WHam! WHAM!
Two heavy iron hammers slammed down on the red-hot rail spike at the eastern edge of the Red-Sand Wastes, sending a shower of bright orange sparks flying into the morning air.
“Last spike on the Eastern Terminus!” shouted General Tie Zhan, wiping a river of sweat off his bald, shiny forehead with one massive hand while holding a half-eaten steamed pork bun in the other. “Alright, boys! Back away from the gravel bed! Let the big bugs roll through!”
CHOO-CHOO! HISS!
Down the gleaming iron tracks came the lead Scorpion-Track Iron Train. Six armor-plated Giant Scorpion Kings—each the size of a two-story barn and painted bright municipal yellow—scuttled along the twin steel rails at fifty miles an hour. Their twelve pincers pumped up and down like piston rods, and every time the engineer in the front cab poured a ladle of Old Guo’s spicy mutton broth down their feeding funnels, the scorpions clicked their mandibles happily and ran even faster.
With a long squeal of iron brakes, the ten flatbed cars behind the scorpions ground to a halt right at the edge of the desert border, where the dry red gravel gave way to the muddy, reed-choked hills of Silver-Fork County.
Pei Xuan stepped down from the command car, his gray cotton robe fluttering in the warm summer breeze. Now that he had broken through to Rank 4 Early-Peak (Qi Gathering), his once-pale cheeks glowed with healthy warmth, and every breath he took carried a faint, steady hum of Furnace-Blood Qi inside his dantian.
Behind him hopped down Hong Ling, clutching her trusty brass abacus, and Su Suanpan—“Abacus Su”—who was pushing his round brass spectacles up his pointy nose while unrolling a ten-foot-long ledger scroll.
“My Lord,” Abacus Su said, his fingers flying across his abacus beads with a sound like summer rain on a tile roof. “As of this morning, our total registered population across Dry-Well City, Black-Rock City, and the Green-Jade Vocational College has reached three hundred and fifty thousand! However, we have hit a terrible supply bottleneck.”
“How bad?” Pei Xuan asked, walking over to the wooden watchtower at the end of the railway line.
“Catastrophic for our construction schedule!” Abacus Su tapped the scroll with his ink brush. “We have mountains of snow-fine desert salt, millions of catties of Meat-Belly Giant Potatoes, and endless coal. What we do NOT have is heavy river timber for roof beams, raw iron ore for our Type-1 Spirit-Rifles, and raw silk cotton for winter uniforms! Every single tree in the desert could barely build three doghouses. And all the timber and iron ore from the central provinces moves down one waterway—the Silver River, ten miles east of these rocky hills.”
“That’s why we sent Clerk Fang and the trade caravan to Silver-Fork Port at dawn,” Hong Ling chimed in, standing on her tiptoes on an empty salt crate and shading her eyes toward the eastern hills. “We gave them ten big ox-carts of our finest snow-salt and ten carts of five-pound Meat-Potatoes! In the central counties, fine white salt sells for two hundred copper coins a catty. Even if we trade it at ten coppers a catty for raw pine logs and pig iron, the merchants at Silver-Fork Port should be kissing Clerk Fang’s boots right now!”
“They would be,” Pei Xuan said calmly, raising his right hand toward the sky, “if Silver-Fork Port were run by honest merchants instead of the Southern Canal Guild.”
He blew a short, sharp note on a bone whistle hanging from his belt.
High above the clouds, a mechanical bird with bronze feathers and two glowing quartz eyes let out a metallic SCREECH! It was the Farsight Spirit-Mirror Hawk, a scouting tool Pei Xuan had fused two days ago for 50,000 Loyalty Points by combining [Desert Falcon] + [Polished Bronze Mirror] + [Echo Stone].
Pei Xuan tapped a two-yard-wide copper basin filled with clear Sweet-Spring water sitting on the watchtower table. Ripples spread across the water, and instantly, the surface lit up like a crystal-clear television screen, projecting both sight and sound from ten miles away!
Old Wei, Old Guo, and General Tie Zhan all crowded around the copper water basin, peering down at the live image.
On the screen, the mighty Silver River stretched half a mile wide, its muddy yellow water crowded with hundreds of tall-masted wooden cargo barges. Along the stone docks of Silver-Fork Port, thousands of shirtless dockworkers—their backs covered in red whip scars and their ribs sticking out like washboards—were hauling heavy logs and iron ingots up the muddy banks with hemp ropes cutting into their shoulders.
Right outside the main wooden toll-gate of the port stood Dry-Well City’s trade caravan: twenty sturdy four-wheeled carts piled high with sparkling white salt sacks and plump, football-sized Meat-Potatoes.
At the head of the caravan stood Clerk Fang, a plump, polite young man trained by Abacus Su, wearing a neat blue Dry-Well Trade Office vest. He was bowing with a bright smile to a squad of thirty burly guards dressed in black silk vests embroidered with golden coins.
“Greetings, brothers of the Southern Canal Guild!” Clerk Fang’s voice rang clearly out of the water basin. “I am Junior Clerk Fang from Dry-Well City in the west! By order of our Lord Pei Xuan, we have brought twenty thousand catties of snow-fine desert salt and twenty thousand catties of fresh Meat-Belly Potatoes. We wish to rent warehouse space and trade fairly for pine timber and raw pig iron at market rates!”
Around the dock gate, hundreds of starving dockworkers and poor fishermen stopped pulling their ropes. When Clerk Fang untied the corner of a burlap sack and scooped out a handful of salt that sparkled like fresh winter snow—without a single speck of bitter yellow dirt—a collective gasp went up from the crowd.
“Heavens above! Look at that salt! Even the County Magistrate’s table doesn’t have salt that white!”
“And what are those giant brown roots on the back carts? Why do they smell like roasted lamb fat?!”
“How much is that salt, young master?!” an old fisherman in patched straw sandals called out, holding up three rusty copper coins with shaking fingers. “The Canal Guild sells us bitter yellow mud-salt for eighty coppers a catty! My granddaughter’s legs have gone soft from eating saltless weeds for three months!”
Clerk Fang smiled warmly and pulled a small copper scale from his belt. “In Dry-Well City, our Lord Pei says salt and food are for keeping common folk alive, not for squeezing them dry! Our snow-salt is only two coppers a catty, and these Meat-Potatoes are one copper a catty! Wait until I pay the port toll, old uncle, and I’ll weigh you out a whole sack!”
The starving dockworkers went wild with joy, surging toward the carts with tears in their eyes.
CRACK!
A braided leather whip lashed through the air, slicing the old fisherman’s straw hat in half and knocking him flat into the mud.
“Back to your ropes, you lazy river-rats! Anyone who touches a single grain of dirt from these desert wagons gets their hands chopped off and fed to the catfish!”
The crowd scattered in terror as a gilded palanquin carried by sixteen sweating pole-bearers marched down the center of the dock.
Sitting on top of a tiger-skin cushion inside the open palanquin was a man so fat he looked like a mountain of greased dough stuffed into a purple brocade robe. He wore three jade thumb-rings on each chubby hand, had two oily black mustaches twisted like catfish whiskers, and held a gold-plated teapot that he sipped from through a silver straw.
A bright red tooltip popped up over his shiny head in Pei Xuan’s water mirror:
“Guild Master Qian!” Clerk Fang hurried forward and bowed politely, holding up his official trade permit stamped with the Iron-Wolf Marquisate’s seal. “We are an official merchant convoy from Black-Rock and Dry-Well Cities. According to Great Yan Kingdom law, the river dock toll for basic food and salt is five percent—”
Ptooey!
Guild Master Qian spat a mouthful of tea leaves right onto Clerk Fang’s shiny leather boots.
“Great Yan Kingdom law?” Guild Master Qian’s three chins jiggled as he let out a booming, greasy laugh. All thirty of his black-vested guards laughed along with him, resting their hands on the hilts of their heavy river cutlasses. “Out here on the Silver River, little boy, my abacus IS the law! Even the King’s grain barges don’t float past Silver-Fork Port without greasing my palms!”
Guild Master Qian stood up on his palanquin, a wave of murky blue Water-Spirit Qi swirling around his fat shoulders as he looked down his nose at the twenty carts.
“Listen up, desert bumpkin!” Guild Master Qian barked, holding up eight stubby fingers. “If you want to unload your carts on my docks and buy a single splinter of wood from my river barges, the Southern Canal Guild Tax for outsiders is eighty percent!”
“Eighty percent?!” Clerk Fang’s jaw dropped. Back in Dry-Well City, watching through the water mirror, Hong Ling smacked the table so hard her abacus bounced three inches into the air.
“That fat pig!” Hong Ling shrieked, her face turning red. “Even the One-Eyed Jackal Bandits only asked for half! Eighty percent isn’t a tax, that’s broad-daylight robbery!”
In the water mirror, Guild Master Qian wasn’t even finished. He pointed his gold teapot at the first ten carts of sparkling white salt.
“Furthermore!” Guild Master Qian sneered. “Because your wagons rolled across my county’s mud road without a ‘Wheel-Rut Permit,’ the first ten carts of salt are officially confiscated right now as a Dock Inspection Fee! As for the other ten carts of potatoes—I’ll be generous and buy them all from you for ten rusty copper coins total! Now unhitched your oxen too; they look fat enough for my guards’ supper!”
“You—you can’t do that!” Clerk Fang stepped in front of the lead cart, his round face flushing red as he spread his arms wide. “This salt and food belong to Lord Pei Xuan of Dry-Well City! We came in peace to do honest business! If you rob our caravan, Lord Pei’s army will—”
“Lord Pei’s army? Bahahaha!” Guild Master Qian laughed so hard tears squeezed out of his tiny pig-eyes. He pointed at the muddy, half-mile-wide Silver River behind him, where fifty massive warships with iron-plated rams on their bows sat anchored in midstream.
“A bunch of sand-eating desert bumpkins who haven’t seen a puddle deeper than a washbasin want to threaten my Southern Canal Guild?!” Guild Master Qian roared, kicking over a basket of potatoes with his silk boot. “Tell your ‘Lord Pei’ that I have five hundred armed river barges and fifty Iron-Beak Warships! Can his scorpions swim? Can his mud-farmers walk on water? If he dares poke his head out of the desert, my River Navy will sink him to the bottom of the Silver River to feed the turtles! Guards! Take the ten salt carts and throw these desert beggars into the ditch!”
“Yes, Guild Master!”
Twenty Canal Guild thugs drew their cutlasses and charged at the carts.
“Nobody touches Lord Pei’s salt unless they pay full price!” shouted Sergeant Stone, the Rank 3 Martial guard commander escorting the caravan. He didn’t try to fight Guild Master Qian’s Rank 4 Qi—Pei Xuan’s strict orders were to never sacrifice a single Dry-Well citizen’s life over cargo.
Instead, Sergeant Stone yanked the red string on a wooden cylinder strapped to the lead salt cart.
POP-HISSSSS!
It was a fused Boom-Pot Sun Pepper-Smoke Flare! Thick, bright orange smoke mixed with roasted red chili powder exploded out of the cylinder, blanketing the entire dock gate in two seconds flat!
“Augh! My eyes! What kind of poison smoke smells like hotpot?!”
“Cough! Cough! My nose is on fire! Where did the carts go?!”
While Guild Master Qian and his thirty guards rolled on the dock clutching their stinging eyes and sneezing their lungs out, Sergeant Stone and Clerk Fang unhitched the fast desert horses from the first ten salt carts—which were too heavy to drag back up the steep muddy hills during a chase—loaded all the teamsters onto the ten lighter potato wagons, and cracked their whips!
“Wait! My salt!” Guild Master Qian waved his fat hand, blowing away the chili smoke with a gust of Water Qi.
The ten heavy salt carts were still sitting by the toll-gate, and Guild Master Qian greedily threw himself onto the nearest sack, hugging the snow-white salt while sneezing violently.
“Ah-choo! Hahaha! Run, you desert rats!” Guild Master Qian wiped his runny nose on his purple sleeve and laughed triumphantly as Clerk Fang’s horses galloped back toward the hills. “Ten thousand catties of snow-salt for free! Tell your Lord Pei to send another ten carts tomorrow! Ah-choo!”
Around the dock, the eighty thousand starving dockworkers and townspeople stared at the fleeing Dry-Well caravan with broken hearts. The old fisherman who had been whipped picked up three white potatoes that had rolled into the mud, hid them inside his torn shirt, and whispered with tears streaming down his face:
“Two coppers for snow-salt... one copper for meat-potatoes... Why couldn’t that kind Young Master Pei be the lord of our Silver River instead of this fat demon Qian?”
DING!
Back on the watchtower at the edge of the Red-Sand Wastes, Pei Xuan’s system chimed softly. Even though Silver-Fork Port wasn’t his territory yet, the thousands of starving dockworkers who had seen the snow-salt and smelled the Meat-Potatoes had already started dreaming of defecting west, nudging his territory’s influence and refugee inflow upward!
Around the copper water basin, the watchtower was dead silent for three seconds before exploding like a barrel of gunpowder.
“Let me at him, My Lord!” General Tie Zhan slammed his iron war-club into the floor, his eyes bulging like brass bells. “Give me three thousand Furnace-Blood soldiers and five hundred Peasant Riflemen! I’ll march across those hills right now, stuff that fat pig Qian into one of his own salt sacks, and use his belly as a drum!”
“March across ten miles of roadless mud hills with heavy supply carts?” Pei Xuan shook his head calmly, dipping a finger into the water basin to turn off the projection. “Did you see those fifty Iron-Beak Warships in the middle of the river, General Tie? If we march on foot, Guild Master Qian will just load our stolen salt—and all his silver—onto his boats and float downstream! Marching an army through hilly mud while chasing riverboats is like a dog chasing ducks in a pond.”
“Then what do we do, Young Master?” Hong Ling stomped her foot, her braids flying. “He stole ten carts of our salt! That’s twenty thousand coppers at Dry-Well prices, or twenty thousand silver taels at capital prices! My stomach hurts just thinking about that fat pig eating our salt for free!”
Pei Xuan didn’t get angry. Instead, a slow, dangerous smile curved across his handsome face—the exact smile he had worn before putting Marquis Pei Zhan, Senior Brother Zhao, and Elder Huo into yellow Debtor Vests.
He turned to his chief bookkeeper. “Abacus Su.”
“Present, My Lord!” Abacus Su immediately snapped his heels together, his brass spectacles glinting coldly in the sunlight as he licked the tip of his ink brush.
“Open a new credit account in the Dry-Well Municipal Debt Ledger under the name of Qian Baifa, Master of the Southern Canal Guild,” Pei Xuan said softly. “Write down that on this day, Guild Master Qian voluntarily took out an emergency commercial loan of ten carts of premium Dry-Well Snow-Salt.”
Abacus Su’s grin stretched from ear to ear. “And what interest rate shall I apply to Master Qian’s loan, My Lord? Our standard bandit rate of one hundred percent per day?”
“No, Guild Master Qian is a wealthy businessman who loves high river tolls,” Pei Xuan chuckled, picking up his red pointer brush and tapping the map table. “Put him down for one thousand percent daily compound interest, plus a Wheel-Rut Inspection Fee, a Pepper-Smoke Cleaning Fee, and a Mental Distress Surcharge for Clerk Fang.”
Scratch-scratch-scratch!
Abacus Su wrote furiously, his abacus clicking like machine-gun fire. “Calculated, My Lord! At one thousand percent daily compound interest, by noon three days from now, Guild Master Qian will owe us his entire fleet of five hundred barges, fifty warships, three river cities, and the underwear off his fat backside!”
“Good,” Pei Xuan said. He looked down at the map, where a hundred-mile stretch of dry, rocky hills separated the Sweet-Spring Well of Dry-Well City from the wide upper bend of the Silver River.
“Guild Master Qian thinks we desert folks can’t swim, and he thinks he owns the only waterway in the south,” Pei Xuan said, drawing a bold, straight red line right through the hundred miles of rocky hills from Dry-Well City to the Silver River. “If the Southern Canal Guild won’t let our boats use their dock... we’ll just dig our own river straight from our front door into the middle of his waterway, build iron ships ten times bigger than his wooden tubs, and collect our debt with interest!”
Old Wei blinked his one good eye, staring at the hundred miles of solid granite hills marked on the map. “Young Master... digging a canal a hundred miles long through solid rock hills? Even if the Emperor of Great Yan drafted half a million men with iron picks, that would take ten years!”
“Ten years is for emperors who pay workers with whips,” Pei Xuan grinned, turning toward the stairs of the watchtower. “We only need three days—and one very proud young man who still owes Old Guo for forty-seven bowls of braised beef tendon noodles.”
“Old Guo! Go boil a fresh pot of beef shank and bring me a jug of millet wine! It’s time to go check on our Chief Highway Inspector!”