CRACK-CRUNCH.
The two-ton anchor tore through Austin’s perimeter fence. Two hand-cut cedar posts snapped and flew into the brush.
The heavy chain whipped across the dirt behind it, throwing sparks from the gravel. It caught Austin’s garden string and ripped it apart.
He had spent forty-five minutes setting that line. He had measured every corner, checked it from both directions, and tapped each stake until the cord was straight and tight. Now the stakes cartwheeled into the blackberry bushes.
The anchor cut a deep trench through the center of the bed.
Austin had prepared that plot for heirloom Nantes carrots. He had sifted sand, leaf mold, and wood ash into the soil so the roots would grow straight. The seed rows were half an inch deep, three inches apart, and graded at a two-percent slope to drain after heavy rain.
Now the whole patch was a heap of torn soil, gravel, and shredded mulch.
Then oily soot from the skiff’s corpse-coal engines rolled over the courtyard. It settled on map point [X: 04, Y: 12], leaving a sticky black smear on his polished floor.
Thirty yards above the cabin, the seventy-foot warship creaked beneath its floating runes.
“BWAHAHAHA!”
Captain Sha Yan leaned over the bow with one spiked boot on the winch.
“Look at the great Clear Sky Sect! Running uphill to hide behind a peasant’s cabbage shed! Not even your dead ancestors can save you now!”
In the weeds beyond the courtyard, two hundred battered survivors huddled together.
Gu Qing knelt in the dirt, his violet robes burned and torn. Chief Elder Zhao supported him with one arm. Elder Mu was binding a gash in a young disciple’s leg.
Around them, sixty Foundation elders and more than a hundred disciples faced the three warships. Some wept. Others could barely hold their chipped swords.
Austin helped the two scouts onto the porch, then saw the rest of the wounded. A girl held a bolt in her calf. An old deacon had blood running into his eyes. Several disciples were trying to carry a friend with burned hands.
“Xiaoyao, take my clean sheets from the shelf. Tear them into bandages. Elder Mu, start with the worst cases.”
“What about the ships?” Xiaoyao asked.
Austin looked at the anchor scar and his ruined carrot bed. His forty-five minutes of careful measuring were gone. The joke of it almost made him laugh. Then another wounded boy cried out, and the garden stopped mattering.
“First I stop them. Then we treat people.”
He handed Xiaoyao the broom. “Guard the porch and the treatment area. If anyone tries to come through, you stop them. No chasing ships, no heroics. Keep these people safe.”
Xiaoyao planted his feet in front of the porch. “I will.”
Austin picked up a flat bamboo dustpan and walked to the edge of the courtyard.
Two broken fence posts lay in the mud. His string was tangled in a briar patch. Greasy soot baked onto map point four-twelve.
A muscle beside his left eye began to twitch.
Deep in his dantian, the blue star started to spin faster.
HUMMMMMMMMM.
Heat and gravity bent the air around him. Moisture froze into tiny crystals, and the sunlight darkened at the edges of his shoulders.
To Austin, the ship above him was as offensive as the mess. Its timbers were warped, its brackets were rusty, and its power lines flickered unevenly. Bare pipes dripped hot water over the side. It was a flying safety violation.
A system alert appeared.
Austin looked up at the wooden keel.
His voice was quiet and cold.
“Who dragged an iron anchor through my carrot bed?”
On the foredeck, Sha Yan rested a scimitar across his shoulder and spat betel juice into the grass.
“A peasant with a kitchen broom? You dare talk back to the Blood Wolf vanguard? You should be thanking us for burning your miserable shack! Archers! Pin him to his porch!”
Twenty archers stepped to the rail. They drew black bows made from tiger bone and corpse sinew. Each barbed iron arrow carried venom that could rot a cultivator’s spirit veins in seconds.
They fired together.
TWANG—SHREEEEEEEK!
The arrows raced toward Austin, leaving green trails in the air.
To him, the volley was sloppy. The shafts wobbled, and nobody had accounted for the hot air rising from the ravine.
“MASTER, LOOK OUT!” Li Xiaoyao lunged forward with his broom.
Pug sprang onto all four paws, lightning crackling between the fangs of his three heads. On the roof, the Sun-Crows spread their golden wings and opened their beaks.
Austin did not move. He simply raised the bamboo dustpan in front of his chest.
“Down, Pug. Keep the hens calm. Don’t waste the aggro on griefers. I’m handling this incident report myself.”