At high noon in Silver-Fork Port, the scorching summer sun beat down on a crowd of twenty thousand starving townspeople packed outside the iron-studded doors of the Qian Family Number One Granary.
Directly across the half-mile-wide Silver River, the twin river towns of Reed-Bank City and Iron-Dock Town looked the exact same. All three cities were owned lock, stock, and barrel by Guild Master Qian and the Southern Canal Guild.
Outside the granary doors, a skinny, grease-haired shop manager stood on a high wooden stool and banged a brass gong.
CLANG!
“Listen up, you poor ghosts!” Manager Shu—Guild Master Qian’s rat-faced cousin—hollered, pointing a bamboo stick at the wooden price board hanging beside the door. He pulled off the old paper strip reading 40 Coppers and slapped on a fresh red slip.
“By order of Guild Master Qian, because of the ‘Great Western Drought,’ the price of white rice is going up again today! Starting right now, one pound of rice costs fifty copper coins! And one pound of coarse river salt costs one hundred copper coins! Pay in cash up front, or get away from the door!”
A wave of desperate cries and sobbing broke out across the square.
“Fifty coppers a pound?!” a gray-haired boat carpenter named Master Chen dropped to his knees on the hot cobblestones, clutching a small cloth pouch containing only fifteen copper coins. “Before the drought, a pound of fine white rice was only two coppers! Fifty coppers is half a month’s wages! And the rice you sell is three years old and mixed with twenty percent river sand and husks!”
“Don’t like the sand? Then go chew on tree bark!” Manager Shu sneered, spitting a sunflower seed shell onto Master Chen’s head. “Wait—aren’t you Carpenter Chen? Didn’t you say your wife is sick in bed and your family hasn’t eaten a grain of rice in four days?”
Manager Shu pulled a stamped red paper contract from his sleeve and pointed his stick at the skinny ten-year-old girl hiding behind Master Chen’s back.
“Press your thumbprint on this Thirty-Year Canal Guild Indenture Contract for your daughter, Carpenter Chen!” Manager Shu grinned with yellow teeth. “Give the girl to Guild Master Qian’s textile mill to spin silk eighteen hours a day, and I’ll graciously give you ten pounds of moldy brown rice right now! Five hundred coppers’ worth of rice for one skinny brat—our Guild Master is practically a living Bodhisattva!”
“Daddy, don’t sell me!” the little girl cried, grabbing her father’s torn sleeve.
Master Chen’s whole body shook as tears rolled down his hollow cheeks. Around him, thousands of dockworkers, fishermen, and weavers clenched their fists until their fingernails dug into their palms, yet thirty Canal Guild thugs holding heavy iron-bound clubs and crossbows stood on the granary steps, daring anyone to make a move.
Up on the third-floor balcony of the Gilded Carp Pavilion overlooking both the granary square and the Silver River docks, Guild Master Qian sat under a silk umbrella eating chilled lotus-seed soup.
He looked down at the weeping crowd and chuckled into his fat three chins.
“Look at those stupid sheep,” Guild Master Qian said to his three Rank 4 Early Qi Gathering bodyguards standing behind his chair. “Hoarding eighty thousand tons of grain in my island vaults was the smartest move I ever made! By next week, I’ll raise rice to eighty coppers a pound! Every carpenter, blacksmith, and boatman in these three cities will have to sign over their houses, their boats, and their children just to buy a bowl of gruel! And what about that desert boy Pei Xuan? It’s been four days since I took his ten carts of salt, and he hasn’t dared let out a single fart!”
“Guild Master Qian is wise and invincible!” the three Qi Gathering mercenaries flattered him, pouring more iced wine into his gold cup. “Those desert bumpkins don’t even have a single raft—”
WHOOOOO-WHOOOOOOO!
A sound like ten roaring brass dragons suddenly tore across the sky from the north!
The vibrations were so loud that the porcelain bowl of lotus-seed soup in Guild Master Qian’s fat hands rattled and spilled cold syrup all over his purple brocade belly!
“What was that?!” Guild Master Qian jumped up from his chair, knocking over his tea table as he waddled to the balcony railing. “Thunder? In a cloudless sky?!”
Down in the granary square and along the stone piers, all twenty thousand starving townspeople froze and turned their heads toward the northern bend of the Silver River.
CHUGGA-CHUGGA-CHUGGA-CHUGGA!
Rounding the wide river bend came a sight that nobody in the Great Yan Kingdom had ever seen in three thousand years of history.
Ten gigantic, silver-gray Ironclad Paddle-Wheel Steam-Spirit Ships came charging down the middle of the Silver River in battle formation!
White steam and black coal smoke trailed from their tall twin brass smokestacks like clouds of war. Their twenty-foot iron paddle-wheels beat the muddy yellow river into frothy white rapids, and flying from the tallest mast of the lead ship was a massive crimson-and-gold banner bearing three bold characters:
DRY-WELL CITY!
“Ships made of solid iron?! And they’re moving without sails or oars?!”
“Look! Four of the iron ships are heading to Reed-Bank City, three are heading to Iron-Dock Town, and the three biggest ones are steering straight for our Silver-Fork Port pier!”
Before Guild Master Qian’s wooden harbor patrol boats could even lift their anchors, Dry-Well No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 glided right up to the deep-water stone pier of Silver-Fork Port.
Old Boatman Liu pulled the reverse lever in the wheelhouse, the giant paddle-wheels spun backward for three seconds to brake smoothly, and—
CLANG-THUUUUUD!
Three twenty-foot-wide heavy iron landing ramps dropped from the bows of the steamships, slamming straight onto the stone pier and crushing Guild Master Qian’s wooden “80% Toll Gate” booth into flat kindling!
“My toll booth!” Guild Master Qian shrieked from his third-floor balcony, his fat face turning purple. “Guards! Dock soldiers! Smash those iron tubs! Don’t let anyone off those ships!”
Two hundred Canal Guild thugs wielding iron clubs and cutlasses came running down the pier, led by Manager Shu.
“Stop right there, you desert trespassers!” Manager Shu screamed, waving his club at the iron ramp. “This dock belongs to the Southern Canal Guild! Anyone who steps off that boat without paying five thousand taels—”
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
Out of the open steel hatch of Dry-Well No. 1 marched General Tie Zhan at the head of five hundred Furnace-Blood Soldiers!
Every soldier wore gleaming black-iron breastplates, carried a Type-1 Dry-Well Spirit-Rifle slung across his chest, and radiated the scorching, muscular heat of Rank 2 and Rank 3 Martial fighters trained on Meat-Potatoes and Spirit-Well water!
General Tie Zhan didn’t even draw his weapon. As the first twenty Canal Guild thugs swung their iron-bound clubs at his head, General Tie simply crossed his thick, iron-hard forearms in front of his chest and took the hits head-on.
CRACK! SNAP! SPLATTER!
All twenty wooden clubs studded with iron nails shattered into flying toothpicks against General Tie’s Furnace-Blood skin!
“My turn!” General Tie grinned, sweeping his massive right arm sideways like a swinging tree trunk.
WHAM-BOOOOOOM!
A gust of crimson blood-Qi roared out from his arm, bowling over all two hundred Canal Guild thugs like tenpins! Manager Shu flew thirty feet backward through the air, lost two front teeth, and landed headfirst inside an empty pickled-fish barrel!
“Abacus Su!” Pei Xuan’s calm voice rang out as he stepped onto the upper bridge deck of Dry-Well No. 1, flanked by Old Wei, Hong Ling, and Ye Guhan. “How much did those two hundred thugs just cost us in armor polish?”
“Two hundred copper coins for uniform dry-cleaning, My Lord!” Abacus Su shouted back, tossing two hundred yellow Debtor Vests down onto the groaning pile of Guild thugs. “Lock them in the brig-barge to peel garlic for tonight’s supper!”
Before the stunned townspeople could even process how easily the feared Canal Guild thugs had been flattened, Old Guo and twenty kitchen helpers rolled ten giant, bubbling iron cauldrons down the ramp onto the pier and pried off the wooden lids!
FWOOOOOSH!
A thick, heavenly cloud of white steam—smelling of fresh, sweet Dry-Well Spirit-Rice simmered with diced Meat-Belly Potatoes and savory minced pork—rolled off the pier and drifted straight into the granary square!
Inside the cauldrons, the rice grains were as plump, white, and shiny as pearls, swimming in thick, creamy porridge without a single grain of sand or moldy husk!
Gulp!
Twenty thousand starving men, women, and children in the square swallowed at the exact same time. Little children began crying from hunger, while grown dockworkers felt their knees go weak at the smell of real, clean food.
Up on the bridge of Dry-Well No. 1, Hong Ling stepped up to a fused Brass Thunder-Megaphone ([Giant Brass Horn] + [Echo Stone] + [Wind Array]) that amplified her crisp, loud voice so clearly that it echoed across all three river cities at once:
“LISTEN UP, GOOD PEOPLE OF SILVER-FORK PORT, REED-BANK CITY, AND IRON-DOCK TOWN!”
Hong Ling’s voice boomed over the rooftops like a joyful bell:
“OUR LORD PEI XUAN OF DRY-WELL CITY HEARD THAT THE GREEDY SOUTHERN CANAL GUILD HAS LOCKED THE GRANARIES AND RAISED MOLDY RICE TO FIFTY COPPERS A POUND!”
She pointed down at the ten wide-open cargo hatches of the Ironclad Steamships, where mountains of clean fifty-pound burlap sacks sat stacked to the ceiling!
“STARTING RIGHT NOW, DRY-WELL CITY IS OPENING DIRECT RELIEF TRADE ON THE PIER! PLUMP, FRESH NEW-HARVEST WHITE SPIRIT-RICE: ONLY ONE COPPER COIN PER POUND! SNOW-FINE DESERT SALT: ONLY ONE COPPER COIN PER POUND! LIMIT TWENTY POUNDS PER FAMILY PER DAY! AND EVERY CHILD OR ELDER WHO LINES UP GETS ONE BIG BOWL OF HOT MEAT-POTATO RICE PORRIDGE COMPLETELY FREE!”
For two seconds, the entire port of eighty thousand people was so quiet you could hear a needle drop.
Then, Carpenter Chen—who was still kneeling by the granary door holding his fifteen copper coins and his crying daughter—stared down the street at the mountains of pearly white rice on the pier.
“One... one copper coin per pound?!” Carpenter Chen’s voice cracked as he leaped to his feet, scooped his daughter onto his shoulder, and sprinted toward the steamship pier with everything he had! “Fifteen coppers can buy fifteen pounds of pure white spirit-rice and a free bowl of meat porridge for my little girl! Long live Lord Pei Xuan!”
“ONE COPPER A POUND! RUN TO THE PIER!”
“Don’t buy Guild Master Qian’s fifty-copper sand-rice! Throw his rotten bags in the street!”
“Wait for me, neighbor! Even if you don’t have a single copper coin left, Lord Pei’s clerks are hiring dockworkers right on the pier for twenty pounds of white rice a day just to help unload timber and iron!”
RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE!
Like a dam bursting open, eighty thousand starving citizens in Silver-Fork Port—plus more than four hundred thousand desperate townspeople across Reed-Bank City and Iron-Dock Town where the other seven steamships had docked—surged onto the waterfront piers in a tidal wave of humanity!
Dry-Well City’s trained clerks stood behind fifty long wooden tables on the piers, weighing out scoop after scoop of gleaming, fragrant white Spirit-Rice and snow-fine salt with generous heaps that always tipped the scale an extra quarter-pound in the buyer’s favor!
Every time a mother watched her starving child wolf down a free bowl of Old Guo’s hot, meaty porridge, and every time a father slung a twenty-pound sack of clean white rice over his shoulder for just twenty copper coins, bright golden numbers exploded above the crowd in Pei Xuan’s eyes:
[Silver-Fork Citizen Loyalty: 35 -> 88/100!]
[Dockworker Loyalty: 40 -> 94/100!]
[River Fisherman Loyalty: 30 -> 91/100!]
Up on the balcony of the Gilded Carp Pavilion, Guild Master Qian clutched his fat chest as if someone had stabbed him in the heart with a rusty butcher knife.
Down in front of his Qian Family Number One Granary, not a single customer remained! Worse yet, because the summer heat was steaming and Guild Master Qian had refused to air out his locked warehouses for three months while waiting for prices to hit a hundred coppers, black weevils and green mold were already sprouting inside his hoarded grain sacks!
“Fifty coppers... down to ONE copper?!” Guild Master Qian coughed up a mouthful of blood onto the balcony railing, his fat fingers trembling as he watched his grain monopoly—worth two million silver taels yesterday—crash to zero value in a single afternoon! “Stop them! Tell my granary clerks to drop our price to ten coppers! Five coppers!”
“G-Guild Master!” his butler came running up the stairs in tears. “Even our own granary clerks just took off their Guild vests and ran down to the pier with baskets to buy Pei Xuan’s one-copper Spirit-Rice! They said your rice tastes like rat droppings compared to Dry-Well rice!”
DING! DING! DING!
Down on the bridge of Dry-Well No. 1, Pei Xuan smiled warmly as his RTS System chimed with a massive population and income breakthrough:
Pei Xuan turned to look up at the Gilded Carp Pavilion, where Guild Master Qian was glaring down at the steamships with bloodshot, lunatic eyes as evening twilight began to fall over the Silver River.
“He won’t accept going broke quietly,” Pei Xuan said softly, watching the red hostility bar over Guild Master Qian’s head flash with murderous madness. “General Tie, Boom-Pot Sun—bring up ten barrels of dish soap and the water-pumping windmills. Tonight, Master Qian is going to try to roast us on the river... so let’s give his fleet a free bath!”