Five miles east of Dry-Well City, where the newly paved Eastern Border Highway met the edge of the Red-Sand Wastes, a cool afternoon breeze blew across the six-lane stone road.
The highway here was a masterpiece of civil engineering. Every single granite slab had been sliced from the quarry by Rank 5 Sword Genius Ye Guhan, fitted together without a hair’s gap between the stones, and bordered by neat rows of young desert willow trees.
At the side of the highway, under a striped canvas sun-umbrella, Pei Xuan sat in a bamboo folding chair drinking chilled watermelon juice.
Beside him stood Ye Guhan, who was holding a carpenter’s spirit-level and staring lovingly at the flat stone road surface. Next to Ye Guhan, alchemist Boom-Pot Sun—a stout, soot-faced man wearing thick brass blast-goggles and an iron apron—was happily stirring three massive black-iron cauldrons mounted on heavy spring-catapult frames.
“Lord Pei, the eastern sky is turning red,” Old Wei reported from the top of the highway toll booth, shading his eyes with his hand. “A forty-foot flying wooden boat is coming fast, surrounded by thirty red-robed cultivators on flying swords!”
Pei Xuan took a sip of his cold watermelon juice and glanced sideways at Ye Guhan.
“Tsk, tsk. What a shame,” Pei Xuan sighed softly, shaking his head as if deeply hurt on a friend’s behalf. “Brother Ye, do you know what that Branch Elder Huo shouted through his projection just before I put him in the pickle jar?”
Ye Guhan didn’t look up from polishing his iron sword with a dry cloth. “What could a mere Rank 4 Qi Gathering frog in a well possibly say that matters to me?”
“Well, I didn’t want to tell you because I knew it would upset your artistic pride,” Pei Xuan said earnestly, pointing down at the mirror-smooth granite highway beneath their boots. “When Elder Huo looked down at your Eastern Border Highway, he sneered and said: ‘Which cross-eyed, shaky-handed apprentice cut these road stones? The left lane is half an inch higher than the right lane, the curb corners are crooked like dog legs, and if you rolled an iron ball down the center line, it would fall into the ditch in ten yards!’”
CRACK!
The dry polishing cloth in Ye Guhan’s hand tore straight in half!
Ye Guhan slowly raised his head. A terrifying, icy aura of Rank 5 Foundation Establishment Sword Intent flared out from his body, making the watermelon seeds on Pei Xuan’s table stand straight up on end!
“He said my left lane is half an inch higher?” Ye Guhan’s voice was colder than ten-thousand-year glacier ice as he stepped out onto the center line of the highway and rested his thumb on the hilt of his iron sword. “Pei Xuan. When that blind old fool flies over Mile Marker Five, nobody else is allowed to touch his boat.”
“Wait, Brother Ye!” Pei Xuan called out quickly. “Don’t chop his boat into useless sawdust! That flying war-boat is made of forty-year Crimson-Flame Spirit Wood! Abacus Su just told me that our Highway Rest Stops need forty flat wooden benches and tables for tired travelers to sit on while eating noodles. Can your Sword Qi slice a flying war-boat in mid-air straight into two-inch-thick, pre-sanded square planks without wasting a single board?”
Ye Guhan let out a proud, icy laugh. “Wasting a board is the mark of a clumsy butcher! Watch closely—not only will I cut his boat into forty identical planks, I will carve the mortise-and-tenon table joints at the exact same instant!”
Meanwhile, over by the three catapult cauldrons, Pei Xuan opened his [Fusion Cube] and spent 200,000 LP to upgrade Boom-Pot Sun’s bubbling concoction:
[ Spend 200,000 LP? -> CONFIRMED! ]
[ Remaining Balance: 3,270,000 LP ]
“Hehehe! Smells like roasted brown sugar and pine tar!” Boom-Pot Sun licked his lips and cranked the iron winches of all three catapults down to the bottom notch. “Lord Pei, my three flying cauldrons are locked and loaded!”
WHOOOOOOOSH—ROOOOOOAR!
High in the eastern sky, a dark crimson cloud tore through the afternoon air at eighty miles an hour!
At the center of the cloud sailed a magnificent, forty-foot-long Rank 4 Crimson-Wood Flying War-Boat, carved with fierce fire-drakes along its bow and powered by twenty glowing Spirit Stones set into its deck.
Standing on the front prow of the flying boat was Branch Elder Huo in person!
However, Elder Huo did not look very dignified right now. Because twenty percent of his soul-consciousness and dantian Qi was currently spinning inside a pickle jar on top of the Dry-Well Bathhouse roof, his face was pale green, dark circles hung under his bloodshot eyes, and he was tying a wet towel tightly around his temples to stop his splitting headache.
Worse still, every ten seconds, his own mouth would twitch by itself and mutter under his breath: “Rub-a-dub-dub, two coppers a tub—GAH! Shut up!”
Elder Huo slapped his own cheek furiously to stop singing the bathhouse jingle, then glared down at the gleaming stone highway leading toward Dry-Well City in the distance.
“There they are!” Elder Huo roared, pointing his gold-plated fire staff down at the small group standing beside the highway toll booth. “Look at that arrogant brat sitting under an umbrella! He didn’t even hide behind his city walls! Disciples of the Crimson Cloud Sect—hear my order! Surround that toll booth from the air, rain down thirty flying swords, and chop that kid and his highway workers into meat paste!”
“YES, ELDER HUO!”
Around the forty-foot flying boat, thirty outer-sect combat disciples (all Rank 4 Early Qi Gathering Stages 1 to 4) shouted in unison and dove downward in a tight wedge formation like thirty red hawks!
“They’re diving in a tight group! How polite of them to save me ammunition!” Boom-Pot Sun cackled gleefully, grabbing the master release rope of his three spring-catapults. “Taste Master Sun’s Triple Taffy Pot Barrage—FIRE!”
TWANG! TWANG! TWANG!
Three heavy iron catapult arms snapped upward with tremendous force, flinging three boiling black-iron cauldrons two hundred feet straight up into the path of the thirty diving sect disciples!
“Watch out! They threw three iron cooking pots at us!” the lead outer disciple laughed scornfully, raising his hand to cast a Fireball Spell. “Do these desert bumpkins think kitchen pots can fly?! Smash them—”
“POT-BURST ART—POP!” Boom-Pot Sun pinched an alchemist’s fire-seal from the ground.
BOOOOM-SPLAT! BOOOOM-SPLAT! BOOOOM-SPLAT!
Before the thirty sect disciples could even cast a single spell, all three cauldrons burst open right in the center of their formation!
Instead of iron shrapnel, out exploded ten thousand crisscrossing ribbons of steaming, golden-black Sticky Spirit-Tar Flypaper Stew!
The sweet smell of roasted brown sugar and honey filled the sky—followed one tenth of a second later by a giant, hundred-yard-wide spiderweb of unbreakable black taffy that wrapped around all thirty diving cultivators at once!
“What is this black goo?! Ack—it’s in my mouth! Mmmph!”
“My hands are glued to my sword hilt! I can’t pinch a spell seal!”
“Don’t bump into me, Junior Brother Wang! Aaaah—your butt just stuck to my chest! Pull away! Pull away!”
“I can’t pull away! The more Qi I use, the tighter this black taffy sucks!”
Up in the air, a hilarious disaster unfolded in less than five seconds:
Because the fused Sticky Spirit-Tar absorbed Qi Gathering energy to make itself ten times stickier, every time one of the thirty disciples struggled or flailed their arms, they got glued onto the disciple next to them!
SCHLUCK! SPLAT! SQUISH!
Thirty red-robed cultivators and thirty flying swords got tangled, rolled, and squashed together in mid-air like thirty flies rolled up in a giant ball of black malt candy!
With all their flying swords glued sideways inside the ball, the giant eight-foot-wide Human Flypaper Ball lost all lift and plummeted out of the sky—WHUUUUUMP—BOING!—landing squarely inside a giant padded hay-wagon that Abacus Su had parked beside the toll booth!
Sixty legs and thirty muffled heads stuck out of the black taffy ball at crazy angles, humming “Mmmph! Mmmph!” as they bounced up and down on the hay without a single broken bone!
Up on the deck of his forty-foot Flying War-Boat, Elder Huo’s jaw dropped so hard his chin hit his chest.
“My thirty elite combat disciples?!” Elder Huo screamed, clutching his aching head as he looked down at the giant black candy ball wiggling in the hay-wagon. “Caught in one breath by three pots of sticky mud?! You demonic bastards! Wait until I fire the Rank 4 Peak Crimson-Dragon Bow Cannon on my war-boat and blow your highway into a hundred-foot crater!”
“Blow my highway into a crater?”
Down on the center line of Mile Marker Five, Ye Guhan heard those five words.
The cold-faced Rank 5 Sword Genius didn’t even jump into the air. He simply took one step forward on the flat granite stones he had laid with his own hands, raised his plain iron sword toward the forty-foot wooden war-boat two hundred feet overhead, and drew the blade three inches out of its scabbard.
SHING!
A single, whisper-thin crescent of pure white Rank 5 Foundation Sword Qi flashed upward into the afternoon sky.
There was no loud explosion, no flashy fire, and no wind that disturbed a single willow leaf beside the road.
It was the pinnacle of Pei Xuan’s “Supreme Highway Carpentry Swordsmanship”—absolute control, zero wasted force, and millimeter-perfect flatness!
Up in the sky, Elder Huo was just reaching his fat hand toward the firing rune of his boat’s bow cannon when the thin white crescent of Sword Qi passed silently through the bottom of his forty-foot Flying War-Boat.
And then it spun thirty-nine times in one hundredth of a second!
SHING-SHING-SHING-SHING-CLACK!
Elder Huo froze.
The wind suddenly felt very cold against his legs.
He looked down at the deck beneath his boots—and realized there was no deck anymore.
In fact, there was no boat anymore!
All around him in mid-air floated forty identical, six-foot-by-two-foot rectangular planks of polished Crimson-Flame Spirit Wood, each one sliced to an exact thickness of two inches, with neat square mortise-and-tenon table slots already carved into all four corners!
Even Elder Huo’s baggy gold-trimmed outer robe had its flapping sleeves and hem neatly trimmed off into four square table napkins, leaving the fat Branch Elder hovering alone in mid-air in his short red silk underpants and socks!
“M-my boat?!” Elder Huo squeaked in a tiny, high-pitched voice as he stared at the forty neat wooden table planks floating around his waist. “My three-thousand-Spirit-Stone Crimson-Wood War-Boat... turned into picnic tables in one slash?! Foundation Establishment?! Why does a mortal highway toll booth have a Rank 5 Foundation Establishment Sword Master guarding the curb?!”
Before Elder Huo could even reach for a flight talisman, the Level 2 Highway Gravity Array beneath the road gave a gentle HUM.
“AAAAAH!”
Elder Huo dropped two hundred feet straight down out of the sky in his red silk underpants—WHOOMP!—and landed belly-first right in the middle of a giant elastic Soul-Catching Silk Trampoline Net held by eight grinning Furnace-Blood soldiers!
Before Elder Huo stopped bouncing on the net, Abacus Su walked right up to the edge of the net, grabbed Elder Huo’s fat right thumb, dipped it into a box of red cinnabar ink, and pressed it firmly onto the bottom of a long paper scroll!
“Branch Elder Huo Tianba of the Crimson Cloud Sect!” Abacus Su announced cheerfully, holding up the stamped contract for everyone to see. “Welcome to Dry-Well Territory! For attempting an armed air raid with thirty unregistered flyers, littering sticky taffy over Highway Mile Five, and causing severe artistic insult to Chief Engineer Ye Guhan, your fine is Two Hundred Thousand Low-Grade Spirit Stones! Thank you for donating forty pre-cut Spirit-Wood picnic tables as your first down payment!”
“Two hundred thousand Spirit Stones?!” Elder Huo bounced up and down in the net in his red underpants, spitting blood and tears at the same time. “You bandits! My whole Green-Jade Valley branch doesn’t have two hundred thousand Spirit Stones!”
HONK! HONK!
Just then, a loud brass rubber horn sounded down the highway!
Flying-Sword Tractor #1 came zooming down the shoulder of the road at fifty miles an hour, pulling a flatbed trailer loaded with forty fresh yellow Debtor Vests!
Senior Brother Zhao slammed on the brakes, drifted the hovering tractor to a neat stop beside the trampoline net, and pushed his brass goggles up onto his charcoal-drawn eyebrows.
“Master! Elder Huo! You finally got here!” Senior Brother Zhao hopped off the tractor seat in his bright yellow #002 Debtor Vest, holding half a roasted lamb leg wrapped in wax paper, and ran over to the net with a big, welcoming smile.
Elder Huo stared through the silk net at Senior Brother Zhao—and then looked down at the five humming Rank 4 flying swords bolted underneath the muddy red tractor chassis.
“Z-Zhao Kuang?!” Elder Huo’s voice cracked so high that three birds fell out of a nearby willow tree. “Why are you wearing a yellow sleeveless dog-vest?! Why did you draw two caterpillars on your forehead with coal?! And why are you driving a manure cart made out of my sect’s flying swords?!”
“Master, don’t call it a manure cart—this is the Model-1 Auto-Plowing Flying-Sword Tractor!” Senior Brother Zhao patted the red iron hood proudly. “And don’t feel bad about getting caught, Master! Honestly, getting arrested by Lord Pei is the best thing that ever happened to our Green-Jade Valley branch! Look at the thirty combat disciples in that hay-wagon—once we wash the sticky taffy off them with vinegar water and put them in yellow vests, our Night School Faculty will have thirty-six teachers! We won’t even have to work weekend overtime anymore!”
“You traitorous beast! I raised you for ten years and you’re happy that I got caught?!” Elder Huo tried to strangle Senior Brother Zhao through the net, only for Envoy Lin to jog up from behind the trailer holding a fresh extra-large yellow vest painted with [ DEBTOR #037 — SENIOR BELLOWS OPERATOR HUO TIANBA ].
“Elder Huo, listen to Senior Brother Zhao—don’t fight the system!” Envoy Lin advised earnestly as he expertly slipped the triple-XL yellow vest over Elder Huo’s fat shoulders through the net openings. “If you curse at Director Su, he charges fifty Spirit Stones per bad word! But if you behave and pump the forge bellows hard, Chef Guo gives out free Scorpion-Tail Spirit Chicken Soup on Friday nights! Plus, half of your head is already working on the bathhouse roof—if your body works hard down here, maybe Lord Pei will let you visit your own head on Sundays!”
Hearing that he might be allowed to “visit his own head on Sundays,” Elder Huo rolled his eyes back, let out a long, pitiful squeak, and fainted dead away in his red silk underpants.
“Does your Green-Jade Valley branch have a treasury, herb fields, and handyman disciples?” Pei Xuan stood up from his bamboo chair, dusted off his hands, and smiled warmly down at the unconscious Branch Elder.
Pei Xuan plucked the Bronze Branch Master Token right off Elder Huo’s belt and tossed it in his hand.
“Since you can’t pay your fine in cash, Elder Huo, our Dry-Well Municipal Court will now repossess your Green-Jade Valley outpost to cover your mortgage!” Pei Xuan turned to General Tie Zhan. “General Tie, bring five hundred Furnace-Blood soldiers and ten trucks. Let’s go take over our new Vocational Technical College!”