At noon, heat shimmered above the highway. The red cliffs wavered in the distance.
Where the road met a silt-choked canal path, a small noodle stall stood beneath an old locust tree. A faded cotton banner hung from a crooked bamboo pole.
[Old Man Liu’s Hand-Pulled Wheat Noodles]
Austin stopped in the shade and pulled off his hard hat. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve.
“Hunger’s down to forty percent,” he muttered, reading the yellow bar in his vision. “Stamina recovery is down too. Hauling Tier 4 metal on an empty stomach is a safety violation. We’re taking a meal break.”
Li Xiaoyao tied the mules to a cedar rail. They pushed their noses into the water trough at once.
Cerberus Pug didn’t wait for instructions.
WHUMP.
He dropped onto the crabgrass beneath the tree. China bowls rattled inside the stall. Pug sighed with delight and spread all three heads across his paws, tongues hanging out.
Old Man Liu stood behind two blackened iron pots.
He was seventy-two and bent like a rusty pry bar. Fifty years earlier, he had trained with a wooden sword at a minor southern sect. His spirit veins were weak, and he had never advanced beyond Qi Gathering Stage 1. He had given up on cultivation forty years ago. Now he pulled noodles, boiled beef bones, and fed travelers who rarely tipped.
“Welcome!” Liu called. “Fresh bone broth and hot noodles. What’ll it be?”
Austin tested the pine bench before sitting down. It groaned, but the legs held. He leaned his five-foot pipe wrench against the table.
Liu stared at the wrench, then at the pebbles and pine needles circling Austin’s boots.
The old cook rubbed his eyes. Heat stroke. Just the sun playing tricks.
“Three large bowls of beef noodles, Uncle,” Austin said. “Extra chili oil, extra scallions, and plenty of beef. If you have a washtub out back, fill that with noodles and broth too. The dog gets mean when he’s hungry.”
“Right away, young master!”
Ten minutes later, two steaming clay bowls landed on Austin’s table. Liu set a cedar tub holding forty pounds of noodles, marrow bones, and broth between Pug’s paws.
The hound didn’t bother sniffing it.
SLURP-CRUNCH-GULP.
Six seconds later, the tub was empty. Pug licked the cedar clean, burped hard enough to rattle the porch shingles, and rested his chin on the rim.
Austin split a pair of bamboo chopsticks and lifted a strand of noodles for a closer look.
“Good dough,” he said with real approval. “Hydration is sixty-four percent. Clean bite. Proper chew.”
He slurped the noodles, enjoying the chili heat and rich broth. Three minutes later, his bowl was empty. His HUD chimed.
Austin pushed the bowl away. “Good work, Uncle. What do we owe you?”
Liu shuffled over, wiping his hands on his apron. “Two bowls and the tub for the dog... thirty-six copper coins.”
Austin reached into his bib pocket.
Empty.
He checked his side pockets. Electrical tape, three brass nuts, and a pencil stub. His hip pockets held two adjustable wrenches, a packet of hard-boiled eggs, and a scrap of sandpaper.
No money.
A cold bead of sweat ran down his jaw.
He carried four crates of Stellar-Steel, enough to buy a small mountain. He had precision tools and a White Dwarf Seed burning inside his chest.
He did not have a single copper coin.
Austin’s left eye twitched with the shame of an honest tradesman.
“Dine-and-dash,” he whispered. “The lowest move in the book. Automatic fifty-point reputation hit with the local merchants.”
Liu saw his expression and chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. If coin is tight, a little flour and water won’t ruin me. A traveler shouldn’t go hungry.”
Austin’s head snapped up. “No way in hell. Licensed contractors don’t stiff people. You supplied the labor, fuel, and materials. The debt gets paid.”
He opened the scrap pouch on his belt and felt along the bottom seam. His fingers found a blue metal shaving, barely larger than a grain of pepper. He had filed it off his hard hat at Sunset Peak.
Austin placed the shaving in Liu’s flour-white palm.
“I don’t carry mortal copper, Uncle. This is a scrap of Grade 4 Stellar-Steel. Show it to a licensed blacksmith in Canglan. It should fetch forty or fifty coppers. Keep the extra as a tip.”
Liu smiled at the tiny violet-blue fleck. “A metal shaving, young master?”
He closed his fingers around it.
The instant his skin touched the metal, the universe broke.
A trace of First Epoch star-fire and Azure-Dragon essence inside the alloy came alive. Pure life force burst into Liu’s palm like steam from a broken pipe.
BOOOOOOM!
Seventy-two years of blockage burned out of his spirit veins.
CRACK-SNAP-POW!
His bent spine straightened. Old, spotted skin sloughed away, revealing smooth flesh beneath. His white hair turned black and streamed over his shoulders.
DING! DING! DING!
Breakthroughs struck like hammer blows.
Qi Gathering Stage 3... Stage 6... Stage 9... Peak!
Foundation Establishment: Initial... Middle... Late Stage!
A pillar of golden qi shot two hundred feet into the sky. The blast stripped dry leaves from the locust tree and sent them spinning over the gorge. The broth in Liu’s pots began to glow.
Liu stood frozen.
His hands were young and strong. He looked at his reflection in a water pail and saw a thirty-year-old Foundation swordmaster staring back.
Then he looked at his palm. The blue shaving sat there, cool and untouched.
Tears ran down his young face.
“An Ancient Lord,” he whispered. “He has granted me a second dawn.”
Austin shouldered his canvas pack and picked up his pipe wrench. He gave the trembling swordmaster a polite nod.
“Told you it was worth forty coppers. Get a licensed buyer to test and weigh it, and ask for a stamped receipt. Don’t let anyone call it worthless scrap just because the piece is small. And keep that water ratio steady, Uncle. Good noodles are all about water management.”
Liu stopped bowing long enough to nod. A fair receipt was something he could use, whatever the metal was worth.
He stepped off the porch.
“Come on, Xiaoyao. Let’s move before the heat gets worse.”
Clomp, clomp, clomp.
Behind him, Liu dropped to his knees and struck his forehead against the ground hard enough to crack it.
“STUDENT LIU KOWTOWS TO THE SUPREME LORD OF THE SACRED SPANNER! MAY THE PATRIARCH LIVE TEN THOUSAND YEARS!”
Pug gave the empty broth tub one last lick, then trotted after the mules with his tail held high.