That evening, five hundred glowing oil lamps lit up the central drill ground of Dry-Well City.
Long wooden dining tables had been dragged out from the public canteen and arranged in twenty neat rows. Sitting on the benches were three hundred elite soldiers, fifty farm team leaders, twenty blacksmiths, and all of Pei Xuan’s top officers.
Right in the front row sat Old Wei, Hong Ling, Old Guo, and General Tie Zhan.
In front of every person lay a freshly copied booklet of the Furnace-Blood Scripture that Abacus Su’s thirty clerks had spent the whole afternoon writing out by hand. Next to each booklet steamed a big clay bowl of Old Guo’s Scorpion-and-Lamb Blood-Boosting Soup.
Up on the wooden stage at the front of the drill ground, Pei Xuan tapped a bamboo pointer against a large blackboard.
“Welcome to the first class of the Dry-Well Public Immortal Night School!” Pei Xuan announced, his voice carrying clearly across the square thanks to his Rank 4 Qi Gathering lungs. “Drink your soup while it’s hot! Tonight, we are learning Chapter One of the Furnace-Blood Scripture: how to turn your blood into a hammer and knock open your dantian door!”
“ROOOAR! LONG LIVE THE CITY LORD!”
Five hundred men and women raised their soup bowls and cheered at the top of their lungs. The idea of becoming an Immortal who could shoot fireballs had every soldier and farmer so excited their faces were glowing red.
They gulped down the spicy lamb soup, wiped their mouths on their sleeves, and eagerly flipped open the first page of their manuals.
For ten seconds, the drill ground was dead silent except for the rustling of paper.
Then, things went sideways.
In the front row, General Tie Zhan—a fearless Rank 3 Martial Commander who had once fought fifty desert horse-bandits with an arrow stuck in his shoulder—stared at the first page with his thick eyebrows twisted into a giant knot.
He turned the booklet upside down.
Then he turned it sideways.
Then he held it two inches away from his nose, squinting so hard his eyes crossed.
“Uncle Wei,” General Tie Zhan whispered out of the corner of his mouth, nudging Old Wei with his elbow. “What is this little squiggly bug on line three? Is that a scorpion or a word? Why does it say ‘Drive the Scarlet Dragon through the Crimson Palace to strike the Mysterious Gate’? Where the hell is my Crimson Palace? Is that near my spleen or my bladder?”
Old Wei was sweating buckets too. He only had one arm, and he was using his thumb to trace the ink characters copied from Envoy Lin’s fancy sect terminology.
“Don’t ask me, General Tie!” Old Wei hissed back, his weathered face turning purple. “I only know how to read numbers up to a hundred and my own name! What is a ‘Mysterious Gate’? When the Young Master explained it this afternoon, he just said ‘lower belly’—why did the clerks copy all these fancy poem words from the original book?!”
Beside them, Old Guo was already swaying back and forth on his bench.
The fat chef had spent all afternoon chopping three hundred pounds of lamb bones and stirring twelve giant cauldrons. Now, with a warm breeze blowing across the drill ground and a page full of tiny black ink squiggles swimming in front of his eyes, his eyelids drooped like heavy lead curtains.
Thud.
Old Guo’s forehead dropped straight onto his wooden table. Within two seconds, a loud, rhythmic snore rumbled across the front row.
ZZZZZZ—SNORT—ZZZZZZ!
His snoring was like a contagious plague.
Back in Row Four, a burly potato-farm leader named Big Bull rubbed his eyes, yawned until his jaw clicked, and slumped onto his arms.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
All across the drill ground, tough soldiers and farmers who could dig irrigation ditches for fourteen hours straight without blinking were dropping like flies against a wall! To these rough border folk, reading a page of classical Immortal sect poetry was ten times more exhausting than fighting a pack of giant scorpions.
Even Hong Ling, who was great at numbers and accounting, was glaring at the manual as if she wanted to chop it into pieces with her cleavers.
Up on the stage, Pei Xuan slapped his forehead.
“My mistake!” Pei Xuan muttered.
When the Fusion Cube had transferred the Furnace-Blood Scripture into his brain this afternoon, he had understood it instantly because the System injected the meaning straight into his mind. But when he wrote it down for Abacus Su’s clerks to copy, it still used the traditional meridian charts and poetic terms from Envoy Lin’s Fireball Qi Art!
Over by the water buckets at the edge of the drill ground, Envoy Lin—who had been brought out in his yellow Debtor Vest to pour tea for the students—let out a smug little laugh behind his hand.
“See that?” Envoy Lin whispered to Marquis Pei Zhan, who was holding a tray of clean cups next to him. “In our Crimson Cloud Sect, new disciples spend three whole years studying Daoist scriptures and meridian calligraphy before they are even allowed to try sensing Qi! Trying to teach mud-covered potato farmers how to read Immortal manuals in one night? Hah! It would be easier to teach Old Yellow the camel how to play the flute!”
Pei Xuan heard Envoy Lin’s whisper with his sharp Rank 4 ears.
He looked at the 388 snoring soldiers and farmers. Each day they stayed at Rank 1, 2, or 3 instead of Rank 4, he was losing millions of potential Loyalty Points!
Waiting three years for farmers to learn classical poetry? Not a chance!
“Wait right here, everyone,” Pei Xuan said, stepping behind the blackboard where stacked supply crates sat.
He looked around the stage for fusion materials.
In the corner sat a crate of cheap Children’s Picture Storybooks (The Monkey Who Stole Peaches, illustrated with big, crude woodblock cartoons) that a merchant caravan had traded for salt last week.
And hanging from the eaves of the canteen porch right next to the stage was a bamboo birdcage holding three noisy Green-Beak Desert Parrots that Old Guo’s kitchen helpers had caught in the oasis trees. Whenever a soldier walked past, the three parrots squawked in a loud, raspy border accent: “Eat more buns! Pay your taxes! Eat more buns!”
Pei Xuan’s eyes lit up.
“Picture books that even a five-year-old can understand... plus loud talking parrots that never shut up...”
He opened the Fusion Cube in his mind!
Into Slot 1, he placed the master copy of the [Furnace-Blood Scripture].
Into Slot 2, he placed the crate of [Illustrated Children’s Storybooks].
Into Slot 3, he placed the three [Noisy Desert Parrots].
“Fifty thousand points for five hundred talking comic books? Sold!”
Pei Xuan hit [YES]!
WHOOSH!
His LP balance dropped from 560,000 to 510,000. A warm golden light swept over the crate of books and the birdcage. The three parrots vanished into the light—don’t worry, they merged into the book spirits happily—and five hundred thick, colorful Comic-Strip Cultivation Primers stacked themselves neatly inside the crate!
Pei Xuan picked up four copies, walked back to the front of the stage, and tossed them onto the front-row table in front of Old Wei, Hong Ling, Old Guo, and General Tie Zhan.
BANG!
The heavy comic books hit the table, waking Old Guo up with a start.
“Huh?! The buns aren’t burned!” Old Guo shouted, wiping drool off his chin.
“Forget the old manuals!” Pei Xuan laughed, gesturing to his clerks to pass out the new colorful books to all five hundred students. “I just had the printing room make the Village Edition. Open page one and press your thumb on the red dot in the corner!”
Curious, General Tie Zhan pushed aside the confusing ink manual, pulled the bright yellow-and-red picture book toward him, and opened to Page One.
There were zero fancy words on the page!
Instead, there was a funny, glowing cartoon drawing of a fat little stick-figure man eating a big lamb leg. Inside the stick-figure’s chest was a drawing of a blacksmith’s bellows, and down in his belly was a closed wooden outhouse door.
General Tie Zhan pressed his thick thumb onto the red dot at the bottom of the page.
Instantly, the cartoon stick-figure started moving on the paper, and the book spoke out loud in a booming, hilarious Red-Sand border accent that sounded just like an old tavern storyteller banging a wooden clapper!
“HEY THERE, BIG DUMMY! LISTEN UP!” the book shouted at the top of its paper lungs. “Don’t look for no fancy ‘Crimson Palace’! Feel that thumping thing under your left tit? That’s your HEART! Right now, take a big breath through your nose, squeeze your butt-cheeks tight, and pump that hot lamb-soup blood from your chest straight down to that stubborn rock two inches below your belly button! One, two, three—SQUEEZE AND RAM IT!”
Across the entire drill ground, five hundred books began shouting at the exact same time as the soldiers pressed their thumbs on the red dots!
“SQUEEZE YOUR BUTT-CHEEKS TIGHT!”
“PUMP THAT HOT LAMB-SOUP BLOOD DOWN BELOW YOUR BELLY BUTTON!”
“IMAGINE YOUR DANTIAN IS A STINGY LANDLORD’S DOOR, AND YOUR BLOOD IS AN IRON BATTERING RAM! SMASH IT! SMASH IT!”
By the water buckets, Envoy Lin dropped his copper teapot onto his own foot.
“Squeeze your butt-cheeks?! Stingy landlord’s door?!” Envoy Lin shrieked, clutching his hair as if his Dao heart was cracking in half. “What kind of demonic street-trash translation is this?! The Mysterious Gate of the Lower Elixir Field is a sacred Immortal aperture! You cannot call it a stingy landlord’s door! And why is the cartoon stick-figure glowing red in the pants?!”
Yet on the benches, the five hundred soldiers and farmers had their eyes wide open—not a single person was sleepy anymore!
“Hahaha! Two inches below the belly button! Why didn’t the book just say so the first time?!” General Tie Zhan roared with laughter. “Look at this little cartoon guy! When he breathes in, the red arrow goes down his back and loops around his kidneys before hitting the door! Even a blind mule could follow this picture!”
“Oh! You have to loop it around the lower back first to build up speed!” Old Wei slapped his thigh with his single hand. “Earlier I was pushing straight down from my stomach and gave myself hiccups! Look at Page Two—the cartoon guy swings a big iron wok inside his belly!”
“Hey! That cartoon guy looks just like me!” Old Guo beamed from ear to ear, wide awake now as he pressed the red dot on Page Two.
“STEP TWO, FATTY!” Old Guo’s book yelled cheerfully. “Once your blood is hot as boiling chili oil, spin it left three times, spin it right three times, and SLAM it against the door like you’re flipping a hundred-pound iron wok!”
“Spin left three times, spin right three times, and flip the wok!” Old Guo closed his eyes, his round belly jiggling as he followed the cartoon’s exact rhythm. “Flipping woks is what I have done for forty years!”
Pei Xuan stood on the stage, watching with a wide grin as all five hundred students began breathing in sync with the shouting comic books.
Within ten minutes, the temperature on the drill ground jumped by twenty degrees!
Five hundred Rank 1, Rank 2, and Rank 3 martial artists were pumping their blood like blacksmith furnaces. White steam rose from five hundred heads at once, turning the drill ground into a giant bathhouse!
For the first two nights of Night School, the sound of shouting comic books and rumbling heartbeats echoed across Dry-Well City until midnight. Every morning and evening, Old Guo served giant tubs of Spirit-Well Lamb Soup and deep-fried red scorpions to keep everyone’s blood-energy topped up.
Then, on the third night of Night School—
Inside the Lord’s Mansion courtyard, Old Wei, Hong Ling, and Old Guo sat side by side near the Sweet-Spring Spirit Well, each holding their Comic-Strip Cultivation Primer open to the final page.
“LAST STEP, HEROES!” all three books yelled in unison. “You’ve been banging on that door for three days! The hinges are loose! Take one giant gulp of Spirit Well air, pull all your blood into one big fist, and KICK THAT LANDLORD’S DOOR DOWN!”
“HAAAAH!”
Old Wei roared first, his single arm corded with thick bronze veins.
BOOM!
A muffled thunderclap burst inside Old Wei’s lower belly!
Before the echo even faded—
BOOM! BOOM!
Two more loud cracks rang out from Hong Ling and Old Guo right next to him!
Three funnels of cool white Spirit Qi whirled above the well and poured straight down into the tops of their heads.
Old Wei’s gray hair turned half black at the roots, and a sharp, fiery blade-aura mixed with Rank 4 Furnace-Blood Qi flared three feet around his body!
Hong Ling jumped up with a bright laugh, flicking her small finger—FOOM! A miniature golden-red fireball shot out and melted an old iron horseshoe on the ground into a puddle of red liquid!
And Old Guo didn’t even stand up—he just pointed his fat index finger under his cold iron soup cauldron twenty feet away.
WHOOSH!
A steady stream of golden-red Blood-Fire sprayed out from his fingertip like a blowtorch, lighting the dry brushwood under the cauldron in half a second and bringing thirty gallons of water to a rolling boil!
“Hahaha! Look at that, Young Master!” Old Guo cheered, wiggling his fiery stubby fingers. “I am a real Immortal Chef now! I don’t even need flint and steel to light the kitchen stoves anymore!”
Over by the kitchen woodshed, Envoy Lin and Marquis Pei Zhan pressed their backs tightly against the mud wall, their legs shaking like dry leaves in a storm.
Envoy Lin pointed a trembling finger at Old Wei, Hong Ling, and Old Guo.
“A... a fifty-two-year-old one-armed gate guard... a sixteen-year-old maid with a kitchen cleaver... and a fat cook who fell asleep on his book on the first night...” Envoy Lin’s voice was barely a squeak. “All three of them broke through to Rank 4 Qi Gathering in three days?! By reading a talking cartoon book that tells them to squeeze their butt-cheeks?!”
Envoy Lin slowly slid down the wall until he was sitting on the ground, staring up at the starry desert sky with hollow eyes.
“Ten years...” Envoy Lin whispered, a single tear rolling down his cheek. “I spent ten years sweeping the alchemy hall in the Crimson Cloud Sect, kissing up to Senior Brother Zhao, and eating bitter grass pills just to open my dantian... Why didn’t I just come to Dry-Well Village and read the butt-squeezing comic book?!”
Above Envoy Lin’s head, his floating tooltip suddenly jumped:
[Envoy Lin — Loyalty: 18 -> 49/100! Thought: "Wait... if I behave well and wash dishes faster, will City Lord Pei let me borrow Volume Two of that comic book?!"]
Marquis Pei Zhan was trembling even harder than Envoy Lin.
He looked at Old Wei—the crippled old guard who used to stand outside his late concubine’s leaky courtyard in Black-Rock City, getting mocked by the Marquis’s gatekeepers. Now Old Wei was a Rank 4 Immortal who could burn the entire Iron-Wolf Marquisate’s army to ashes with a wave of his hand!
“My Pei Clan...” Marquis Pei Zhan muttered bitterly, covering his face with his soapy hands. “I threw away a dragon and kept a bunch of worms!”
Just as Pei Xuan was about to congratulate Old Wei and the others, a loud SCREEEECH echoed from the night sky above the mansion.
A large Fused Iron-Feather Scout Hawk—one of Pei Xuan’s map-clearing reconnaissance birds—dropped down from the clouds and landed on Pei Xuan’s shoulder.
At the exact same moment, a chime rang inside Pei Xuan’s mind, and his RTS Territory Map popped open automatically!
Pei Xuan’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the red warning icons blinking over Black-Rock Border City on his mental map.
Black-Rock Border City—the place where he and his late mother had been bullied for sixteen years, and the city that rightfully belonged to his family!
Even worse, Lady Wang and Pei Heng were trying to run away with the family treasury AND leave 100,000 potential citizens (and future Loyalty Point generators!) to starve to death!
“Trying to run away with my silver and starve my future taxpayers?” Pei Xuan’s smile turned cold as he snapped his fingers.
“General Tie Zhan! Old Wei!” Pei Xuan barked.
“Here, My Lord!” Both men snapped to attention, their armor clanking.
“Tell the Scorpion Cavalry to saddle up and hitch fifty giant wagons of steamed Meat-Potatoes behind them!” Pei Xuan pointed east toward the dark horizon. “My dear stepmother and eldest brother are packing their bags in Black-Rock City without saying goodbye. Let’s ride over tonight and help them move—straight into yellow Debtor Vests!”