The three mercenary scouts from the Crimson Flame Pavilion sat bound against a grove of iron-bamboo stalks. Their faces were pale as bleached linen. Each man held a steaming wooden bowl of cabbage and turnip broth between their bound hands, sipping the fragrant soup with trembling, disbelieving lips.
“You’re telling me,” Lin Xiao said, hovering in his floating blue dome atop a polished dark rock stool, “that the Crimson Flame Pavilion is gathering hunting parties to sweep the entire eastern forest before the autumn equinox?”
“Yes, Lord Immortal! By the heavens, we swear it!” the lead mercenary cried, almost choking on a slice of tender turnip. “Young Master Yan Zixuan of the Crimson Flame Pavilion is turning twenty this winter! His father, the Pavilion Lord, ordered a Grand Beast Tribute. Three hundred high-tier beast cores, fifty spirit-hound pelts. A living dragon-vein spirit to forge a core-advancing golden pill! The outer mercenary guild was offered ten thousand low-grade spirit stones to map every nest between here and the Ironwood Gorges!”
Tie Shan snorted, the sound like a blast of fiery fire air that made the hired blades flinch.
“Greedy sect mongrels,” Tie Shan growled. He crossed his massive arms—one iron-gray, one glowing with golden titan runes. “For hundreds of years they have treated this sacred wilderness as an open slaughterhouse. If their Young Master comes here seeking dragon blood, my hammer will flatten him into a bronze coin!”
“No need for flattening yet,” Lin Xiao replied smoothly. “Information is always more valuable than violence. Drink your soup, gentlemen. Tomorrow morning, Xiao Hei will escort you to the edge of the forest road. Take your lives, leave your crossbows, and tell your guildmaster that this valley is off-limits.”
The three hired blades nodded furiously, bowing their heads to the ground in tearful thanks. They had expected to be flayed alive or fed to the eight-foot shadow hound. Instead, they had been served warm vegetable broth and granted safe passage. To their scared minds, this calm, merciful blue sovereign was more terrifying than any demon king, possessing an impossible to understand ancient majesty that viewed human squabbles as trivial dust.
With the prisoners secure, Lin Xiao turned his attention toward the crystal-clear pool by the weeping willow.
There, swimming back and forth near the bamboo water chute, the little golden-veined carp was watching the campsite with glistening, eager eyes. It had watched Lin Xiao rescue Old Ba, heal Tie Shan, and name Xiao Hei. Now, it poked its tiny golden nose above the water surface, blowing three neat bubbles that popped with soft musical notes.
Blub-blub!
Lin Xiao felt the tiny creature’s pure, innocent heartbeat shaking through the water. From the moment he had awakened in the tea basin, this little fish had stayed faithfully by his side, riding in his belly, playing in his water chutes, and bringing easy joy to his new life.
“Come here, little one,” Lin Xiao said softly, gliding over to the edge of the pool.
The carp wriggled its tail, swimming straight toward Lin Xiao and pressing its round head affectionately against the slime’s outstretched azure tendril.
Lin Xiao reached into his internal void, retrieving a strand of packed wood-element dew and refined stone marrow. The purest essence pulled out from the wild tea terraces and the ancient iron-bamboo. He allowed the golden nectar to dissolve into the water around the little fish.
“You have a tiny body. But your spirit is as grand and unbending as the ancient dragons of the sky rivers,” Lin Xiao said, his voice ringing with clear, melodic deep ring that stilled the forest night. “You swam through poisoned rust without yielding, and you brought light to this dark brook. Under the canopy of stars and the twin moons of the azure sky, your True Name shall be Xiao Long—the Little Dragon!”
The moment the name was spoken, the Clear Stream River erupted into brilliant, rainbow-bright emerald light!
SPLAAAAASH!
A pouring cascade of turquoise aquatic qi surged from the riverbed! The water in the pool rose into a swirling column twenty feet high, spiraling into the night sky!
Within the aquatic cyclone, Xiao Long’s tiny four-inch body began to expand with majestic grace. The ancient, dormant dragon-vein bloodline that slept in all freshwater carp—a lineage forgotten since the dawn of the Great Void—burst through its mortal genetic cocoon!
His golden scales thickened, shifting into semi-clear jade-and-gold dragon armor that gleamed like burnished sunstones. His slender body elongated, stretching from four inches to an amazing, supple fifteen-foot-long Horned Azure River Drake! From his broad, noble brow sprouted a pair of pearl-white crystal-clear horns that crackled with faint, misty lightning. Long, silken ivory whiskers trailed from his snout. And four delicate, pearl-scaled talons unfurled beneath his snake-like belly!
Xiao Long leaped from the swirling water column into the open sky!
He danced through the twilight air, riding self-generated clouds of silver mist and gentle rain. His snake-like body waved with sky poetry. He circled the bamboo arbor three times. That let out a clear, sweet-sounding roar that sounded like ringing jade chimes, before dropping gracefully to the quartz terrace.
He lowered his majestic dragon head, resting his cool, pearl-white horns gently against Lin Xiao’s squishy blue body. He purred—a deep, aquatic deep ring that sent ripples of pure life-force through Lin Xiao’s core.
“Lord Xiao,” a youthful, musical voice echoed through the newly formed soul link. “Xiao Long thanks Master for breaking my mortal shell! The waters of the Grand Lonely Forest shall forever flow to nourish Master’s peace!”
Tie Shan stared at the fifteen-foot horned dragon, then tossed his head back and let out a bellow of pure, roaring delight that shook the pine cones from the branches!
“A Horned River Drake! A true living dragon of the river veins!” Tie Shan shouted, slapping his golden titan thigh with a crack that sounded like a cannon. “Lord Xiao names a pup, and a Beast King rises! Lord Xiao names a fish, and a Celestial Dragon takes flight! Hahaha! This is a grand day! A glorious day! Such an occasion can’t be celebrated with tea alone!”
The titan bear turned and sprinted up the western trail with earthquake-like strides.
“Wait here, Lord Xiao! Wait right here!” Tie Shan’s voice boomed from the darkness.
Two minutes later, the ground shook once more as Tie Shan leaped back down the ridge. In his massive arms, he was cradling a huge, thirty-gallon earthen wine vat. He was sealed with pitch, river clay, and ancient oilcloth. The vessel was caked in fifty years of fiery ash and dried moss.
“What’s that?” Lin Xiao asked, blinking his eye nodes in curiosity.
“Fifty-Year Aged Hundred-Mountain Rice Wine!” Tie Shan announced proudly, setting the massive vat down on the quartz terrace with a solid thud. “Before the Iron Vulture bandits drove me into the ravine, I buried three vats of high-grade spirit rice wine deep inside a dry dark rock fissure beneath my old forge! The underground heat has been slowly stewing and aging it for half a century! I swore I’d never unseal it until the day I found a master worthy of my hammer!”
Tie Shan raised his golden titan hand and smashed the clay seal with a single swipe of his claws.
POP!
The oilcloth was peeled away. Then, an aroma of mind-bending intensity exploded into the clearing.
It was rich, mellow, and intensely fragrant. A heady bouquet of fermented sweet glutinous rice, mountain honey, dried osmanthus blossoms, and scorched earth marrow. Just inhaling the vapor made the air in the glade shimmer with faint amber halos. Even the three tied-up hired blades fifty paces away inhaled deeply, their eyes fluttering as if intoxicated by the sheer fragrance alone.
“Now this,” Lin Xiao said, his entire fluid mass shaking with genuine mortal joy, “is what I call a celebration!”
The grand founding banquet of the Clear Stream began beneath the silver glow of the twin moons.
Using Tie Shan’s five-foot hand-hammered red-bronze wok, Lin Xiao ladled out steaming mounds of red-braised wild pork belly, caramelized mountain yams, and tender stewed turnips. Xiao Long curled his fifteen-foot dragon body around the edge of the stone basin, happily enjoying large bowls of steamed rivercress tossed in sweet vine-sap. Xiao Hei, reclining like an eight-foot black panther beside Lin Xiao, devoured three roasted boar shanks with thrilled tail thumps that rustled the bamboo reeds. Old Ba slowly savored a hollowed gourd of rich marrow broth, his eyes misty with total contentment.
And the wine flowed like water.
Tie Shan poured the aged golden liquor into hollowed stone bowls. Lin Xiao drew a generous portion directly into his internal heat chamber. He used his heat control. He warmed the aged rice wine until it was comfortably, gently hot—the optimal warmth to release the volatile esters and sweet floral aromatics of aged rice spirits.
Smooth as liquid silk, Lin Xiao marveled inwardly as the warm, honeyed alcohol washed through his chaos core. No harsh burn, no bitter bite. Just deep, comforting warmth, sweet grains, and the fragrance of autumn blossoms.
Tie Shan, meanwhile, was not using a stone bowl. The giant titan bear picked up the thirty-gallon earthen vat with both hands, tilting the vessel back and chugging gallons of aged wine with thunderous, deep-throated gulps!
Gulp, gulp, gulp, GULP!
Amber liquor splashed into his braided beard and across his chest. Lowering the half-empty vat with an ear-splitting SLAM, Tie Shan let out a roar of drunken ecstasy that made the entire mountain ridge vibrate!
“Amazing! Supreme! Incomparable!” the giant bear boomed, his eyes glowing with drunken fire and tears of joy. He began staggering around the clearing in a clumsy, earth-shaking victory dance. He swung his golden titan arm through the air like a war hammer.
“Look at this arm!” Tie Shan shouted at the stars, slapping his golden forearm with a loud CLANG. “Forged from star-iron marrow by the Living Sovereign of Chaos! Who among the Southern Beast Clans has an arm like this? Not the Tiger Kings! Not the Lion Lords! Only Tie Shan! Only the blacksmith of Lord Lin Xiao!”
Tie Shan stumbled over to Lin Xiao. He dropped to his knees and wrapped his massive, furry arms around the blue slime in a crushing, drunken bear hug.
“Lord Xiao!” Tie Shan cried happily, burying his soot-covered snout directly into Lin Xiao’s squishy azure body. “You’re the greatest master under heaven! You feed us pork! You give us dragons! You let me drink wine! From this night on, if anyone frowns at you, I’ll hammer them into a cooking pan!”
Lin Xiao, twisted into a squished blue pancake between the bear’s massive arms, merely chuckled with fluid good humor.
“Easy, Tie Shan, you’re spilling the broth,” Lin Xiao laughed, gently expanding his non-Newtonian thickness to cushion the drunken embrace. “Drink some water, big guy. We have a lot of building to do tomorrow.”
As the laughter, singing, and steam drifted up into the starry night, a deep, sky deep ring began to harmonize within Lin Xiao’s origin core.
The Ancient Soul Circuit—linking him to Tie Shan the Titan Bear, Xiao Hei the Shadow Gale Hound, Xiao Long the Azure River Drake, and Old Ba the ancient tortoise—locked into a flawless sharp-angled mandala of shared spiritual hum. The surrounding spiritual qi of the fifty-half-mile river valley began to converge toward the campsite, cascading smoothly into Lin Xiao’s Primordial Chaos Void without pushback.
A crisp, majestic bronze chime echoed through Lin Xiao’s spiritual sea:
Lin Xiao felt his internal void expand faster and faster.
The boundary separating mortal Qi Gathering from immortal Foundation Establishment shattered like thin ice! A radiant sea of liquid sapphire origin essence condensed at the exact center of his body, establishing an inexhaustible, self-sustaining spiritual fountain.
Lin Xiao smiled, floating contentedly on a soft cedar cushion beside the dying embers of the hearth.
Above him, the twin silver moons bathed the misty bamboo forest in calm light. Xiao Hei was curled asleep beside his cushion, breathing softly like a giant black hound. Xiao Long drifted peacefully beneath the surface of the pool. His pearl horns glowed softly under the water. Old Ba had tucked his head into his shell with a contented sigh. Tie Shan was snoring like a thunderous earthquake against the warm dark rock hearth. It grabbed the empty wine vat like a child’s toy.
No corporate deadlines. No freight schedules. No stress, Lin Xiao thought, gently pulsating with the warm, honeyed aftertaste of fifty-year rice wine.
Just good friends, full bellies, and a quiet river.
The world outside might be full of greedy sects and ruthless hunters. But right here, right now... This was home.