TWEEEEET!
The sharp, clear blast of Pei Xuan’s copper whistle echoed across the lantern-lit square of Ward 3.
Down by the ruined public latrine, Senior Brother Zhao froze for half a second, his muddy hand still gripping the dark-red Flame-Serpent Talisman. He glared up at the young man in the white bathrobe standing on the bathhouse terrace, then burst into wild, raspy laughter.
“A whistle?! You’re blowing a copper guard-whistle at an Immortal cultivator?!” Senior Brother Zhao laughed so hard that a piece of yellow straw fell off his nose. “Who are you calling, mortal boy? Your city guards with wooden clubs? Or that traitor Lin Cang?!”
Behind him, Junior Brother Ma and Junior Brother Chen staggered out of the gravel and hauled the fainted Junior Sister Liu up by her elbows. The stench on their robes made their eyes water, which only made their hatred burn hotter.
“Senior Brother Zhao, don’t waste words on him!” Junior Brother Chen snarled, pulling a defensive Crimson Cloud Shield Talisman from his damp pouch. “Activate Elder Huo’s Flame-Serpent Talisman right now! That talisman holds a full-power strike from a Rank 4 Peak Qi Gathering master! Not even five thousand mortal soldiers in iron armor could survive one breath of that fire snake!”
“Put up the Four-Corner Cloud Shield around us first so the heat wave doesn’t singe our faces!” Senior Brother Zhao barked.
The four juniors quickly stood at four corners around Senior Brother Zhao and slapped their palms together. A dome of shimmering red light ten feet wide rose around the five filthy sect disciples, blocking out both the night wind and the laughter of the crowd.
Inside the red shield dome, Senior Brother Zhao bit the tip of his tongue and spat a drop of blood-essence onto the dark-red jade talisman in his hand.
“Mortals of this nameless mud town!” Senior Brother Zhao roared, holding the glowing red jade high above his head. “Watch carefully! This is the gap between Heaven and Earth! A mortal who crawls in the dirt can train his muscles for a hundred years, yet he can never produce a single spark of true Immortal Qi! Bow down and despair before the Crimson Fire of our sect!”
CRACK!
Senior Brother Zhao crushed the jade talisman in his fist.
ROOOOOOOOAR!
A terrifying wave of heat exploded in front of the broken latrine! Out of the shattered jade burst a thirty-foot-long serpent made entirely of condensed, roaring crimson fire. The fire snake had glowing yellow eyes, fangs as long as sabers, and scales of spinning flame that turned the gravel beneath its belly glowing orange.
Even thirty yards away, the townspeople under the stone shop awnings felt the hot wind dry their lips.
“Oh no! Brother Lin, that’s Elder Huo’s personal life-saving talisman!” Cuihua gasped from behind the noodle cart. “Can the city guards block a fire snake that big?!”
“Don’t panic, Sister Cuihua! Look at the street corner!” Envoy Lin pointed excitedly with his wooden chopsticks toward the wide stone avenue leading from the Ward 3 Night School. “Lord Pei didn’t whistle for the city guards—he whistled for the Evening Adult Literacy & Fireball Class!”
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
Before the thirty-foot Flame Serpent could even coil its tail to lunge, the heavy, rhythmic sound of five hundred pairs of thick-soled work boots marching in step shook the entire square!
From the wide avenue at the east end of the night market marched five neat, square columns of men and women—one hundred workers per row, five hundred workers in total!
They were not wearing shining soldier armor, and they were not carrying swords or spears.
Every single one of them wore tough gray canvas work overalls smudged with brick clay, coal dust, and flour. On their heads, buckled tightly under their chins with hemp rope, they wore heavy black-iron cooking woks as helmets! Tucked into their leather tool belts were bricklaying trowels, blacksmith hammers, and brightly colored paper booklets—the Comic-Strip Cultivation Primers that Pei Xuan had fused at the start of the month!
Leading the very first row was a fifty-year-old master bricklayer with arms as thick as tree trunks and a big gray beard. It was Master Bricklayer Wang, who had built the first mud walls of Dry-Well Village and had just cracked open his dantian to reach Rank 4 Early (Qi Gathering Stage 1) two nights ago!
Behind Master Wang marched 499 veteran bricklayers, blacksmiths, kiln-workers, and bakery stokers who had been soaking in Sweet-Spring water, eating giant Meat-Potatoes, and practicing the Furnace-Blood Scripture every night after work!
Up on the bathhouse terrace, Pei Xuan smiled proudly as his RTS System highlighted the marching worker brigade in bright gold:
“Halt! Left—FACE!” Master Bricklayer Wang bellowed in a voice trained by thirty years of shouting over noisy construction sites.
STOMP!
All five hundred workers pivoted on their heels at the exact same instant, forming five long, straight lines right between the roaring thirty-foot Flame Serpent and the night market stalls.
Inside his red protective shield, Senior Brother Zhao stared at the five hundred workers wearing upside-down iron woks on their heads. For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating from swallowing too much fertilizer.
“W-what is this?!” Junior Brother Ma pointed a trembling finger through the shield. “Why are they wearing cooking pots on their heads?! And why is that old man in front holding a brick-plastering trowel?!”
“Hahaha! They must be crazy!” Senior Brother Zhao threw his head back and laughed wildly, all his arrogance rushing back in a flood. “This mortal city lord has run out of tricks! He actually called out five hundred mud-masons and kitchen cooks to form a human wall against Elder Huo’s Rank 4 Peak Flame Serpent! Does he think iron woks can block Immortal Fire?! Flame Serpent—GO! Roast these pot-headed fools into charcoal!”
HIIIIISSSSSS!
At Senior Brother Zhao’s command, the thirty-foot Crimson Flame-Serpent opened its terrifying jaws, bared its flaming fangs, and lunged straight through the air toward the front row of bricklayers!
Twenty feet! Fifteen feet! Ten feet!
Master Bricklayer Wang didn’t even blink. He casually reached into his back pocket, pulled out his dog-eared Comic-Strip Cultivation Primer, and tapped the painted parrot on the cover.
SQUAWK!
The magic paper parrot on the book cover puffed out its chest and shouted across the square in a loud, cheerful desert accent so every single worker could hear the rhythm:
“Attention, Class Three! Turn to Page Four, Picture Two! When a wild fire-snake tries to burn the public brick kiln, don’t run and don’t hide! Squat like an ox, clench your butt cheeks tight, boil the Meat-Potato blood in your belly, and PUNCH THE STOVE ON THREE! One—Two—THREE!”
“ON THREE!” Master Bricklayer Wang roared, dropping into a deep, rock-solid horse stance that cracked the dust under his boots.
CLACK!
Behind him, all four hundred and ninety-nine bricklayers, blacksmiths, and cooks dropped into the exact same horse stance in perfect unison!
“BOIL THE BLOOD!” Master Wang shouted.
BOOOOOOOM—HUMMMM!
Five hundred pairs of lungs sucked in a deep breath of night air at the exact same moment! Beneath their gray canvas work shirts, the Furnace-Blood Scripture roared to life like five hundred blacksmith bellows pumping at full speed!
Normally, a mortal without a natural Spirit Root could never gather heaven-and-earth Qi in their dantian. And a single Half-Step Rank 4 worker could only condense a tiny spark of blood-fire the size of a walnut.
But Pei Xuan’s Furnace-Blood Scripture had been fused by the Cube with zero flaws—it turned hot, iron-rich martial blood directly into liquid fire-Qi! Even better, when five hundred workers who ate from the same giant pot and sang the same night-school chant circulated their blood-Qi side by side, their heat linked together into one giant industrial furnace!
Red-gold steam hissed out from underneath five hundred iron wok-helmets! The calloused, brick-hardened right fists of all five hundred workers turned bright, glowing orange like red-hot cannonballs pulled fresh from a forge!
Inside the red shield dome, Senior Brother Zhao’s manic laughter died in his throat.
His eyes bulged until the corners split. Looking at the five hundred glowing fists facing him, he didn’t feel like he was looking at mortal workers anymore—he felt like he had stuck his head inside the mouth of an erupting volcano!
“Wait—what kind of cultivation art is that?!” Senior Brother Zhao shrieked, his voice pitching up like a strangled chicken’s. “None of those dirty bricklayers have Spirit Roots! How are all five hundred of them condensing Qi Gathering fire at the same time?!”
“PUNCH THE STOVE!” Master Bricklayer Wang bellowed, thrusting his glowing right fist straight at the nose of the incoming Flame Serpent!
“HAH!”
Five hundred workers punched forward with one earth-shaking shout!
FOOM! FOOM! FOOM! FOOM! FOOM!
Five hundred fist-sized fireballs—each one dense, heavy, and spinning like a red-gold iron shot—blasted out of the workers’ calloused knuckles at the exact same tenth of a second!
In an instant, the dark sky over Ward 3 turned brighter than midday! Five hundred roaring fireballs streaking side-by-side didn’t look like a mortal spell—they looked like a solid wall of falling meteors thirty yards wide!
KABOOOOOOOOM!
The first one hundred bricklayer fireballs slammed headfirst into the open jaws of Senior Brother Zhao’s thirty-foot Flame Serpent!
The proud Rank 4 Peak Flame Serpent didn’t even get to let out a whimper. Hit by a hundred compressed Furnace-Blood fireballs at once, its head exploded like a cheap paper lantern hit by buckshot! The next fifty fireballs tore through its flaming body from neck to tail, blowing the “invincible” sect talisman spell into harmless red confetti in less than half a breath!
And there were still three hundred and fifty fireballs left in the volley, flying straight at Senior Brother Zhao and his four juniors!
“Block it! Pour all your Qi into the Four-Corner Shield!” Senior Brother Zhao screamed in sheer, mortal terror, slamming both muddy hands against the inside of their red light dome.
Junior Sister Liu and the three junior brothers cried out in panic, pumping every last drop of Qi from their dantians into the protective shield.
A split second later, three hundred and fifty worker fireballs rained down on the five sect disciples like a five-minute artillery bombardment packed into two seconds!
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-CRACK-BOOOOOOOM!
The first fifty fireballs hammered the Four-Corner Crimson Cloud Shield until it spider-webbed with cracks.
The hundredth fireball shattered the shield like thin window glass!
The remaining two hundred and fifty fireballs had been carefully aimed by Master Bricklayer Wang at a slight upward angle so they wouldn’t crack the street tiles—which meant they grazed right over the tops of the five sect disciples’ heads and blasted the air three feet in front of their chests!
A blinding mushroom cloud of red-gold fire and black smoke rolled thirty feet into the air.
When the smoke cleared five seconds later, the entire Ward 3 Night Market was so quiet you could hear a noodle drop.
Five hundred bricklayers stood neatly in their rows, blowing little puffs of white smoke off their right knuckles before calmly tucking their thumbs back into their tool belts.
“Not bad, boys!” Master Bricklayer Wang nodded in satisfaction, checking page four of his comic-strip primer. “Row Three was half a beat slow on the butt-clench, so your fireballs drifted a foot to the left. Tomorrow night after we finish laying the sewer pipes on Fifth Street, everyone does twenty extra squats!”
“Yes, Foreman Wang!” the five hundred workers answered in a neat chorus.
Over in front of the broken latrine, Senior Brother Zhao and his four juniors stood frozen like five pieces of burnt toast.
The fertilizer on their red robes had been baked dry into a hard, smoking crust of gray mud. Their long, proud “Immortal” hair stood straight out in five giant, frizzy black afros that were still puffing little wisps of white smoke.
Senior Brother Zhao blinked his eyes. Two puffs of black soot came out of his nostrils.
When he raised a trembling hand to touch his forehead, his fingers brushed against smooth, bare skin—both of his eyebrows and his front bangs had been burned completely off!
“M-my eyebrows...” Senior Brother Zhao whispered in a hollow, broken voice. He looked at the five hundred bricklayers in iron wok-helmets, and his knees finally gave out.
THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD.
All five proud disciples of the Crimson Cloud Immortal Sect collapsed onto their backs in a neat row, staring blankly up at the stars as little rings of smoke floated off their frizzy hair.
“Five hundred...” Junior Brother Chen whimpered, his burnt lips trembling as he stared at the ceiling of lanterns. “Five hundred Qi Gathering fireballs... from bricklayers wearing iron cooking pots! Senior Brother Zhao... did we fly into the wrong world?! Are we in an Upper-Realm Immortal City pretending to be a mortal town?!”
“Don’t ask me...” Senior Brother Zhao groaned, a single tear rolling down his soot-blackened cheek and sizzling on his hot collar. “Even in our Crimson Cloud Sect’s main mountain, if you want to gather five hundred Qi Gathering disciples in one square to fire a spell volley, the Sect Master himself has to ring the Golden Bell for three days! Yet here... a kid in bath slippers blew a copper whistle once, and five hundred masons came out of an alley and blew up Elder Huo’s treasure talisman with their bare fists!”
Down behind the iron noodle cart, Envoy Lin walked out holding his empty porcelain bowl, shaking his head like a wise old veteran looking at foolish new recruits.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Zhao Kuang, I warned you twice, didn’t I?” Envoy Lin squatted down beside Senior Brother Zhao’s smoking afro and poked his shoulder with a chopstick. “You thought I was staying here for two boiled eggs? Look at Foreman Wang over there! Two months ago, Foreman Wang was a sixty-year-old mortal mason who couldn’t even read his own name! Now he punches out fireballs hotter than yours, gets twenty silver coins a month in salary, and doesn’t have to kowtow to any sect elders! Do you still think your moldy little courtyard in Green-Jade Valley is something special?”
Senior Brother Zhao opened his mouth to argue, but only a puff of black smoke came out. For the first time in his life, his proud Immortal pride felt as ridiculous as a paper crown in a rainstorm.
Over in Row One of the worker militia, a young blacksmith apprentice named Little Iron pulled off his wok-helmet and stared down at his own warm, glowing dantian in disbelief.
“Foreman Wang! Look at my belly!” Little Iron shouted, jumping three feet into the air for joy. “That punch just knocked open my inner gate! I can feel a spinning pool of fire-Qi inside my dantian! I’m a Rank 4 Qi Gathering cultivator now! Wait until my mother hears that her son is an Immortal!”
“Me too! My dantian just popped open like a champagne cork!”
“Mine too! Hey, Old Li, my rheumatism disappeared completely when that fireball shot out!”
Down the five rows of workers, thirty-two men and women began cheering and hugging each other as warm red-gold Qi halos bloomed around their shoulders.
CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!
Up on the bathhouse terrace, Pei Xuan clapped his hands warmly as the twenty thousand citizens in the square erupted into deafening cheers, tossing their hats into the air and hugging the nearest bricklayers.
“Thirty-two more workers just broke through to Rank 4 Early from one practice punch!” Pei Xuan grinned from ear to ear. “At this rate, by next month, even the grandmas sweeping the streets in Dry-Well City will be Qi Gathering cultivators!”
Beside him, Abacus Su didn’t cheer. Instead, he snapped his golden abacus shut with a crisp CLACK, tucked his thick ledger under his arm, and adjusted his spectacles with a cold, terrifying smile.
“Lord Pei, the fireworks show is over,” Abacus Su said, already jogging down the marble stairs toward the street with five fresh yellow Debtor Vests tucked under his elbow. “Now comes the most terrifying part of the night—handing them the itemized bill!”