Elder Pei Hai lay flat on the floor of Blood Wolf Castle’s council hall, his torn robes covered in mud. Both burned hands were wrapped in stained linen. He struck his forehead against the stone every few seconds.
“He grows beans on Xue Sha’s swords!” he wailed. “The golden birds breathe solar fire! There’s an eight-hundred-pound, three-headed hound sleeping on his porch! Patriarch, we cannot attack. Sunset Peak is the private garden of an Ancient Sun God!”
On the dais, Patriarch Nether-Ghost had heard enough.
SLAP.
A wave of crimson force struck Pei Hai and threw him thirty feet across the hall. He hit the giant beast ribs that formed the wall and coughed black blood.
“COWARD! SNIVELING WORM!”
Nether-Ghost’s scarlet robes spread like bat wings. His Half-Step Nascent Soul aura snuffed out the lamps and coated his skull throne in red frost.
“You let an exiled mortal and a few Clear Sky illusions frighten you. A Sun God growing peas? Divine beasts on a pine roof? It is a mirage! Gu Qing created a painted scarecrow to bluff our army!”
He drew himself upright.
“Clear Sky spent everything it had to ambush Xue Sha’s team. They want us to retreat in fear. If we turn back now, the other nine demonic sects will smell weakness and tear our bloodline apart.”
He marched to a black altar. On it rested a five-foot war horn made from the thigh bone of an ancient blood titan.
Nether-Ghost lifted it and blew with the full force of his core.
HOOOOOOOOOOORN!
The Great Demonic Blood Horn shook the underground hall.
Outside, the swamp boiled. Purple flames burst from the mud, and old banks collapsed into the reeds.
Fifty dark shapes rose from the sunken docks beneath the castle.
They were Blood War Skiffs, seventy-foot flying ships built from iron-banded bog oak. Tattered banners hung from their masts. Soul-piercing ballistae and corpse-fire catapults lined their decks. Three thousand demonic warriors in red iron armor howled as the fleet climbed into the sky.
At its center flew the Nether-Dragon Flagship.
The three-hundred-foot vessel was built from deep-sea dragon bones and demonic bronze. Ten thousand blood-refined crystals powered it. At its prow sat the Nine-Nether Blood River Annihilation Cannon, a siege weapon made to blast through mountains.
Nether-Ghost landed on the forward deck and pointed his iron staff south.
“ADVANCE! DROWN THE SOUTHERN CLOUD MOUNTAINS IN FIRE! TEAR DOWN THEIR GATES! LEAVE NO DISCIPLE, BIRD, OR HOUND ALIVE!”
The fifty skiffs surged forward in formation, their dark sails snapping in the wind.
***
Five miles south, nine wild strokes of the Grand Heavenly Alarm Bell shattered Clear Sky Sect’s morning peace.
Apprentices dropped their practice swords and ran. Deacons shouted orders across the courtyards.
On the Heavenly Sword Pavilion’s high terrace, Sect Master Gu Qing, Elder Mu Chen, and Chief Elder Zhao stood together. Their knuckles whitened around the jade railing.
A five-mile-wide wall of crimson fog rolled through the northern passes. Fifty skiffs rode above it like sharks, and war drums beat inside the cloud.
BUM. BUM. BUM. BUM.
“The Blood Wolf Sect,” Gu Qing said. “Nether-Ghost has emptied his vaults. He brought every ship and every killer in the marsh.”
“Sect Master!” Elder Zhao shouted. “The Nine-Peaks Barrier is at full strength, but that flagship’s cannon will break our outer wards within the hour. What are your orders?”
Gu Qing looked over the ancient pines and tiled roofs of his home.
“Move the junior disciples into the deep vaults. All Golden Core elders and senior disciples assemble at the main pass. Prepare the Blood Sacrifice Array. If the sect burns today, we make them pay for every yard.”
“What about Sunset Peak?” Elder Mu pointed toward the quiet western ridge. “The Ancestral Sovereign is resting there. If their vanguard crosses his boundary and disturbs his lawn—”
Gu Qing’s face drained of color.
“May the ancestors help us. If those madmen interrupt his seclusion, I fear their fleet will not be the only thing destroyed.”
***
On Sunset Peak, the morning remained warm and calm.
Austin stood in the dirt between his cabin and the chicken coop. He held a wooden folding ruler, four pine stakes, and a spool of twine. A pencil rested behind his ear, and a framing mallet waited under his arm.
“Three meters by six. Square the corners with a three-four-five triangle before anything else. If the frame is crooked, the boards won’t fit and the dirt spills out every time it rains.”
He drove in a stake, pulled the string tight, and checked the line with one eye closed.
“Carrots on the east side for morning sun. Potatoes on the west. Sixteen inches between rows, and the rain barrel can water everything by gravity.”
BUM. BUM. BUM. BUM.
The distant drums rattled the dirt in his seed tray. Alarm bells and faint explosions followed from the east.
Austin stopped with his mallet in the air. He stood and looked over the ridge.
Five miles away, black smoke rose above Clear Sky Sect. Tiny red shapes swarmed around its towers, and green and violet sword light flashed between them.
A system notice appeared.
Austin’s left eye twitched.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. A server-wide raid in the middle of my garden layout?”
He threw the mallet onto the dirt and put his hands on his hips.
“And that music. The same four-second drum loop over and over. Why is there no volume control in build mode? That’s basic design!”
Beside the porch, Pug rose onto his front paws. All three heads turned east. Six ruby eyes fixed on the approaching skiffs, and violet sparks jumped between his fangs.
Austin picked up his mallet. “Stay down, Pug. Let the raid guilds finish their fight so the music stops.”
Two Clear Sky scouts stumbled out of the trees. One had an arrow in his shoulder. The other was dragging him and leaving blood on the trail.
Austin dropped the mallet again.
Perhaps this was still a game. Perhaps those were only damage effects. But he had watched men get hurt on real jobs, and he could not stand there measuring carrots while somebody bled out.
“Xiaoyao, bring water and clean cloth. Pug, keep the path clear.”
He went to meet the scouts. “Inside the fence. Slowly. I’ve got you.”
Behind them, more wounded disciples appeared between the trees.