belongs in jail.”
At the rear, Grandmaster Ouyang tripped over a loose brick. His face turned the color of curdled animal fat.
The party reached the bottom and entered the main melting vault.
The chamber was two hundred paces across, arched with blackened granite vaulting that groaned under the weight of the three-hundred-foot bronze tower above. In the center stood the Grand Melting Fire. A sixty-foot-tall monstrosity of forged iron and pitted bronze plates, streaming waves of choking dry heat.
Eight huge tube-shaped pillars, each four paces thick, ringed the fire, their top flanges bolted into the ceiling vaults to carry the dead-weight of the Crucible Tower.
Patriarch Shen Canghai puffed out his chest, attempting to reclaim old family dignity.
“There they stand, Magistrate Meng!” Shen Canghai proclaimed, gesturing to the columns. “The Eight Heaven-Supporting Pillars! Forged from twenty-five tons of our clan’s Thousand-Year Cold-Forged Star Iron! Even heavenly sky-trial can’t shake our craftsmanship!”
Frank walked over to Pillar Number Four without saying a word.
He set his light metal clipboard on a grease barrel, pulled his brass hammer from his belt. Then he rested his palm flat against the dark metal tube.
In Frank’s vision, the DAO-QA screen flickered, bathing the iron column in sharp-angled wireframes.
Frank raised the hammer and delivered three rapid taps against the center pipe rim.
CLINK. TUD. TUD.
The sound was not the musical chime of refined sky iron. It was a dull, leaden thud, followed by a faint shaking that died almost instantly.
Frank tapped it again, two inches higher.
TUD.
A flake of black paint peeled away. It showed a chalky, porous gray surface riddled with tiny air pockets and yellowish stone veins.
Frank pulled white marking chalk from behind his ear and drew a jagged circle around the pipe rim.
“Thousand-Year Star Iron, Patriarch?” Frank asked deadpan, turning around with his hammer on his hip. “Who forged this column? A blind blacksmith melting down stolen farm plows in a dirt trench?”
Shen Canghai’s face twitched. “You dare insult our metalworking legacy?! That’s sacred star iron, cooled in the Nine-Fold Frost Spring!”
“It’s forty percent blast-fire melted rock waste,” Frank replied flatly, his voice cutting through the steam like a razor. “The core isn’t star iron. It’s pig iron mixed with discarded farm plows, scrap kettles, and twelve percent lead-zinc solder to lower the melting point and save coal.”
In Frank’s eyes, the QA system box generated its complete metalworking breakdown.
Frank pointed his brass hammer at the chalk circle on the pillar.
“Look at the crystal-clear fracture pattern along that cold shut,” Frank said to Magistrate Meng and Dan Kui. “When you pour cast iron at low heat levels to cut fuel costs, the liquid skins over before fusing. That seam isn’t a joint. It’s an internal crack running through seventy percent of the column.”
Dan Kui stepped forward, pressing trembling fingertips against the chalk circle.
The Chief Judge extended his spiritual sense into the metal. A heartbeat later, his eyes snapped open in catatonic horror!
“By the Heavens...” Dan Kui gasped, beard shivering. “The inside is hollow! It’s filled with hardened gravel and rusted melted rock waste-cake! The spiritual qi channels are cut by lead deposits!”
Dan Kui whirled on Shen Canghai, his voice shaking with fury: “Shen Canghai! You billed five hundred thousand spirit stones per pillar for pure star iron! You delivered gravel-packed sewer pipes!”
“Slander!” Shen Canghai shouted in cornered desperation. “A minor casting strange flaw doesn’t prove fraud!”
“It stood because the building wasn’t at full heat load,” Frank said. He walked toward the fire. “Let’s talk about the boiler.”
Frank stopped in front of the sixty-foot fire’s intake pipe hub.
A massive bronze pipe fed high-pressure steam into ceiling chimney pipes. Frank pointed his red pencil at the main pressure relief valve.
The emergency relief valve was a heavy brass lever designed to vent excess steam if internal pressure exceeded safety margins.
Except the lever was not free to move.
A thick coil of rusted through copper fence wire was wrapped twelve times around the balance weight arm, binding the valve shut against a rusted bracket!
“Exhibit B,” Frank said, tapping the wire. “The emergency relief valve is wired down with chicken wire. Why wire down a safety release, Judge?”
Magistrate Meng frowned: “To prevent the valve from releasing steam?”
“Bingo,” Frank said. “Because the boiler’s internal coils are crusted with four inches of scale. Water flow is choked by eighty percent. The moment they light all nine burners, steam pressure spikes to two hundred and fifty pounds of pressure.”
Frank looked over at Grandmaster Ouyang.
“If the valve opened, it would vent high-pressure steam through the plaza floorboards, blowing your judging pavilion into the sky,” Frank said deadpan. “So instead of descaling the boiler, your crew wired the valve shut to silence the gauge.”
Grandmaster Ouyang collapsed onto the flat stone slabs, weeping into his sleeves.
“And that’s not all,” Frank added, walking to the rear of the fire.
Behind the fire lay a dark trench cut into the bedrock floor. A discharge pipe trickled rainbow-bright slurry directly into an open rock fissure.
Frank knelt, dipped a strip of treated litmus paper into the liquid, and held it up.
The paper turned jet-black within half a second.
“Liquid silver-sulfur ether runoff,” Frank said. “No evaporation kiln. No charcoal scrubber. An illegal drainage trench straight into the karst fissure.”
Frank pointed toward the ceiling.
“That fissure feeds the Northern Dragon Spring,” Frank said. “The main drinking underground water bed for three hundred thousand residents in the lower district. Every time they fire this fire, two hundred gallons of liquid silver sludge seep into city drinking wells.”
Magistrate Meng’s face turned corpse-pale.
“The Northern Dragon Spring...” Meng choked out. “For six months, thirty thousand commoners in the North Ward suffered from trembling limbs and clouded vision! Astrologers claimed it was a ghost curse!”
“It was chronic liquid silver poisoning,” Frank replied flatly. “Caused by an unlicensed chemical dump beneath your premier monument.”
Frank reached into the boiler’s control panel. Then he pulled out a stack of soot-covered parchment logbooks.
He flipped through the brittle pages, displaying the official stamps for Magistrate Meng.
“And look who signed off on safety rule-following,” Frank said. “Contract Number 441. Approved structurally sound by Deacon Yan. Approved and co-signed by the Royal Household Comptroller... Bearing the personal wax seal of Consort Rong.”
The ten royal court guards froze in stunned silence.
Patriarch Shen Canghai stumbled backward until his shoulders hit the defective pillar, his eyes fully empty of hope.
The paper trail was complete. Shoddy melted rock waste pillars, wired-down boiler valves, poisonous runoff, and multi-million-stone embezzlement—all tied to the Shen Clan, the guild, and Third Prince Jiang Feng’s royal faction.
Suddenly, a terrifying metal screech tore through the vault!
SKRRRRRRRRR-CLANG!
Pillar Number Four groaned. A network of jagged cracks raced across the chalk circle Frank had drawn.
At the same time, the wired-down brass relief valve on the fire began to shriek! The pressure needle spiked wildly past the red mark, shaking against the stop pin at three hundred PSI!
“Core heat runaway!” Dan Kui shrieked, clutching his hard hat. “The Earth Fire has surged! The boiler is going to detonate! Run!”
“Nobody runs,” Frank snapped, his voice sharp as forged steel. “Ling’er! Bring the brass valve-wrench!”
“Here, Master!” Princess Jiang Ling’er dashed forward, handing the eighteen-inch tool to Frank without pause.
Frank clamped the jaws of the wrench around the backup cold-water bypass cock.
“Niu Mang! Cut the draft door!”
“On it, Master!” Niu Mang swung his hard dark metal-iron trench shovel with pinpoint care. It slammed the flat blade against the main air damper.
THWACK-SLAM!
The iron draft door slammed shut, instantly choking off eighty percent of the oxygen feeding the underground coal fires!
Frank threw his entire body weight into the wrench.
CREAK... SNAP!
The rusted bypass valve gave way. A flood of icy pool water surged into the overheated boiler jackets with a violent hiss!
PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSH!
Dense white plumes of clean steam vented safely through the backup blow-off stack into drainage chimney pipes.
The shrieking needle on the brass dial shuddered, slowed, and drifted backward, coming to rest safely at ninety-five PSI.
The deep groaning of the vault slowly subsided into silence.
The massive fire stood dark, cooled, and dormant.
In the center of the quiet chamber, Frank wiped soot from his forehead, adjusted his hard hat. Then he tucked the brass wrench into his tool belt.
“Bypass engaged,” Frank muttered. “System steadied. That will hold for twenty-four hours before the melted rock waste pillars start creeping again.”
Frank turned to Chief Magistrate Meng, who was leaning against a court guard’s shoulder, heart hammering against his ribs.
“Judge,” Frank said, tapping the fraudulent logbooks against his clipboard. “The physical evidence is secured. The boiler is dead. The code violations are documented. Post armed guards at every exit, impound the Shen Clan foundry records, and issue your arrest warrants.”
Magistrate Meng straightened his robes, eyes burning with court fury.
“By the sovereign power of the Great Da-Qi Royal High Trial!” Meng bellowed. “Patriarch Shen Canghai! Grandmaster Ouyang! Deacon Yan! You’re hereby arrested on charges of high treason, load-bearing manslaughter, and grand embezzlement of royal treasuries!”
Meng turned to Frank, bowing with deep respect:
“Master Lu... The empire owes you a debt that can’t be measured in gold. Let’s climb to the Imperial Plaza. The capital awaits your judgment.”
Frank picked up his tea thermos from the grease barrel, took a refreshing sip of jasmine tea. Then he checked his wrist watch.
“Good,” Frank said. “It’s four-thirty. We can wrap up the awards ceremony, collect the prize money, and still beat the five-o’clock rush hour.”