CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!
The sound of Abacus Su’s golden abacus beads clicking together was sharper than a hailstorm hitting an iron roof.
Still lying on their backs in front of the ruined public latrine, Senior Brother Zhao and his four smoking juniors heard the footsteps stop right beside their heads. They looked up weakly through a haze of burnt hair smoke and saw a thin man in a neat scholar’s robe peering down at them through round glass spectacles.
Behind the scholar stood Pei Xuan in his white bathrobe, Hong Ling twirling her two heavy kitchen cleavers, and General Tie Zhan leading twenty armored guards who were carrying five buckets of cold water and five stiff scrub-brushes.
“Listen carefully, you five unregistered flying vandals,” Abacus Su said, unrolling a six-foot-long paper invoice that trailed all the way down to his ankles. “Under Article 14 of the Dry-Well Municipal Property Protection Code, here is your itemized damage bill for tonight’s disturbance:”
Abacus Su cleared his throat and read aloud so the entire night market could hear:
“Item One: Unauthorized nocturnal flight over Ward 3 and emergency activation of the Level 2 Town No-Fly Gravity Array—thirty thousand low-grade Spirit Stones!
Item Two: Complete destruction of forty-two red clay roof tiles, three pine rafters, and one wooden door on Public Latrine #3, plus spoilage of two tons of fermenting Grade-A potato fertilizer—five thousand Spirit Stones!
Item Three: Twelve cracked blue-stone street tiles, one trampled two-copper braised egg belonging to Model Worker Lin Cang, and overtime hazard pay for five hundred Night-School Bricklayers who had to punch out your fire snake—ten thousand Spirit Stones!
Item Four: Loud roaring and bright red flashes after 9:00 PM, which frightened the thirty pregnant sows in the Ward 3 Municipal Pigpen and caused them to lose two pounds of weight each—five thousand Spirit Stones in porcine emotional distress!
Total fine due immediately: Fifty Thousand Low-Grade Spirit Stones! Cash or Spirit Stones only. Do you want to pay together or split the bill five ways?”
Silence hung over the square for three seconds.
Then Senior Brother Zhao sat up so fast his crispy black afro puffed out a cloud of gray ash.
“Fifty thousand Spirit Stones?!” Senior Brother Zhao shrieked, his eyebrowless forehead wrinkling like a dried walnut. “Are you insane?! Even the entire Green-Jade Valley Branch of our Crimson Cloud Sect only keeps ten thousand Spirit Stones in its vault! How can a broken toilet roof and thirty scared pigs cost fifty thousand Spirit Stones?! You’re robbing us in broad—in bright lantern light!”
“Robbing you?” Abacus Su looked deeply offended and tapped his spectacles. “Those thirty sows are bred from fused Spirit-Boar stock! When they get scared, their pork belly loses its three-layer marbling! Do you know how much Chief Chef Old Guo values three-layer marbling?! Five thousand Spirit Stones is already a twenty-percent holiday discount!”
“Empty their pouches,” Pei Xuan ordered calmly, waving a hand.
Hong Ling stepped forward with a happy grin, used the flat of her kitchen cleaver to flick the five storage pouches off the sect disciples’ belts, and dumped their contents out onto a clean cloth on top of a barrel.
Out rolled five three-foot Rank 4 flying swords, a few bottles of dry, chalky Fasting Pills, three changes of red outer-sect robes, and a small pile of dimly glowing gray stones.
“Young Master, I counted them!” Hong Ling held up the gray stones with a look of pure disgust. “Five dignified Qi Gathering Immortals, and between all five of them, they only have eighty low-grade Spirit Stones! Even Senior Brother Zhao only has thirty-two stones in his pocket! They are broker than the desert bandits we caught in Month One!”
Around the square, twenty thousand townspeople burst into fresh laughter.
“Eighty Spirit Stones between five people? That’s only sixteen stones each!” Blacksmith Zhang hooted. “Even our Foreman Wang has saved up more silver than that!”
Senior Brother Zhao’s face turned dark purple beneath the black soot. “You ignorant mortals! Spirit Stones are sacred cultivation resources! How can you compare them to mortal silver?! Give me back my Red-Flame Sword! That sword was bestowed upon me by Branch Elder Huo! If you dare keep it, Elder Huo will ride his flying boat across the desert and slaughter every last dog and chicken in this city!”
Pei Xuan picked up Senior Brother Zhao’s Red-Flame Sword by the hilt, weighed it in his hand, and clicked his tongue.
“Good spring steel, decent wind-groove runes, and a Rank 4 spirit-iron core,” Pei Xuan nodded thoughtfully. “Leaving five good pieces of steel like this for five lazy disciples to stand on like skateboards is a terrible waste of industrial material. Hong Ling, put these five flying swords into the warehouse. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to fuse them into a high-speed agricultural plow for the new eastern farmlands.”
“A plow?!” Senior Brother Zhao and his four juniors screamed in horror at the exact same time.
“My Red-Flame Sword has drunk the blood of twelve mountain bandits!” Senior Brother Zhao howled, trying to lunge forward, only for General Tie Zhan’s heavy iron boot to step lightly on his chest and pin him flat to the gravel. “You want to use an Immortal flying sword to dig mud for potatoes?! Kill me! Just cut my head off right now!”
“Cutting your head off won’t pay back the forty-nine thousand nine hundred and twenty Spirit Stones you still owe the city,” Pei Xuan said with a warm, neighborly smile. “According to our Dry-Well Labor Code, since all five of you have opened your dantians and know basic spell hand-seals, we won’t waste your education on simple ditch-digging. We just opened twenty new evening classes at the Dry-Well Public Cultivation Night School, and we are short on classroom assistants.”
Pei Xuan pointed his fan at the five blackened cultivators:
“Starting tomorrow morning, the five of you are sentenced to five years of mandatory teaching labor as Substitute Spell Instructors! For every worker you help master the basic Fireball, Water-Mist, or Wind-Blade hand-seal, Abacus Su will deduct ten Spirit Stones from your debt! Guards—hose them down outside the gate, put them in yellow Debtor Vests #002 through #006, and lock them in the Night School Faculty Dormitory!”
“Yes, My Lord!”
Ten minutes later, after being blasted clean with high-pressure hoses of icy well water by Sanitation Captain Liu, Senior Brother Zhao and his four juniors were marched into a clean, whitewashed brick room at the back of the Ward 3 Night School.
Their beloved red sect robes had been taken away to be boiled and disinfected. Now, all five of them wore rough gray cotton pajamas and bright yellow vests painted with bold black numbers:
[ DEBTOR #002 — SUBSTITUTE TEACHER ZHAO KUANG ] [ DEBTOR #003 — SUBSTITUTE TEACHER LIU YAN ] [ DEBTOR #004 — SUBSTITUTE TEACHER MA BAO ] [ DEBTOR #005 — SUBSTITUTE TEACHER CHEN FENG ] [ DEBTOR #006 — SUBSTITUTE TEACHER SUN ER ]
CLANG!
The heavy wooden-barred door of the dormitory room locked shut.
Inside the clean room—which actually had five soft cotton mattresses, a warm heated brick floor powered by Ao Ming’s underground pipes, and a clean indoor flush toilet—Senior Brother Zhao sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor with his eyes squeezed shut.
“Senior Brother Zhao...” Junior Sister Liu sniffled, pulling the collar of her yellow Debtor Vest up to hide her chin. “Our dantians are sealed with magnetic loadstone cuffs, our flying swords are gone, and tomorrow morning they want us to teach mortal bricklayers how to cast spells! What do we do?!”
“We die before we surrender!” Senior Brother Zhao declared fiercely, raising a trembling, eyebrowless face toward the ceiling. “The secrets of the Crimson Cloud Immortal Sect must never be taught to mud-legged peasants! If we teach them, we are traitors like Lin Cang! If we refuse to eat their mortal food, refuse to drink their water, and go on an Immortal Hunger Strike, that mortal city lord will be terrified that we might starve to death and anger Elder Huo! Everyone sit in a circle and meditate! Not one bite of Dry-Well food enters our mouths!”
“Right! Not one bite!” Junior Brother Ma and the others nodded Grimly—though as soon as Junior Brother Ma sat down on the warm heated floor, his stomach let out another long, hollow GUUUURGLE that echoed off the whitewashed walls.
They had been flying across the desert for three days on chalky Fasting Pills, had just used up all their Qi in battle, and had thrown up everything in their stomachs after falling into the latrine. Their bellies were so empty that their front ribs were practically sticking to their backbones.
Outside the wooden bars of the dormitory door, Pei Xuan stood in the hallway with Old Guo, Boom-Pot Sun, and Envoy Lin.
Pei Xuan looked at the floating RTS Loyalty bars above the five disciples sitting cross-legged on the floor:
* [ Zhao Kuang — Loyalty: 15/100 (Stubborn & Starving) ]
* [ Liu Yan — Loyalty: 22/100 (Cold, Hungry, & Secretly Likes the Heated Floor) ]
* [ Ma Bao — Loyalty: 28/100 (Dreaming of Roast Meat) ]
“Young Master, they say they are going on a hunger strike!” Hong Ling said, frowning. “Should I pry their mouths open with a spoon and pour potato porridge down their throats?”
“Never use violence on educated talent when soup can do the job ten times better,” Pei Xuan chuckled, patting Old Guo and Boom-Pot Sun on their round bellies. “Chef Guo, Master Sun—bring out the midnight faculty supper.”
“Hehehe! Coming right up, Lord Pei!”
Old Guo and Boom-Pot Sun rolled a small iron cart right up to the wooden bars of the dormitory door—less than three feet away from Senior Brother Zhao’s nose!
Sitting on top of the cart over a glowing charcoal brazier was a fat, unbreakable black-iron cauldron fused by Pei Xuan.
Old Guo lifted the heavy clay lid with a flourish.
WHOOOOOSH!
A thick, golden cloud of steam burst out of the cauldron, while Hong Ling thoughtfully placed a small wind-stone fan behind the pot to blow every single wisp of steam straight through the wooden bars into the dormitory!
Inside the cauldron simmered Old Guo and Boom-Pot Sun’s latest joint masterpiece: Golden Scorpion-Tail Spirit Chicken Soup!
Three plump, yellow-skinned desert chickens had been stewed for six hours until the meat was falling off the bones, swimming in a rich, golden broth alongside snow-white chunks of Red-Tail Scorpion meat, sweet desert red dates, wild wolfberries, and three pinches of Boom-Pot Sun’s Meridian-Warming Nine-Spice Powder. Slices of fresh ginger and chopped green scallions floated on the glistening golden oil on top.
The moment that rich, savory, slightly spicy aroma hit the inside of the dormitory room, all five “hunger-striking” sect disciples violently twitched!
SNIFF. SNIFF.
Junior Brother Ma’s nose wiggled by itself. Before he could stop it, a long, shiny string of drool dripped straight off his chin and landed on his yellow Debtor Vest.
“Don’t smell it! Hold your breath!” Senior Brother Zhao hissed, pinching his own nose shut with two fingers while his stomach did a violent backflip. “It’s a mortal trap! It’s just ordinary chicken boiled in dirty water!”
Right outside the bars, Envoy Lin pulled up a little wooden stool, sat down facing Senior Brother Zhao, and held out a large porcelain bowl.
“Chef Guo, since I caught five vandals tonight and agreed to teach the 7:00 AM Beginners’ Fireball Class tomorrow, I qualify for the Faculty Midnight Supper, right?” Envoy Lin asked loudly.
“Of course, Teacher Lin! Here—have a whole drumstick and two scorpion tails!” Old Guo scooped a massive chicken leg dripping with golden broth into Envoy Lin’s bowl, along with a spoonful of tender white scorpion meat and a fluffy steamed roll soaked in chicken oil.
Envoy Lin blew gently on the golden broth and took a long, loud sip right in front of the wooden bars:
SLUUUUUURP—AAAAAH!
As the fused Spirit Chicken Soup slid down Envoy Lin’s throat, a visible wave of warm pink spiritual energy spread across his face! Inside his dantian, the mild medicinal power of the scorpion tails and Sweet-Spring water washed through his meridians like a warm spring breeze, instantly healing his tired muscles and adding a thin thread of pure Qi to his cultivation!
“Good heavens!” Envoy Lin closed his eyes in bliss before biting off half the tender chicken drumstick with a juicy CHOMP. “This isn’t ordinary soup—this broth has more pure Yang Qi than the Crimson Cloud Sect’s inner-disciple Spirit-Fowl Banquet! Just drinking one bowl feels like meditating for three days! And the chicken skin is so soft it melts on my tongue!”
Inside the bars, four pairs of bloodshot eyes stared dead at the half-eaten drumstick in Envoy Lin’s hand.
Junior Brother Ma was trembling so hard his teeth clattered together. He could feel the rich spiritual mist drifting off the soup cauldron actually seeping into his pores and soothing his bruised back!
“S-Senior Brother Zhao...” Junior Brother Ma whimpered, tears pooling in his eyes. “That’s not dirty mortal water! Look at the spiritual glow on that broth! Even our Branch Elder Huo only gets to eat spirit-chicken once a month! If I don’t eat a bite right now, my meridians are going to dry up!”
“Hold steady, Junior Brother Ma!” Senior Brother Zhao croaked, though his own throat was bobbing up and down like a piston as he watched Envoy Lin dip the fluffy white bun into the golden chicken oil. “Where is your backbone—”
“I don’t want a backbone! I want a chicken wing!” Junior Brother Ma suddenly broke down crying, threw himself on his knees against the wooden bars, and stuck both hands out toward Old Guo’s pot. “Chef! Sir! Director Su! I surrender! I know how to teach the Wind-Blade Spell and the Minor Rain Art! I have neat handwriting too! Please give me one bowl of soup! Just one bowl!”
[ Prisoner Ma Bao's Loyalty increased: 28 -> 65/100 (Loyal Substitute Teacher!) ]
“Shameless!” Junior Sister Liu gasped—and then, before Senior Brother Zhao could even praise her, she shoved Junior Brother Ma aside, pressed her face between the wooden bars, and held out her own hands with tears streaming down her cheeks. “Chef Guo! Don’t give it all to him! He has terrible handwriting! I was top of my class in Basic Fire-Control! If you give me a bowl of soup and a clean comb, I’ll teach three classes a day!”
[ Prisoner Liu Yan's Loyalty increased: 22 -> 68/100 (Loyal Substitute Teacher!) ]
“Me too! Give me the chicken neck! I love chicken necks!” Junior Brothers Chen and Sun lunged at the bars together, fighting over who got to hold the wooden bowls Old Guo handed through the gap.
Within two minutes, four of the five Crimson Cloud Sect disciples were squatting by the bars in their yellow Debtor Vests, slurping golden chicken soup at top speed while crying tears of pure happiness.
Only Senior Brother Zhao was left sitting alone in the center of the floor.
His stomach let out a sound like a dying donkey: AWWW-GURGLE-SQUEAK.
Out by the cart, Old Guo scraped the bottom of the iron cauldron with his ladle and sighed loudly.
“Aiya, only one bowl left at the bottom of the pot, with the biggest chicken thigh and three whole scorpion tails,” Old Guo said, shaking his head. “Since Debtor #002 Zhao Kuang is on an Immortal Hunger Strike, I guess I’ll just pour this last bowl into the pig bucket for the thirty scared sows—”
“WAIT! DON’T GIVE IT TO THE PIGS!”
Like a starving tiger springing from a bush, Senior Brother Zhao launched himself across the room on his hands and knees, skidded across the heated floor tiles, and grabbed the wooden bars with both hands!
Tears poured down his eyebrowless face as he stared at the last golden chicken thigh in Old Guo’s ladle.
“I’m not on a hunger strike! I was just stretching my legs!” Senior Brother Zhao sobbed at the top of his lungs, his pride shattering into dust and blowing away in the chicken-soup steam. “Give it to me! Please don’t feed it to the pigs! I’m Qi Gathering Stage 5! I know the Five-Fire Ring Art, the Crimson Cloud Sword Steps, and thirteen basic farming spells! I’ll teach morning school, night school, and weekend cram school! Just give me the thigh and a second bowl of broth!”
Old Guo grinned and handed the big bowl through the bars.
Senior Brother Zhao buried his whole face in the bowl. With the very first mouthful of hot, savory, spirit-rich chicken soup flooding his empty stomach and warming his battered dantian, the floating bar above his frizzy black head shot upward like a rocket!
“Mmmph! Mmmph!” Senior Brother Zhao chewed the tender white scorpion tail meat so fast he nearly bit his own tongue. As he swallowed the golden broth, he felt a warm surge of pure spiritual energy wash through his sore chest and even loosen the bottleneck between Qi Gathering Stage 5 and Stage 6 that had troubled him for a whole year!
He lowered the empty bowl with trembling hands, his eyes wide with disbelief as he stared at the glossy film of chicken oil left at the bottom.
“This... this soup really has zero pill toxins!” Senior Brother Zhao whispered in awe, licking a drop of broth off his upper lip. “Back in the sect, every time I ate one of Elder Huo’s Qi-Gathering Pills, my stomach cramped for two days and black sludge built up in my meridians! Yet one bowl of this scorpion-chicken soup cleared out half the old sludge in my dantian and made my Qi ten percent purer!”
“Now you believe me, right?” Envoy Lin chuckled proudly from his little wooden stool outside the bars, patting the Little Red Paper Flower pinned to his yellow vest. “Wait until you try Chef Guo’s breakfast tomorrow morning—steamed Meat-Potato buns stuffed with diced spirit-boar and pickled chili bamboo shoots! One bun keeps your dantian warm for six hours!”
Junior Brother Ma licked the inside of his wooden bowl until it shone like a mirror, then raised his hand eagerly like an obedient schoolboy.
“Director Su! Teacher Lin!” Junior Brother Ma asked earnestly. “Just now you said that if we teach the night-school classes well, we can earn those Little Red Paper Flowers too. How many classes do we have to teach to get an extra chicken drumstick at supper?”
Abacus Su pushed his spectacles up his nose and flipped open the Dry-Well Night School Faculty Handbook.
“Every Substitute Teacher is required to teach four two-hour classes per day—two in the morning for the night-shift ironworkers, and two in the evening for the day-shift bricklayers and farmers,” Abacus Su read briskly. “Basic meals include unlimited Meat-Potato porridge and two steamed buns. However, for every ten students in your class who successfully master a basic spell hand-seal without burning their own eyebrows off, the instructor receives one Red Star Sticker! Five Red Star Stickers can be traded for one Little Red Flower—which cuts ten Spirit Stones off your fine AND comes with a voucher for one whole braised chicken leg or a bowl of spicy beef tendon noodles!”
Senior Brother Zhao’s eyes lit up brighter than two lanterns.
“Ten students equals one Red Star Sticker?!” Senior Brother Zhao calculated rapidly on his fingers. “Wait—I’m Qi Gathering Stage 5! I know the fast-shortcut hand-seals for the Minor Fireball and the Earth-Loosening Art! If I teach a class of a hundred bricklayers, I can get ten Red Star Stickers in a single night! That’s two Little Red Flowers, twenty Spirit Stones off my bill, and TWO chicken legs every evening!”
“Hey! Senior Brother Zhao, you can’t hog all the big classes!” Junior Sister Liu protested, clutching her empty soup bowl to her yellow vest. “I want the hundred-student class too! I can teach the Water-Mist Art to the vegetable farmers so they can water twenty acres of cabbages with one hand-seal!”
“Line up, line up! Everyone gets a classroom assignment based on their quiz score!” Envoy Lin stood up and handed five brightly colored Comic-Strip Cultivation Primers through the wooden bars like a strict headmaster. “As your Senior Debtor #216 and Night School Teaching Assistant Supervisor, I suggest the five of you memorize the rhymes in these comic books before midnight! If you use fancy sect words that the bricklayers can’t understand, Foreman Wang will dock your soup vouchers!”
“Yes, Supervisor Lin! Thank you, Supervisor Lin!” Senior Brother Zhao and his four juniors took the comic-strip books with both hands, not a single trace of their former “Immortal arrogance” left on their faces. Within ten seconds, all five red-sect disciples were huddled together under the wall lamp, earnestly practicing the parrot rhyme: “Squat like an ox, clench your butt cheeks tight...”
Pei Xuan watched Senior Brother Zhao lick the bottom of the porcelain bowl one last time before arguing with Junior Brother Ma over how to pronounce “butt-clench” in the local desert dialect.
“Three million Loyalty Points a day,” Pei Xuan smiled, patting his sleeves as he turned toward the stairs. “Get a good night’s sleep, Teacher Zhao. Tomorrow morning at dawn, before your first class starts, I need you out in the eastern gravel plains—to test-drive my new Flying-Sword Tractor!”