Peeling an egg as hot as a furnace took patience and thick leather gloves.
Austin held the ruby shell between two flat pieces of slate and tapped until it cracked. Steam hissed out. The little kitchen filled with the smell of cooked egg and hot metal.
He popped the golden yolk into his mouth.
It tasted like rich, salted butter with a faint electric tingle. Warmth spread from his stomach to his fingertips.
Austin wiped his mouth and picked up his hoe.
“Two nails and a kiln. Now we’re talking. Nails are worth more than gold on a remote site. You can’t hold a roof together with good intentions. Give me eight-penny nails and I can fix those rotted floor beams.”
Li Xiaoyao was still sweeping the courtyard.
The boy looked possessed. His eyes shone, and his breath came in slow, steady rhythm. Golden mist rose from the black floor with each stroke.
He had swept map point fourteen-eight for eighteen hours. Along the way, he had breathed in traces of the star-fire leaking from the ground. The heat had cleared three blockages in his spirit veins, and he now stood one step from the Third Stage of Qi Gathering. Most outer disciples needed three years of hard training to reach it.
“Senior Chu, the floor is clean.” Li Xiaoyao leaned on the broom. “I did the corners too.”
Austin checked the spot. It shone like new lacquer.
“Good work. Sit down and eat the egg I left you. Then take a break before you collapse. I’m clearing brush on the southern ridge.”
Xiaoyao looked at the covered bowl. “You saved that for me?”
“You did the work. You get a share.” Austin handed him a dry pair of cloth gloves. “Watch the chickens. If another egg appears, leave it in the straw. Don’t pick it up with your bare hands.”
***
The southern slope dropped steeply into a foggy gorge known as the Deep Pit of Despair. Black shale and tangled briars covered the hillside.
For a thousand years, Clear Sky Sect had forbidden its disciples to go there. According to the records, the Founding Patriarch had trapped an Earth-Fiend Demon General beneath a thirty-foot monument of Heaven-Suppressing Soul Iron.
Austin knew none of this.
He saw an overgrown bank blocking his drainage route and spoiling the view.
[Invasive Briars: 50+ Clusters | Terrain Clutter: Severe]
He rested the hoe on his shoulder and studied the long slope.
“Clearing this by hand would take all day. A builder who uses the wrong tool goes broke paying for labor. Where’s a brush hog when you need one?”
He closed his eyes and focused on the warm spark behind his navel. The console offered a new setting.
[Heat Output: 0.001% → 0.05%]
“A quick controlled burn,” he said. “Same idea as a weed torch on a gravel drive.”
He leveled the hoe at the slope and pushed his will into it.
WHUUUUUM.
A wave of white heat rolled downhill.
Thousands of briars vanished into fine vapor. The shale glowed red, softened, and then cooled into a smooth sheet of black glass. Two seconds later, the entire slope looked like a new concrete spillway.
“That’s site clearance.” Austin pocketed the nails and tapped their heads together. They gave a clean ring. “One pass instead of eight hours of digging.”
He turned toward the shack, but a deep groan shook the rock beneath his feet.
CRACK.
A huge slab stood in the center of the glassy slope. It had been buried under roots for a thousand years. The thirty-foot monument was made of black star-fallen iron and covered in blood-red runes.
Austin’s heat had softened the ancient seal like wax. The runes melted into oily smoke.
BOOM!
The ground split open. A cloud of sulfur poured from the gorge, carrying the stench of rotten metal, burned bone, and old rage.
“KAAA-HAHAHAHA!”
The roar shook pine needles from trees three miles away.
“ONE THOUSAND YEARS BENEATH THE PATRIARCH’S SEAL!”
A massive claw of black bone and red magma burst from the crack. A horned head with four burning eyes pulled itself into the sunlight. Green venom dripped from its fangs and hissed on the stone.
“CLEAR SKY DOGS! I, EARTH-FIEND GENERAL YAN JIAO, AM FREE! I WILL SLAUGHTER YOUR ELDERS, DRINK YOUR SECT MASTER’S BLOOD, AND CARVE MY THRONE FROM—”
The demon saw Austin and stopped.
Austin stood five paces away, leaning on his rusty hoe with the tired look of a man whose work had just been interrupted.
Yan Jiao’s ancient senses saw something very different from a weak outer disciple. Inside the young man’s body burned a tiny, unrestrained star. Its power bent the air around him. Even the stray heat had begun to soften the demon’s black horns.
The venom on Yan Jiao’s fangs boiled away.
That is no cultivator, the demon thought in horror. That is a solar god from the First God Era. Why is a star emperor standing outside my tomb with a farming tool?
Austin sighed and waved the hoe at him.
“Great. An underground mole. Shoo. Get out of here. Burrowing pests ruin the drainage and tear up the base.”
The demon froze.
He commands me to return to the dirt or be destroyed.
“I OBEY, SUN EMPEROR!” Yan Jiao wailed.
He shoved his head back into the crack, grabbed the broken edges of the ground, and pulled them closed over himself. Then he dug three thousand feet deeper and sealed the passage with three layers of demonic wards.
Silence returned to the ridge. A thin ribbon of steam rose from the seam.
Austin scratched his jaw with the hoe handle.
“Huh. It lost interest right away. Strange mob behavior. Oh well, saved me five points of tool wear.”
He turned and whistled as he climbed back toward the shack.
***
Halfway up the southern trail, Bai Chen, Senior Brother Shen, and twenty Iron Sword Hall disciples stood frozen on the steps.
They had heard the demon’s roar. They had smelled the sulfur. Then they had heard that same ancient horror scream, “I OBEY, SUN EMPEROR!” before burying itself alive.
Senior Brother Shen was at the fourth level of Foundation Establishment. He had fought twenty duels without his hand ever shaking. Now he could barely hold his sword sheath.
Behind him, the archers trembled so hard that their crossbow bolts rattled. One man dropped his weapon and stared into the bamboo.
“Young Master Bai,” Shen whispered, “are you certain Chu Yuan is only an outer-sect cripple?”