The grand conference chamber of the Hundred Treasures Pavilion in Qianyuan City was paneled in polished sandalwood, its high rafters draped in heavy crimson silk banners. Around the massive rosewood board table sat seven senior council elders, each clad in fancy fox-fur coats and holding carved ivory pipes.
The air in the room was dense with tobacco smoke and thick skepticism.
“Brother Lu, have you lost your merchant senses in your old age?” Elder Qian, the guild’s chief treasury work boss, slammed his brass-ringed fist onto the polished wood. “Sixty freight wagons! Thirty tons of our finest refined northern iron, fifty tons of hard coal forging coal, five thousand reams of prime scholar paper. Our entire winter share of high-mountain tea seeds! You’re throwing the guild’s quarterly capital into the mouth of the Grand Desolate Forest!”
“The royal records are unequivocal,” another elder chimed in. He shook his head until his silver hairpins clattered. “The southern mountain range is a graveyard of savage beast tribes and blood-cult fiends. No human caravan has ever entered those valleys and returned with anything more than gnawed bone splinters.”
Patriarch Lu Feng sat at the head of the long table. He leaned back in his high-backed ebony armchair. He didn’t yell. He didn’t become flustered. Instead, he smiled with the calm composure of a man who held the secret keys to an emperor’s vault.
Without uttering a word, Lu Feng reached inside his stitched sleeve, withdrawing a small, slender vial crafted from white mutton-fat jade. He gently flicked the wax seal loose with his thumb.
Pop.
A wisp of pale green vapor drifted from the slender opening.
In less than three breaths, the stale, bitter odor of burning tobacco smoke was fully banished from the sandalwood hall. In its place bloomed an aroma so crisp, vibrant, and intoxicating that the seven elders froze in their seats, their pipes dangling forgotten between their fingers. It smelled of high-mountain morning mist, crushed wild peaches, and ancient underground springs touched by sky light.
Elder Qian, who had suffered from chronic lung wheezing for two decades, involuntarily drew a deep breath. His eyes bulged as the cool vapor entered his lungs, instantly dissolving the stubborn thick spit in his chest and allowing him to draw the cleanest breath he had enjoyed since his youth.
“What... What elixir is this?” Elder Qian gasped, clutching his throat with trembling fingers. “The aroma alone cleared my lung stall! Is it a heaven-grade healing pill from the capital?”
“It’s not a pill,” Lu Feng replied calmly, recapping the jade vial. “It’s a standard beverage enjoyed by the citizens of the Myriad Spirit Safe hall. It’s called Jade-Dew Spirit Wine. And if you authorize the caravan, we’ll receive twenty casks of it, alongside four crates of bone-mending salves that can regenerate cut tendons overnight.”
Lu Feng then placed three Spirit Bamboo Tokens onto the center of the table.
The seasoned iron-bamboo slips gleamed with an antique bronze sheen under the lantern light. The elders leaned forward to inspect them. Then, the faint sapphire vortex swirling at the core of each token rang with their spiritual senses, streaming an aura of boundless balance and unbeatable power.
“Look at the deep ring seal,” Lu Feng commanded softly. “Test it with your spirit senses. Test it with your test loupes. Have you ever seen a seal of such flawless, divine complexity in all your years across the merchant empires?”
Elder Qian drew a brass magnifying glass from his pocket, pressing it against his eye. His hands began to shake wildly. “The internal qi matrix... It’s twisted together at the micro-load-bearing level. Not even an apex Core Formation grandmaster could etch such sharp-angled perfection without shattering the bamboo fibers. This seal... It’s impossible to counterfeit.”
“And each token is redeemable for one full dan of polished spirit rice at the Safe hall granaries,” Lu Feng declared. He stood up and pressing both palms against the table. “They don’t want our clipped silver coins or impure quartz stones. They want honest goods: iron, coal, paper, and seeds. If we move now, the Hundred Treasures Guild secures an exclusive commercial monopoly on the most abundant spiritual paradise in the southern realm. If we hesitate, the merchant guilds of Cloud River Province will smell the wine and take our place.”
The seven elders looked at the jade vial, then at the glowing bamboo tokens, and finally at one another.
“Assemble the wagons,” Elder Qian whispered, his voice trembling with sheer greed and awe. “Draft every wagon driver in the district. Mobilize sixty wagons before sundown!”
***
Three days later, the morning sun rose over the rugged limestone bluffs of the southern border highway.
A massive freight convoy stretched across the dirt road like a massive iron-scaled centipede. Sixty heavy freight wagons, each built from seasoned hardwood and heavy with cold-forged iron bands, were hauled by teams of broad-shouldered mountain draft oxen. One hundred human wagon drivers, wagon drivers, and veteran guards walked beside the wheels, their knuckles white as they gripped short swords, crossbows, and iron-tipped whips.
As the lead wagon passed the weathered royal border marker—a chipped stone stele marking the boundary of the forbidden Grand Desolate Forest—a murmur of anxious dread rippled through the human ranks.
“I have a bad feeling about this, Captain Zhao,” muttered a young wagoner named Chen Er, adjusting the leather reins of his two oxen. “My grandfather used to say that the beasts of the southern forest peel human skin to make drumheads. What if this ‘safe hall’ is just an elaborate trap to fatten us up for slaughter?”
“Silence your flapping tongue, boy,” Captain Zhao snapped from atop his chestnut gelding, though he too kept a vigilant eye on the emerald canopy above. “I walked these roads three days ago with a leg black from scorpion rot. The Blue Sovereign cured me with a single tap. Mind your manners, keep your hands off your weapon handles, and remember what the Patriarch ordered: we’re guests here, not invaders.”
Suddenly, the rushing roar of the Clear-Stone River shifted its timbre.
From the foaming river shallows fifty paces ahead, a dozen sleek, silvery shapes breached the surface like leaping dolphins. The creatures landed effortlessly upon the riverbank boulders. It shook glittering cascades of water droplets from their rainbow-bright pelts.
The wagon drivers gasped, several reaching wildly for their crossbows. But Captain Zhao right away barked a furious command to hold.
Standing atop the highest river boulder was Elder Lu Da. The river otter chieftain was clad in a crisp, water-resistant canvas smock stitched with green silk trim. His rainbow-bright silver coat gleamed like polished sterling in the morning sun, his golden sense whiskers twitching with skilled care. Across his chest hung a polished brass whistle, and in his webbed paw he held a tall signaling pole topped with a fluttering emerald pennant.
TWEEEEEEET!
Elder Lu Da blew a crisp, rhythmic blast on his whistle, raising his paws in a formal greeting gesture.
“Welcome, honored friends of the Hundred Treasures Guild!” Elder Lu Da’s squeaky yet dignified voice carried across the water with surprising deep ring. “The Sovereign of the Countless Spirits welcomes your convoy to our southern borders! Wagons carrying heavy iron and coal, please form two columns and follow the river water chute markers! The road ahead has been cleared and leveled by our earth-shaping crews!”
Chen Er stared in utter disbelief. An otter the size of a grown man, wearing a tidy smock and speaking cultured human court dialect with proper commercial greetings.
“Did... Did that otter just call us honored friends?” Chen Er stammered, his whip dangling limp in his fingers.
Before anyone could reply, the gravel beneath the wagon wheels smoothed out.
The rutted, mud-choked ditch that had plagued the royal highway for decades had been fully replaced. Extending into the forest was a broad, twelve-pace-wide roadway paved with linked slabs of smooth river-slate and compacted quartz gravel. Raised drainage ditches lined both flanks, channeling runoff cleanly into the river water chutes. The draft oxen, accustomed to straining their tendons against knee-deep mud, let out contented grunts as the heavy hardwood wheels rolled forward with zero-drag ease.
The convoy rolled beneath the towering canopy of iron-oaks. Then, the human wagon drivers looked up into the dappled shade.
High on the mossy granite ridges above the road, large, shadowy shapes paced the convoy in complete silence. Dozens of black glass wolves moved through the tree line, their coats blending with the dark pine bark. Yet their ruby eyes held no hungry bloodlust. They were scanning the distant ridgelines for rogue monsters and bandits, acting as an elite vanguard escort.
“They aren’t hunting us,” Captain Zhao murmured, a feeling of deep relief washing over his chest. “They’re guarding our flanks.”
“Supply convoy successfully routed through Southern Defile Sector Four,” the Dao Spirit’s voice rang coolly in Lin Xiao’s mindscape. “Road friction reduced by sixty-two percent following slate-paving operations. Axle stress negligible. All sixty wagons projected to arrive at the Border Depot within forty minutes.”
Lin Xiao, currently bobbing comfortably on a wide lotus leaf floating in the lower pool pond, munched on a handful of roasted pine nuts.
“Look at that dust cloud,” Lin Xiao chuckled telepathically, watching the distant glint of iron wagons through the trees. “Sixty full wagons! That’s thirty tons of proper refined iron for Tie Shan. No more smelting rusty swamp rocks until three in the morning. And five thousand reams of paper! Su Ling’er can finally print those agricultural textbooks and start our public school for the beast cubs.”
Beside the pond, Su Ling’er stood with her bamboo clipboard tucked beneath her arm, her three snowy tails swishing with energetic excitement. “Patriarch Lu certainly moves quickly when profit calls, Master. He brought everything we requested on the first manifest. Shall I open the trade scales at the central pavilion?”
“Open the scales, unroll the carpets, and get the hospitality tables set up,” Lin Xiao replied, bouncing off his lotus leaf and landing lightly on Su Ling’er’s shoulder with a pleasant, squishy thwip. “These wagon drivers have walked fifty miles through bandit country. Let’s show them how the Myriad Spirit Safe hall does business.”
The lead wagon broke through the tree line into the sunlit expanse of the southern border meadow. Then, one hundred exhausted human wagon drivers drew in a collective breath of wonder.
Before them stood no savage beast lair. But a vast, bustling frontier township of freshly cut cedar and polished stone, framed by emerald hills and sparkling waterways. Smokehouses puffed fragrant birch smoke. Long frame stand tables groaned under the weight of freshly baked flatbreads and steaming kettles. And waiting at the gateway to greet them was a welcoming delegation of seven-foot earth-bears, graceful fox maidens, and an azure slime bobbing cheerfully in the morning sun.