Swish. Swish. Swish.
On the main bluestone avenue of Dry-Well City, right outside Old Guo’s Number One Fragrance Noodle House, a tall, handsome young man in a snow-white robe was sweeping fallen leaves with a bamboo broom.
Even though he was wearing an orange Municipal Sanitation & Highway Inspector armband over his white silk sleeve, he held that five-copper bamboo broom as if it were a peerless divine blade. Every time he flicked his wrist, a razor-thin crescent of invisible Rank 5 Foundation Establishment Sword Qi shot six inches above the bluestone tiles, sweeping every speck of red dust, melon seed shells, and camel hair into a neat pyramid without scratching a single stone!
Passersby—farmers carrying baskets of giant potatoes and night-school students holding comic-strip cultivation primers—walked past and greeted him cheerfully:
“Morning, Inspector Ye! Sweeping the street before lunch again?”
“Wow, look at that broom technique! My son tried copying Inspector Ye’s stance yesterday and swept our courtyard clean in ten seconds!”
Ye Guhan’s ears turned bright red. He kept his chin tilted up at a forty-five-degree angle toward the clouds, his cold, handsome face stiff as a block of ice.
“Hmph! Ignorant mortals,” Ye Guhan muttered under his breath, though he carefully angled his broom so he wouldn’t get dust on a little girl’s candy apple. “Who is your ‘Inspector Ye’? I am the lone sword prodigy of the Northern Snow Peaks! I am not sweeping the street! I am merely using the weight of mortal dust to temper my Heart-Like-Still-Water Sword Intent!”
Grrr-ruuuumble.
A loud, hollow sound echoed from Ye Guhan’s flat stomach.
His icy expression cracked for half a second. He secretly glanced sideways through the open window of the noodle house, where Old Guo was lifting the wooden lid off a six-foot-wide iron cauldron.
Rich, golden steam billowed out into the street. Inside the bubbling broth swam thick chunks of five-spiced beef shank, soft golden tendons that melted on the tongue, hand-pulled spirit-wheat noodles, and a handful of chopped green cilantro.
Ye Guhan swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
Just then, the clatter of hooves sounded down the street. Pei Xuan rode up on Old Yellow—who now had a patch of shiny golden scales growing on his hump from eating too many fusion leftovers—followed by Hong Ling, Abacus Su, and Old Wei.
As soon as Pei Xuan looked at Ye Guhan, a glowing blue citizen tooltip popped up over the young sword genius’s head:
Pei Xuan nearly laughed out loud. Ever since Ye Guhan’s Loyalty had crossed 60 back during the battle against the Crimson Cloud Envoy, the proud young sword master had been contributing a massive 100,000 LP every single midnight. Yet in broad daylight, Ye Guhan still stubbornly insisted that he only stayed in Dry-Well City because he was “working off his noodle tab.”
If Pei Xuan simply walked up and said, Hey Brother Ye, go dig me a ditch, Ye Guhan’s fragile sword-genius pride would make him sulk on the roof for three days.
To get a Rank 5 Sword Immortal to dig a hundred-mile canal in three days, a wise mayor had to use the right bait!
Pei Xuan quietly opened his Fusion Cube inside his mind before dismounting.
“System,” Pei Xuan thought, pointing at three items in his storage pouch. “Fuse [One Jug of Aged Desert Millet Wine] + [Rank 3 Iron-Sand Grindstone] + [Three Drops of Pure-Yang Spirit Dew]. Spend 100,000 Loyalty Points!”
HUMMMMM—DING!
A heavy black clay wine jug appeared in Pei Xuan’s hand. Simply pulling the red cloth wrapper half an inch loose sent a crisp, metallic CLANG echoing through the air—as if ten thousand invisible swords were ringing inside the wine!
On the street, Ye Guhan’s body froze. His head snapped around so fast his ponytail whipped across his face. His eyes locked onto the black clay jug in Pei Xuan’s hand like a hawk spotting a fat rabbit.
“That smell...” Ye Guhan’s nostrils flared, his hand trembling on his bamboo broom. “Wine brewed with pure Sword-Metal Qi?! Where did a mortal town like this get such a treasure?!”
Pei Xuan acted as if he hadn’t noticed Ye Guhan at all. He walked right past the young sword master, sat down at an outdoor wooden table in front of the noodle house, and set the black clay wine jug on the table alongside a steaming bowl of double-tendon beef noodles that Old Guo hurried out to serve.
“Sigh...” Pei Xuan let out a long, heavy sigh, shaking his head while tapping a map of the eastern hills spread across the table. “What a shame! What a terrible waste of good wine and good beef!”
Hong Ling, who had practiced this exact routine with Pei Xuan ten times on the train ride back, immediately put her hands on her hips and asked loudly:
“Why are you sighing, Young Master? Isn’t that the legendary Nine-Edge Sword-Sharpening Wine that you spent three months brewing for a true Supreme Sword Grandmaster?”
“It is,” Pei Xuan said loudly, making sure every word drifted straight into Ye Guhan’s ears five paces away. “I wanted to connect Dry-Well City to the upper bend of the Silver River by cutting a Grand Desert Canal straight through the hundred miles of Eastern Granite Hills. That way, our ships could sail right out to the river without paying Guild Master Qian’s greedy road tolls.”
Abacus Su adjusted his spectacles and shook his head sorrowfully. “Alas, My Lord! I just checked the geology reports! Those hundred miles of hills are made of Black-Turtle Granite! Not only does the canal need to be one hundred miles long, fifty feet wide, and twenty feet deep, the stone walls on both sides have to be sliced as smooth as a mirror so the water doesn’t leak into the sand! Even if someone had Rank 5 Foundation Establishment Sword Qi, their wrist would probably go numb after three miles, and the ditch would come out crooked like a crawling earthworm!”
“You’re right, Abacus Su,” Pei Xuan sighed again, reaching out to put the cork back into the fragrant wine jug. “Cutting a hundred-mile straight line through Black-Turtle Granite in three days requires absolute, god-like control of Sword Intent. Not a single inch can be too wide or too narrow. I guess there isn’t a swordsman in the entire Northwest with that kind of sharpness and stamina. Come on, General Tie, let’s just pour this Sword-Sharpening Wine down Old Yellow’s throat and send ten thousand men with iron pickaxes to chip at the rocks for the next five years...”
BAM!
The bamboo broom landed upright in the wooden broom-bucket thirty feet away without making a sound.
In a blur of white silk, Ye Guhan stood right beside Pei Xuan’s table. His arms were crossed over his chest, his chin was tilted toward the sky, and his dark eyes burned with offended pride.
“A crawling earthworm?” Ye Guhan’s voice was as cold as winter frost—until his eyes darted down to the bowl of glistening beef tendons and the open jug of Sword-Sharpening Wine. “Numb wrists after three miles? Pei Xuan, are you insulting the swordsmanship of this seat?!”
Pei Xuan blinked innocently, looking up at him. “Oh! Inspector Ye! I didn’t see you standing there. I wasn’t talking about you, of course. You already worked so hard last month slicing that ten-mile ditch through the western mountains, and besides, a hundred miles of Black-Turtle Granite is ten times harder. Nobody would blame you if your sword-light wobbled a little bit around mile forty—”
“MY SWORD NEVER WOBBLES!”
Ye Guhan slammed his palm onto the table. Before Pei Xuan could even blink, Ye Guhan snatched the black clay jug of Nine-Edge Sword-Sharpening Wine, tilted his head back, and poured half the jug straight down his throat!
Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!
“Haaaah!”
As the fused wine hit Ye Guhan’s stomach, a dazzling pillar of silver-white Sword Qi erupted from the crown of his head, shooting thirty feet into the sky and slicing a passing raincloud cleanly into two symmetrical halves!
Every iron pot in Old Guo’s kitchen hummed in resonance. Ye Guhan’s eyes shone like twin stars as the razor-sharp Gold-And-Iron Qi coursed through his meridians, washing away every trace of fatigue and pushing his comprehension of the Way of the Sword a big step forward!
Ye Guhan grabbed the chopsticks on the table, slurped down the entire bowl of extra-tendon beef noodles in three breaths, drank the last drop of soup straight from the bowl, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
“Fifty feet wide! Twenty feet deep! One hundred miles straight east to the upper bend of the Silver River!” Ye Guhan barked, tying the remaining half-jug of wine to his belt and resting his hand on the hilt of his unadorned black-iron longsword. “Listen well, Pei Xuan! I am NOT digging a canal for your boats! I am merely using those hundred miles of Black-Turtle Granite to practice my new Hundred-Mile One-Line Sword Formation! And moving that wine jug plus one bowl of noodles onto my tab—”
“Oh, no need for the tab!” Pei Xuan stood up with a warm, generous smile. “If Inspector Ye can really slice a hundred-mile stone canal to the Silver River in three days, not only is your entire forty-seven-bowl noodle debt completely wiped clean, I will give you two jugs of Sword-Sharpening Wine every week and a permanent VIP Gold Card for unlimited free beef tendon at Old Guo’s noodle house!”
Ye Guhan’s foot slipped half an inch on the bluestone tile.
“U-unlimited free beef tendon?!” Ye Guhan coughed loudly into his fist, forcing his face back into an icy scowl while his Loyalty bar jumped another two points to 86/100. “Hmph! Who cares about your mortal beef tendon? I only care about the peak of the Sword Dao! Tell the fat cook to have three catties of braised beef shank waiting for me at sunset—with extra chili oil and pickled mustard greens!”
SWOOSH!
With a single tap of his boots, Ye Guhan shot into the air like a white shooting star, flying straight toward the Eastern Granite Hills with a trail of whistling sword-wind behind him!
“Move out!” Pei Xuan laughed and waved his hand. “General Tie, bring the Scorpion-Track Trains and the ten thousand Engineering Corps workers! Senior Brother Zhao, Elder Huo—bring your thirty Crimson Cloud disciples and the Auto-Plowing Flying Sword Array! As fast as Inspector Ye cuts the granite blocks loose, I want those blocks scooped out of the trench and stacked along both banks as floodwalls!”
“Yes, Principal Pei!” shouted Elder Huo and Senior Brother Zhao in unison. Both of them wore yellow Debtor Vests over their red sect robes, and neither of them dared slack off for a second—because today’s lunch box was Old Guo’s Crispy Fried Scorpion-Tail Pork Chop Rice!
Ten minutes later, at the foot of the Eastern Granite Hills, a sight unfolded that left thirty thousand newly arrived eastern refugees dropping their wheelbarrows in utter shock.
Ye Guhan stood suspended twenty feet in the air above the rugged granite ridge. He took another swig of the Nine-Edge Sword-Sharpening Wine, drew his black-iron sword, and swung it downward with both hands.
“Sword One: Splitting the Earth in a Single Line!”
SHING—BOOOOOOOM!
A blinding crescent of silver Sword Qi, fifty feet wide and half a mile long, shot out from his blade like a falling moon!
The solid Black-Turtle Granite hills didn’t crumble into messy rubble. Instead, with a deafening roar that shook the desert for ten miles around, two parallel vertical cuts sliced twenty feet deep into the living bedrock, and a horizontal cross-cut sheared the bottom clean off!
In a single breath, a one-mile-long canyon—fifty feet wide, twenty feet deep, with walls polished as smooth and flat as cut jade—opened right through the heart of the rocky hill!
“Heavens above! Is that a god?!”
“One sword swing dug a mile of river channel?!”
The refugees on the hilltops rubbed their eyes as if they were dreaming. And before the dust could even settle, Pei Xuan blew his whistle from the command car of the Scorpion Train.
“Engineering Corps—scoop the stone!”
“Up, up, up!” roared Elder Huo and Senior Brother Zhao, waving their arms as they channeled their Rank 4 Qi into the Auto-Plowing Flying Sword Array and twenty fused Heavy-Lift Crane Carts.
Instead of wasting the cut granite, Ye Guhan’s precise sword-light had sliced the rock inside the trench into neat, five-foot square cubes! Three thousand Furnace-Blood soldiers and two thousand Vocational College disciples rushed down into the smooth trench with iron hooks and scorpion-pulled rollers, hauling the ready-made granite blocks up ramps and stacking them along both edges of the canal to form ten-foot-high stone embankments and towpaths!
CLANG! BOOM! SHING!
Up ahead, Ye Guhan didn’t even slow down. Every time his Sword Qi dipped by a fraction, he took another sip from the black clay jug at his waist. The fused wine turned into roaring metallic energy in his dantian, making his sword-light burn brighter and sharper with every mile!
Mile ten!
Mile twenty-five!
Mile forty!
By noon on the second day, Ye Guhan had sliced clean through the highest granite ridge between the Red-Sand Wastes and Silver-Fork County. By the morning of the third day, he was eighty miles east, his white robes fluttering in the gale of his own Sword Qi as he carved through the last stretch of hard shale rock separating the desert basin from the wide, curving upper bank of the Silver River.
“Tell Old Guo...” Ye Guhan panted, his eyes shining with ecstatic madness as his comprehension of Foundation Establishment Sword Intent reached a whole new level from three days of non-stop heavy cutting, “...to put extra tendon... and two poached eggs... in my bowl tonight!”
“Final Sword: Connecting the Four Seas!”
KRA-KOOOOOOM!
Ye Guhan swung his sword one last time at Mile 100—stopping just ten feet short of the Silver River’s muddy outer bank so the yellow river water wouldn’t backflow into the dry trench before Pei Xuan was ready.
Behind him stretched an impossible miracle of engineering: a one-hundred-mile-long, fifty-foot-wide stone canal, straight as a taut bowstring, running all the way from the eastern edge of the Silver River straight back to the central plaza of Dry-Well City!
DING!
A golden system banner exploded across Pei Xuan’s vision as hundreds of thousands of citizens and refugees cheered along the hundred-mile stone embankments:
Ye Guhan sheathed his sword with a crisp clink, floated down onto the hood of Pei Xuan’s command car, and crossed his arms—only for his knees to wobble slightly as the delicious smell of Old Guo’s portable noodle stove drifted up from the back of the train.
“Look closely, Pei Xuan!” Ye Guhan said hoarsely, pointing back down the hundred-mile granite canyon that gleamed like a silver mirror under the afternoon sun. “Take out your ruler and measure it! If a single inch of this hundred-mile trench is off by the width of a hair, I’ll sweep your streets for free for ten years! Now... where is my VIP Gold Card and my three catties of braised beef shank?!”
“Right here, Inspector Ye! Fresh out of the pot!” Old Guo laughed, lifting a porcelain basin the size of a washbowl piled high with steaming beef tendon, shank, and four golden poached eggs.
While Ye Guhan sat cross-legged on the train roof wolfing down his noodles at lightning speed, General Tie Zhan leaned over the stone parapet and looked down into the twenty-foot-deep empty granite trench.
“My Lord,” General Tie scratched his bald head. “The ditch is dug, and it’s prettier than the Emperor’s palace moat! But if we knock down that last ten-foot wall at the east end to let the Silver River water flow in, the land here at Dry-Well City is higher than the river! Water doesn’t flow uphill! How are we going to fill a hundred-mile stone canyon from the desert side?”
Pei Xuan smiled, looking back toward the center of Dry-Well City, where twenty giant iron roasting spits were spinning over roaring charcoal fires beside the original Sweet-Spring Spirit Well.
“Who said we’re using Guild Master Qian’s muddy yellow river water?” Pei Xuan chuckled, snapping his fingers. “Our canal flows west to east, General Tie! Bring the twenty roasted chili-mutton sheep to the Old Well—it’s time to wake up our Chief Water-Supply Engineer and ask him to sneeze!”