Behind the sound-dampened cedar double doors of the inner council chamber, the air tasted of scorched agarwood, spilled dragon-well tea dregs, and cold, sour bureaucratic sweat.
Provincial Governor Zhao had already thrown his nine-dragon gold crown onto the low rosewood table. The heavy imperial coronet rolled across the grain, denting a lacquer inkstand before clattering onto its side. Zhao paid it no mind. He paced the carpet like a caged leopard, his silk sleeves hiked up past his elbows, spilling lukewarm tea over his embroidered cuffs every time his hands twitched.
Around the table sat the three highest-ranking dignitaries in the northern commandery: Grandmaster Ouyang, Chief Arbiter Tie, and Imperial Chancellor Wei.
None of them looked like statesmen. They looked like four men standing on the trapdoor of a public gallows waiting for the lever to drop.
"Tell me the transcription was wrong," Zhao whispered. His voice was raw, scraping through clenched teeth as he closed the distance and knotted his fists in the iron scales of Arbiter Tie’s gorget. "Tell me the junior clerk misread the tally stone. Tell me that sixty-foot obelisk had a hairline frost crack from three winters back!"
Arbiter Tie dropped to his knees, his forehead grazing the carpet pile. His weathered cheeks were the color of cold tallow.
"My Lord, by my mother’s ancestral tablet, that pillar was sound! Twelve master talisman-smiths cleared the crystalline matrix at daybreak. Zero flaws. Not a speck of internal fatigue. The boy didn't even take a swing at it! No spell incantations. No spirit chants. No martial stance. He just laid the flat of that blue wrench against the base—light as a cooper tapping a hoop on a barrel—and the array screamed! The runes blew past five hundred thousand points, the diagnostic core spat out the forbidden First Epoch glyph *NaN*, and sixty vertical feet of sacred Nether-Obsidian sheared into thirty tons of builder's sand in half a heartbeat!"
"Do you know what *NaN* translates to?!" Chancellor Wei stammered, his fingers digging into his bald scalp until red welts showed. "The high archivists unsealed the black-iron scrolls from the First Dynasty! *Not a Number*! It is the tongue of the Ancient Star Builders! It means his density, his mass, his foundational strength exceeds the mathematical boundaries of the Heavenly Dao itself!"
From the corner by the lattice screen, Grandmaster Ouyang sat slumped on an ebony stool, clutching his ribs as though a rib had punctured his lung.
"The metal..." Ouyang groaned, rocking back and forth. "My Dragon-Tooth Chisel... three hundred years of guild heritage, forged from the fossilized bicuspid of a Void-Dragon... turned to powdered grit. Gone. And the boy has four twenty-pound billets of raw Cosmic Star-Steel dumped on a pine workbench next to the pit latrines! He traded two of those celestial wonders to Tang the Tinker for crumpled charcoal drawings of mud dredges and sump pumps! Sump pumps, Zhao!"
"And you saw the dog," Chancellor Wei squeaked, his voice pitching into a dog whistle. "Eight hundred pounds of celestial Nether-Solar Cerberus! It dropped fifty feet like a falling meteor, took twenty thousand liters of concentrated wyrm bile to the chest without blinking, and shook that five-century Calamity Dragon until its eyeballs scrambled like soft eggs! That monster is curled up outside our door right now, using the beast's severed horn as a chew stick!"
Governor Zhao slowly released Tie’s collar and backed away, falling into his high-backed sandalwood throne. He covered his face with trembling, liver-spotted palms.
"He isn't some backwater disciple from the crags," Zhao whispered, his chest heaving under his embroidered robe. "Forget mountain sects. Forget rogue God-Tier Patriarchs playing games in the lower world. That is a living elder architect. An ancient sun-forger who stepped down from the higher astral spheres in blue canvas dungarees to inspect our mortal foundations. And he found them wanting."
Zhao snapped his head upright, his eyes wild and bloodshot.
"If some hotheaded clan heir insults him... if one of our arrogant young sword scions pops an alchemical blood pill and scuffs those blue overalls with a rusty broadsword... he won't just kill the boy. He will drop the sky on us! He will fold Canglan Citadel like a damp paper lantern and erase thirty million souls from the imperial tax rolls in two tenths of a second!"
Zhao slammed his palm down on the rosewood table, rattling the jade teacups.
"Hear my emergency decrees!
"First: Send runners to every remaining combatant in the championship roster immediately. Anyone paired against Austin forfeits within three seconds of setting foot on the sand. If a single idiot draws three inches of steel or flares a sword intent, I will have his clan stripped of noble rank, his family cemetery plowed with salt, and his entire lineage sent south to dig sulfur pits for high treason!
"Second: The Grand Artisan Championship. Notify all nine guild elders on the adjudication panel. Whatever that boy builds—whether it is a world-cleaving celestial ballista or a cast-iron skillet—every judge awards a clean, unquestioned, unanimous hundred points. He wins the championship. No debates. No commentary.
"Third: The First Epoch Matrix Core. Unseal the nine-dragon glacial jade casket. We present it to him on bended knee, with the full ceremonial honors of an imperial state visit. We hand him the prize, we bow until our noses touch the sand, and we pray to every god in the firmament that he packs his dog and leaves this city before sunset!"
"At once, My Lord!" the three officials chorused, their voices cracking as they pressed their foreheads to the floorboards.
***
Ten minutes later, the afternoon glare beat down across the five-hundred-meter combat crater.
Austin was reclined in his plush rosewood armchair on the royal dais, heavy steel-toed work boots resting comfortably on the swollen, softly wheezing belly of the eighty-foot Earth-Wyrm. The dragon emitted a low, rhythmic snore every few seconds, smelling faintly of sulfur and garden soil.
Curled beside the armchair, Pug was diligently working over the tip of a severed obsidian horn. The hound’s jaw muscles bunched, cracking off thumbnail-sized chips of bone with wet, contented crunches: *Cronch. Cronch.*
Austin turned a page on his clipboard, tracing the pencil lines of Master Tang’s hand-drawn hydraulic ram schematics. He pulled a brass grease pencil from behind his ear and scribbled a note in the margin: *Check check-valve spring tension. Needs stainless ball bearings, not lead shot. Flow rate restricted by rough casting.*
Down in the pit, Arbiter Tie stepped onto the sand with a bronze megaphone, clearing his throat until his voice echoed off the volcanic basalt:
*"ROUND TWO, MATCH ONE OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP BRACKET!*
*"CONTESTANT AUSTIN VERSUS... YOUNG MASTER GU CHEN OF THE IRON-SWORD SECT!"*
From the western competitor tunnel stepped Young Master Gu Chen. He was a Seventh-Stage Foundation swordsman, dressed in crisp white linen, an heirloom broadsword strapped across his shoulder.
Gu Chen took three measured steps onto the sand.
He halted.
Slowly, carefully, he tilted his chin upward toward the royal gallery.
He saw the teen in denim overalls sitting with his feet propped on the belly of the five-hundred-year-old Calamity Dragon. He saw the three black heads of the Cerberus gnawing happily on the jagged horn. He saw Austin glance down over the rim of his spectacles, an unsharpened pencil hovering over a piece of scrap paper.
Gu Chen’s complexion shifted from sun-bronzed to the shade of sour milk.
His hand never went near his sword hilt.
Instead, Gu Chen dropped straight to both knees, threw his palms toward the sky, and screamed at the top of his lungs:
*"I CONCEDE! I SURRENDER! MY RIGHT ELBOW HAS DEVELOPED AN ACUTE AND INCURABLE MERIDIAN CRAMP! THE QI FLOW IS BLOCKED! I FORFEIT UNCONDITIONALLY!"*
Without waiting for the gong, Gu Chen scrambled to his feet, hitched up his robes, and sprinted back into the dark tunnel like a jackrabbit fleeing a brush fire.
Arbiter Tie blinked twice, wiped a sleeve across his dripping brow, and struck the bronze plate:
*"WINNER BY FORFEIT: CONTESTANT AUSTIN!"*
Up in the box, Austin lowered his clipboard, staring at the empty tunnel in utter confusion.
"What was that?" Austin muttered, tapping the arm of his chair. "He didn't even load into the match. Did his connection drop in the lobby?"
Five minutes later:
*"ROUND THREE, MATCH ONE!*
*"CONTESTANT AUSTIN VERSUS... LADY SHEN OF THE FROST-MIST PAVILION!"*
Lady Shen drifted out of the eastern gate like a winter breeze, gossamer silks floating around her waist. She took two steps onto the sand, caught sight of the limp dragon serving as a footstool, dropped to the ground, and grabbed her left ankle with theatrical agony:
*"Woe is me! A fatal rupture of the celestial tendons! The gravel has betrayed my footsteps! I cannot bear my own weight! I forfeit!"*
Before the gong could ring, four junior disciples from the Frost-Mist Pavilion rushed out with a wicker stretcher, hoisted Lady Shen aboard, and vanished back into the tunnel in under three seconds.
*"WINNER BY FORFEIT: CONTESTANT AUSTIN!"*
Match Four: Master Ba of the Mountain-Cleaver Clan marched out, took one look at Pug's wagging tails, announced that his morning horoscope forbade the drawing of metal implements under an unfavorable moon, and bolted.
Match Five: Young Master Song claimed acute digestive poisoning from cold breakfast noodles—lamenting that the heavy dough friction had wrecked his internal dantian—and surrendered while clutching his belly.
Match Six: Sword Scion Liu stepped through the archway, dropped to his knees, bowed three times toward Austin's box, vaulted clean over the ten-foot boundary wall, and took off down the public thoroughfare outside the stadium.
In less than twenty-two minutes, Austin had cleared five consecutive tournament rounds without ever lifting his heels off the sleeping dragon's ribs.
A blue chime sounded in his field of vision. Austin pulled up his interface:
Austin sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses.
"Pitiful," he muttered to Li Xiaoyao. "Every single bracket. You grind your gear, you prep your consumables, you show up on tournament day, and the entire lobby starts queue-dodging to protect their win-rate. Fake disconnects, phantom injuries, rage-quits before the first bell. Not an ounce of competitive pride in the whole province."
Li Xiaoyao clasped his hands, bowing with gleaming eyes. "The Master's terrible presence alone shatters the martial spirit of our greatest champions! Before the Sacred Spanner, worldly blades know only shame!"
"Quit romanticizing it, Xiaoyao. That ain't an aura. That's just scrub behavior from folks who can't stomach an honest loss."
Before the boy could argue the point, a brassy fanfare of ninety-nine long imperial horns tore across the arena rim:
*TA-TA-RAAAAAAAA!*
Governor Zhao emerged onto the forward rostrum, clutching the gilded railing with white knuckles. His amplified voice shook with forced regal splendor:
*"CITIZENS, MARTIAL MASTERS, AND HONORED GUESTS OF THE GREAT YAN!*
*"DUE TO UNCONTESTED MARTIAL SUPREMACY IN THE COMBAT ARENA, WE TRANSITION DIRECTLY TO THE CROWN JEWEL OF OUR CENTENNIAL FESTIVAL!*
*"THE GRAND ARTISAN CHAMPIONSHIP FORGING EXPO!*
*"LET THE MASTER BUILDERS OF THE REALM STEP FORWARD TO REVEAL THEIR CELESTIAL MASTERWORKS BEFORE THE THRONE!"*
Austin's eyes brightened behind his lenses.
He slid the hydraulic sketches into his brass blueprint tube, capped it with a firm push, and checked the quick-release magnet holding his five-foot blue pipe wrench to his back harness. He rose from the armchair, shaking the sand and dog hair from his denim pant legs.
"Now we're talking," Austin said, stretching his shoulders until his joints cracked. "The crafting minigame. Time to show these amateurs how to build a real machine."