Three miles east of the Refugee Welcome Camps, right across the main road of Red-River County, a ten-foot-high barricade of sharpened wooden logs and iron spikes blocked the entire valley.
In front of the wooden spike-wall stood five thousand county soldiers holding spears and rattan shields.
Sitting under a silk parasol on a fat white warhorse was Count Wang Ba of Red-River County—Lady Wang’s older brother.
Count Wang weighed nearly two hundred and sixty pounds, wore a shiny suit of gilt-bronze scale armor that barely fit over his round belly, and held a heavy nine-ring broadsword resting across his saddle. Despite his fat belly, he was a genuine Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster who had trained in the Wang Clan’s Iron-Ox Cleaving Blade using piles of taxpayer silver.
Behind the spike-wall, on the Red-River County side, over twenty thousand starving tenant farmers and townspeople were trapped on the dusty road with their wheelbarrows.
“Nobody takes another step west!” Count Wang roared, his fat jowls shaking as twenty of his tax bailiffs cracked long leather whips over the heads of the front-row farmers. “You ungrateful mud-legs! Who gave you permission to pack your pots and pans and run off to Black-Rock City?! Every single one of you is registered on my Red-River County tax rolls! If you all run away to Pei Xuan’s desert, who is going to plant my thirty thousand acres of summer beans?! Who is going to buy the millet in my granaries?!”
An old village headman knelt in front of the spike-wall, holding up an empty rice sack with trembling hands.
“Milord Count! It’s not that we want to leave our ancestral graves!” the old headman cried. “The spring drought dried up all the wells, and the locusts ate every blade of grass! You raised the price of granary millet to five silver taels a peck—none of us have five silver taels! If you don’t let us go to Lord Pei’s welcome camps to eat free meat-potatoes, our whole village will starve to death in three days!”
“Starve to death?!” Count Wang sneered coldly, picking his teeth with a gold toothpick. “Even if you starve to death, your bones belong in Red-River County’s fields as fertilizer! Listen up! Any farmer who wants to stay alive can come sign my Fifty-Year Blood-Indentured Servant Contract right now! Once you sign yourself and your children over as my personal slaves, I will loan each family half a bag of moldy bran at thirty percent monthly interest!”
A wave of furious cries broke out among the twenty thousand trapped farmers.
“Half a bag of moldy bran in exchange for turning our children into slaves for fifty years?!”
“Look across the dry riverbed! Just three miles away, the smoke from Lord Pei’s soup cauldrons is rising into the sky! Even the wind blowing from the west smells like spicy fried locusts and lamb broth!”
“Why won’t you let us cross the road?!”
“Shut up!” Count Wang’s eyes turned fierce, and he swung his nine-ring broadsword with a surge of Rank 3 Peak Internal Qi!
SLASH—BOOM!
A twelve-foot-long crescent of yellow Martial Blade-Wave shot out from his sword and blasted a three-foot-deep trench across the dirt road right in front of the farmers’ wheelbarrows!
“See that trench?!” Count Wang barked arrogantly. “That is the power of a Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster! I heard my foolish brother-in-law Marquis Pei Zhan lost Black-Rock City to that little maid’s bastard Pei Xuan. Hah! Pei Zhan was only a weak Rank 3 Mid softie! If that little nephew Pei Xuan dares stick his nose across my wooden spike-wall today, I’ll chop him and his camel into eight pieces! Soldiers—lock the spike-gates and drive these peasants back to the fields!”
The five thousand county soldiers raised their spears, though the floating tooltips above their heads told a very different story.
Right at that moment, a low, rhythmic rumbling sound echoed from the western road leading from the Refugee Welcome Camps.
CHUGGA-CHUGGA-CHUGGA-ROOOOOAR!
Black smoke mixed with red sparks puffed into the air as a bizarre dust cloud rolled down the smooth stone highway straight toward Count Wang’s wooden spike-wall!
“What is that noise?!” Count Wang frowned, standing up in his stirrups and shading his eyes. “Is that thunder? No—look at the road!”
Two hundred yards away, Pei Xuan rode leisurely on the back of Old Yellow, flanked by General Tie Zhan, Old Wei, and five hundred Scorpion Cavalrymen.
Behind them rolled the supply carts where Pei Xuan had just paused for thirty seconds to deal with the wooden spike-wall blocking his future taxpayers.
Earlier, when the injured farmers ran into Camp #1 reporting Count Wang’s spike-wall blockade, Pei Xuan had looked at his supply yard:
1. Three Giant Shed Shells of Molted Scorpion Kings (harder than six-inch cast steel, left behind when the Scorpion Kings grew bigger after drinking Spirit Well water). 2. Six Heavy Iron Deep-Plows & Wide Shovel-Buckets from the agricultural depot. 3. Three Fused Fire-Qi Boiler Engines powered by low-grade coal and Spirit-Spark stones.
Pei Xuan had tossed all three into the Fusion Cube and spent 150,000 LP!
Now, rolling side by side down the center of the highway were three monstrous, gleaming dark-red Bulldozer Scorpion-Tractors!
Each tractor was fifteen feet wide and ten feet tall, moving on heavy iron caterpillar tracks forged from interlocked scorpion-shell plates. Attached to the front of each machine was a massive, curved twelve-foot steel shovel-blade, and sticking out of the top was a smoky iron exhaust pipe that went CHUG-CHUG-CHUG like an iron dragon!
Sitting in the driver’s seat of Tractor #1 was blacksmith Zhao Dahu—wearing a brand-new blue Dry-Well Engineering Corps cap—grinning from ear to ear as he gripped the two iron steering levers!
“My Lord! This iron monster is a hundred times easier to drive than an ox-cart!” Zhao Dahu shouted happily over the roar of the Fire-Qi engine. “You just push both levers forward and step on the gas pedal!”
“Keep it in second gear, Master Zhao!” Pei Xuan called out from Old Yellow’s back, pointing his riding crop at Count Wang’s ten-foot wooden spike-wall ahead. “That illegal roadblock ahead doesn’t have a municipal building permit. Clear it off the road so the twenty thousand folks behind it can come eat breakfast!”
“Aye, My Lord!”
Across the barricade, Count Wang stared at the three rumbling red-iron monsters rolling toward his wall. Because there were no horses or oxen pulling the iron shells, Count Wang thought his soldiers were pushing hollow wooden siege-carts from the inside!
“Hmph! Trying to scare this Count with three painted iron turtles pushed by foot-soldiers?!” Count Wang sneered, pointing his nine-ring broadsword at Pei Xuan. “Pei Xuan! You little bastard! Not only did you lock up my sister Wang Cuihua in Black-Rock City, now you dare bring siege carts to my Red-River County border?! Archers—shoot arrows at those three iron carts! Spearman—brace the wooden spike-wall!”
TWANG-TWANG-TWANG!
Five hundred arrows rained down on the three Bulldozer Scorpion-Tractors.
TING-TING-PING-PING!
Every single arrow bounced harmlessly off the six-inch fused Scorpion-King armor shells without leaving so much as a white dot!
“Full throttle, boys! Clear the road!” Zhao Dahu yelled, pushing both iron levers all the way forward!
VROOOOOOOOM!
The three Fire-Qi engines let out a deafening roar, flames shooting a foot high out of their exhaust pipes as the three Bulldozer Scorpion-Tractors charged straight into the ten-foot wooden spike-wall!
CRAAAAACK—SMASH—SNAP!
There was no dramatic tug-of-war.
The twelve-foot steel shovel blades hit the sharpened tree trunks like a hot cleaver slicing through soft tofu!
Logs as thick as a man’s waist snapped in half with deafening cracks! Iron spikes bent into pretzels! In less than three seconds, the three Bulldozer Scorpion-Tractors plowed straight through the middle of Count Wang’s blockade, flattening a forty-foot-wide section of the spike-wall into neat kindling wood!
“WHAT?!”
Count Wang’s jaw dropped so hard he bit his own tongue.
His five thousand county soldiers—who had barely eaten a full meal in a month anyway—didn’t even try to block the roaring iron monsters. The moment they saw three-foot-thick oak logs snapping like toothpicks, all five thousand soldiers jumped out of the road into the ditches on both sides!
“Bunch of useless cowards! Get back in formation!” Count Wang screamed, his fat face turning purple as he saw the twenty thousand trapped refugees behind the wall starting to cheer.
Count Wang spurred his white horse forward, stood up in his stirrups, and poured every drop of his Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster internal Qi into his nine-ring broadsword!
“Watch this Count chop your iron turtle in half! IRON-OX CLEAVING BLADE—TRIPLE SLASH!”
Count Wang leaped ten feet into the air off his horse’s back and brought his glowing broadsword crashing down with all two hundred and sixty pounds of his weight right onto the front steel shovel-bucket of Zhao Dahu’s Tractor #1!
CLANG—KRAK!
A deafening metallic ring echoed across the valley!
The fused Scorpion-King steel shovel-bucket didn’t even get a dent!
Instead, Count Wang’s heavy nine-ring broadsword shattered into nine flying iron rings and a jagged stub! The terrifying counter-force bounced straight back up Count Wang’s arms, tearing the tiger’s-mouth skin between his thumbs and fingers and making both of his arms go completely numb!
“AIEEEEE! MY HANDS! WHAT KIND OF METAL IS THIS?!”
Count Wang dropped his broken hilt and landed clumsily on the road right in front of the moving tractor, clutching his throbbing wrists and hopping on one foot in pain!
Inside the cab of Tractor #1, Zhao Dahu blinked out the windshield. “Huh? What is this fat yellow watermelon jumping up and down in the middle of the road? Let me scoop it out of the way!”
Zhao Dahu pulled the right hydraulic lever back!
WHIRRRRR—CLUNK!
The twelve-foot front steel shovel-bucket slid smoothly along the ground right under Count Wang’s boots, scooped the two-hundred-and-sixty-pound Count Wang straight off his feet along with three broken logs and a pile of horse manure, and lifted him ten feet into the air!
“WAAAH! LET ME DOWN! I AM A ROYAL COUNT OF GREAT YAN! I AM sitting IN HORSE POOP!”
Count Wang rolled around helplessly inside the deep steel shovel-bucket, his gilt-bronze armor covered in fresh horse manure as his stubby legs kicked at the sky!
Seeing their greedy Count scooped up into a tractor bucket like a sack of roadside trash, the twenty thousand starving refugees behind the broken barricade burst into wild, deafening cheers!
“The spike-wall is smashed! And Lord Pei’s iron monster scooped Count Wang into a trash bucket!”
“Run! Push the wheelbarrows across the border to Lord Pei’s camp!”
Even the five thousand Red-River County soldiers didn’t hesitate for another second. They threw their wooden spears into a neat pile by the roadside, ripped off Count Wang’s county badges, and joined the cheering refugees running westward!
“Wait for us! We haven’t been paid in four months—we want to join Red-Sand Prefecture too!”
Pei Xuan rode Old Yellow up beside Tractor #1 and looked up at the steel shovel-bucket ten feet above the ground, where Count Wang was wiping horse manure off his fat chin and glaring down in humiliation.
“Nephew... Nephew Pei Xuan!” Count Wang tried to put on his elder uncle airs even while sitting in a tractor bucket. “I am your stepmother’s blood brother! And I hold a royal bronze tally from the King of Great Yan! Let me out of this shovel right now, or the Royal Court will—”
“Zhao Dahu,” Pei Xuan interrupted calmly. “Drive Tractor #1 back to the welcome camp latrine pit and dump the bucket.”
“Right away, My Lord!” Zhao Dahu grinned.
Ten minutes later, back at Welcome Camp #1, Abacus Su stood in front of the water station clicking his golden abacus while Lady Wang (#888), Pei Heng (#889), and Pei Bao (#890) watched in horror.
CLUNK—THUD!
Tractor #1 tilted its hydraulic shovel forward and dumped Count Wang right onto the ground next to Lady Wang’s feet!
“Big Brother?!” Lady Wang shrieked, dropping her water dipper. “You brought five thousand soldiers and you ended up in a shovel bucket too?!”
“Shut up, Cuihua!” Count Wang groaned, rubbing his bruised backside as two Scorpion Cavalry guards slipped an extra-large, triple-wide yellow Debtor Vest (#1,001) over his fat belly.
“Prisoner #1,001, Wang Ba!” Abacus Su announced briskly. “For building an illegal wooden fence across a public highway, whipping twenty thousand citizens, and chipping three flecks of red paint off Bulldozer Tractor #1 with your broadsword: your fine is 250,000 silver taels! Since your sister is pouring water and your nephews are scrubbing toilets, you are assigned to haul coal and shovel gravel for the new Desert Railway Project!”
Pei Xuan looked at the endless stream of refugees and ox-carts now jamming the fifty-mile highway between the eastern border, Black-Rock City, and Dry-Well City.
“Moving two hundred thousand people and millions of pounds of potatoes and salt by ox-cart is way too slow,” Pei Xuan murmured, rubbing his chin as he looked at the flat desert corridor. “It’s time to build a real train!”