Scarface Ba didn’t wait for the desert sun to set.
With his heavy iron breeches still tangled around his ankles, the mercenary captain gestured wildly to three of his closest lieutenants. The four brutes gripped their hidden oilskin packets of Nine-Nether Arsenic Powder, their knuckles white with desperate madness. If they could toss the black potion-made poison directly into the frothing mouth of the bronze dragon pipe hub, the underground water would carry the deadly venom straight into the bellies of the celebrating crowd. The blame would fall upon the foreign scholar, the miraculous fountain would be abandoned as a cursed well of death. The Iron Vulture Gang’s hoarded mud water tanks would regain their undisputed monopoly before twilight.
“Move now!” Scarface Ba hissed, lunging forward with a desperate hop. “Toss it into the intake valve!”
The four hired blades hurled themselves toward the bronze wellhead, their arm muscles knotting as they prepared to fling the toxic packets into the churning water troughs.
They didn’t make it two paces.
Coiled lazily around Lin Xiao’s collar in the shape of a sleek, two-foot azure river serpent, Xiao Long snapped his golden-horned head upright. The young flood dragon’s semi-clear whiskers bristled with crackling azure sparks, his slit pupils narrowing as he tasted the foul, skin-burning stench of inorganic arsenic drifting through the sweet water mist.
