FZZZZZZT.
The twenty poisoned arrows never reached Austin’s dustpan.
Five inches from his apron, the heat around his body caught them. The venom vanished in a puff of sulfur. The iron tips flashed into sparks, and the wooden shafts turned to ash.
A few dull embers drifted into the bamboo pan.
Austin tipped them into the weeds and shook his head.
“Garbage speed. Under ninety meters a second. No allowance for the rising air. You couldn’t punch through half-inch drywall with a spread like that. Did anyone test these enemies?”
On the war skiff, Captain Sha Yan stumbled backward until his spine hit the mast.
“Twenty rank-three armor-piercing arrows... reduced to kitchen dust? What kind of immortal ward is he hiding?”
Austin ignored him.
He reached into his apron pocket. His fingers passed bent nails, a chalk stub, a leather washer, and a brass plumb bob before finding a smooth gray river pebble about the size of a walnut.
He had picked it up before breakfast. It was dense and even, a good stone to use as a small shim under the new tool shed.
Right now, he had another use for it.
Austin held it between his thumb and forefinger. The developer console opened.
“Yes. Clear the airspace. I still have two carrot beds to plant.”
The star in his dantian flared. A thin stream of power ran down his right arm and into the pebble.
The stone became a blinding blue-white point of light. Its glow drowned out the sun, and the air snapped tight around Austin’s fist.
He drew his wrist back an inch and flicked the stone toward the ship.
No battle stance. No chant. Just the easy motion of a man skipping a rock across a pond.
THWIP.
BOOM!
The shock wave flattened the clover for fifty yards and knocked the Clear Sky survivors across the dirt. A thin white line cut through the sky.
The pebble struck Sha Yan’s ship in the center of its iron keel.
CRACK—BOOM!
The seventy-foot vessel vanished in a white fireball. Its hull, engines, weapons, and crew burst into hot ash before anyone could scream.
The blast caught the two trailing skiffs. Their masts snapped and their hulls folded inward. Both ships spun into the deep ravines, trailing smoke and flame.
Then silence returned.
Gray ash drifted over the pines. No one had time to stare for long. There were too many people still bleeding.
A demonic archer crawled from the wreckage near the trees and raised his bow toward the porch. Xiaoyao stepped between him and the wounded. One short sweep knocked the bow into the ditch and pinned the man to the ground.
“Treatment area stays clear,” Xiaoyao said. His voice shook, but his broom did not.
Austin nodded to him, then turned to the others.
“Elder Mu, take six healers and the worst cases onto the porch. Zhao, get every able-bodied disciple moving stretchers. Gu Qing, make a list of the missing. Use doors and clean wood for splints. Save the broken ships for salvage, but no one goes near a lit boiler.”
Gu Qing stared at him. “You are giving us shelter?”
“You need help. Argue later.” Austin shook the static from his hand. “And bring those fallen water barrels before the wounded get thirsty.”
They moved. Not because he was a sovereign on a screen, but because his orders gave them something useful to do.
PING.
Austin took a slow breath.
The core in his dantian grew denser and heavier, but its containment held firm. His shoulders broadened slightly, and the ache from two days of shoveling gravel left his back.
“Level fifteen. An automated mining quarry?” He opened the blueprint with growing interest. “Finally. No more breaking surface rock by hand.”
The plans showed a thirty-meter shaft, ore chutes, conveyors, and rock crushers. It could turn raw mountain into clean building stone while Austin ate dinner.
Before he reached the tool bench, a furious roar shook the clouds.
“WHO DARES BUTCHER MY VANGUARD?!”
The sky turned blood-red.
The three-hundred-foot Nether-Dragon Flagship burst into the gorge. At its prow, the Nine-Nether Blood River Annihilation Cannon glowed with crimson power and aimed straight at Sunset Peak.
Patriarch Nether-Ghost stood on the dragon skull above it. His scarlet robes whipped in the wind, and the souls of ten thousand dead warriors screamed around him.