At high noon, heat shimmered off the imperial pavers in thick, greasy waves. The distant red cliffs wobbled like ribbons of molten wax under the glare.
Where the Northern Imperial Highway met a silt-choked canal road, a single shingled roof poked out from beneath a massive locust tree. Dust coated the eaves. A sun-bleached cotton banner hung limp from a crooked bamboo pole: **[Old Man Liu’s Hand-Pulled Wheat Noodles]**.
Austin stopped at the edge of the dirt clearing, unstrapped his midnight-blue hard hat, and dragged the sleeve of his denim work shirt across his dripping forehead.
"Hunger gauge down to forty percent," Austin muttered, squinting at the flashing yellow bar in his peripheral vision. "Stamina regen penalized fifteen percent. Hauling Tier 4 payload on an empty belly is an OSHA violation waiting to happen. Time for a mandatory thirty-minute meal break."
Li Xiaoyao smiled, tying the two pack-mules to a sturdy cedar hitching rail in the shade. The mules immediately buried their noses in a water trough, tails flicking at green flies.
Behind them, Cerberus Pug didn't wait for permission.
*WHUMP.*
Eight hundred pounds of obsidian hound dropped onto the crabgrass under the locust tree. The impact rattled porcelain bowls inside the open-air shack and kicked up a cloud of dry chaff. Pug groaned with soulful, canine ecstasy. His three heads sprawled across his forepaws, red tongues lolling out into the clover, soaking in the shade.
Behind a pair of blackened cast-iron cauldrons stood Old Man Liu.
He was seventy-two, bent like a rusted pry-bar, his skin mottled with brown liver spots. Fifty years back, Liu had swung a wooden training sword as an outer aspirant at some third-rate sect down south. But his meridian roots were brittle junk—hardened like dry river clay—and he’d never cracked past Qi Condensation Stage 1.
He’d given up on the immortal path four decades ago. Now he pulled dough, boiled beef shins, and fed couriers, grain haulers, and dusty swordsmen who didn't tip.
"Welcome, travelers!" Old Man Liu called, his voice thin and raspy from forty years of broth steam. He wiped down a weathered pine bench with a stained rag. "Fresh bone broth and hot noodles! What'll it be?"
Austin sat down, testing the bench. The pine groaned, but the four-by-four legs held.
He unclipped his five-foot blue pipe wrench from his belt and propped the heavy tool against the table leg. Around his steel toes, twelve gray pebbles and thirty dried pine needles kept spinning in the red dust. Silent, frictionless micro-orbits. Three revolutions a minute.
Old Man Liu set down his rag. He blinked, staring hard at the blue wrench, then at the little ring of gravel hovering and circling Austin's boot leather.
The old cook rubbed his rheumy eyes with the back of a flour-dusted wrist. *Heat stroke,* he thought, chuckling dryly. *Old eyes playing tricks. Sun devils dancing on the road again.*
"Three extra-large bowls of beef noodles, Uncle," Austin ordered, resting his forearms on the raw wood. "Heavy chili oil, double scallions, extra braised shank slices. And if you got a wooden laundry tub or a washbasin out back, fill that with broth and noodles too. The dog gets mean when his blood sugar drops on a long haul."
"Right away, young master!"
Ten minutes later, steam billowed across the porch.
Two wide ceramic bowls hit the pine table, broth shimmering with crimson chili oil and fragrant toasted sesame seeds. Down on the dirt, Liu dropped a heavy cedar washbasin packed with forty pounds of thick wheat noodles, boiled marrow bones, and scalding beef broth right between Pug’s paws.
The hound didn't bother sniffing.
*SLURP-CRUNCH-GULP.*
Six seconds. That was all it took. Pug’s three heads worked the washbasin like a triple-piston combustion engine. Forty pounds of starch, broth, and bone vanished down three throats. The dog licked the bottom until the wet cedar shone, let out a deep, chest-rattling burp that rattled the porch shingles, and rested his chin on the empty rim with a sleepy sigh.
Austin picked up a pair of bamboo chopsticks, split them with a sharp snap, and lifted a thick ribbon of wheat noodles. He held it up to the light, inspecting the cross-section with his safety glasses.
"Good gluten strand formation," Austin murmured in genuine appreciation. "Tensile elasticity is sitting around four hundred kilopascals. Hydration ratio looks calibrated to about sixty-four percent. Minimal surface tear-out, proper starch gelatinization. Clean bite. Proper chew."
He slurped the noodles down, savoring the burn of the scorched chili and the rich marrow broth. Sweat broke out on the back of his neck.
In three minutes, his bowl was dry. His HUD chimed with a reassuring ping.
Austin pushed the empty crock away, wiping his chin with a clean cotton rag. "Good work, Uncle. Top-shelf grub. What do we owe you?"
Old Man Liu shuffled over with a warm, wrinkled smile, wiping his palms on his apron. "Two large bowls and the washbasin for the big dog... that'll come to thirty-six copper coins, young master."
Thirty-six coppers.
Austin reached into the front bib pocket of his denim dungarees.
His fingers hit empty canvas.
He checked his side pocket. Nothing but a roll of electrical tape, three brass compression nuts, and a stub of yellow lumber pencil. He checked his hip pockets. Two six-inch adjustable wrenches, a pack of hard-boiled eggs, and a scrap piece of emery cloth.
Austin froze.
A bead of cold sweat rolled down his jawline.
He had four crates of Tier 4 Stellar-Steel ingots out on the mules, worth enough spirit stones to buy a small mountain. He had machine-milled pipe fittings. He had an ancient White Dwarf Seed burning at 150,000 Kelvin inside his ribcage.
He had zero copper coins.
Zero zinc pennies.
Austin’s left eye twitched with pure, unadulterated tradesman shame.
"Dine-and-dash," Austin muttered under his breath, voice tightening in horror. "The ultimate hack-contractor move. Screwing a sub out of honest labor. Automatic fifty-point faction hit with the local merchants."
Old Man Liu saw the boy’s blank stare and offered a soft, toothless chuckle. "Ah, don't sweat it, young man. If coin is tight on the road, don't worry about thirty-six coppers. A little flour and water won't break an old noodle cook. A traveler far from home shouldn't go hungry."
Austin's head snapped up, expression flint-hard. "No way in hell. Licensed contractors don't stiff their subs. You provided labor, heat, materials, and prep time. Every debt gets settled to within basic accounting tolerance."
Austin unclipped the leather scrap pouch on the side of his belt.
He dug his thumb into the bottom seam, fishing around until he felt a tiny, razor-sharp flake. A microscopic blue metal curling—barely the size of a fleck of coarse black pepper—left over from when he’d filed a burr off his safety helmet’s brim back at Sunset Peak.
Austin pinched the microscopic sapphire grain between calloused fingers.
He took Old Man Liu’s weathered, flour-white hand and set the speck dead in the center of the old man's palm.
"I don't carry mortal copper, Uncle," Austin said, tone strictly professional. "This is high-tensile Grade-4 cosmic alloy lathe scrap. Take it into Canglan and show it to any licensed blacksmith. Ought to fetch forty or fifty coppers on melt value alone. Keep the difference as a tip for the gluten work."
Old Man Liu looked down at the tiny blue flake in his hand. It sparkled with an odd, iridescent violet sheen under the midday sun.
"A... a metal shaving, young master?" Liu smiled, mildly amused.
The old man closed his fingers around the speck.
The instant flesh met metal...
The universe broke.
The microscopic trace of First Epoch stellar plasma and Azure-Dragon essence compressed inside the alloy flared to life.
A flood of blazing, starlight-pure vitality roared out of the grain, blasting into the old man's palm like a rupture in a high-pressure steam line!
*BOOOOOOM!*
Seventy-two years of dried, crusted gunk in Liu's meridians didn't just clear—they exploded into mist!
*CRACK-SNAP-POW!*
The old man’s hunched spine jerked upright with the sickening sound of snapping oak!
Yellowed, liver-spotted skin blistered and sloughed off, falling like dry parchment to reveal smooth, radiant, jade-white flesh underneath! His thinning white hair turned midnight black in a heartbeat, surging down his broadening shoulders in glossy waves!
*DING! DING! DING!*
Breakthroughs rattled through Liu's skull like sledgehammers striking an anvil:
*Qi Condensation Stage 3... Stage 6... Stage 9... Peak!*
*Foundation Establishment Initial... Middle... LATE STAGE!*
A pillar of golden spiritual qi erupted from Liu’s crown, blasting two hundred feet into the summer sky! The concussive wave stripped the locust tree of three seasons of dry leaves, sending them spiraling into the gorge like golden confetti!
Ambient qi swirled violently around the porch, whipping the beef broth in the iron cauldrons into a frothing, luminescent celestial brew!
Old Man Liu stood frozen in the middle of the porch.
His hands were wide, youthful, and corded with lean muscle. He stared down at his reflection in a wooden water pail: a thirty-year-old Foundation swordmaster with razor-sharp cheekbones and eyes burning with late-stage spiritual pressure!
His gaze dropped to his open palm.
The tiny blue shaving sat there, cool, quiet, and completely untouched by the firestorm it had just unleashed.
Liu’s breath hitched in his throat.
Hot tears streamed down his youthful cheeks, splashing against the raw pine planks.
"The... the Immortal of the Heavenly Harvest..." Liu choked out, his voice deep, rich, and trembling with terrifying spiritual weight. "An Ancient Lord... has granted me... a second dawn..."
Austin slung his canvas pack over one shoulder, tightened his sternum strap, and picked up his five-foot pipe wrench. He gave the trembling, newly forged immortal a polite nod.
"Told you the scrap was good for forty coppers," Austin said casually. "Keep that hydration ratio at sixty-four percent, Uncle. Good noodles are all about water management."
Austin stepped off the porch and walked out onto the highway.
"Come on, Xiaoyao. Let's make tracks before the heat peaks."
*Clomp, clomp, clomp.*
Eight-pound boots hit the stone. The twelve pebbles spun peacefully around his ankles.
Behind him, in the dust of the clearing, the Late Foundation swordmaster hit the dirt on both knees, slamming his forehead against the earth with a concussive shockwave that cracked the hardpack:
*"DISCIPLE LIU KOWTOWS TO THE SUPREME LORD OF THE SACRED SPANNER! MAY THE PATRIARCH LIVE TEN THOUSAND YEARS!"*
Pug trotted past the kneeling master, giving the empty broth tub one last wistful lick before trotting after the mules, three tails wagging high in the sun.