The brass steam-whistle on the flagship Dry-Well Number One let out a long, cheerful blast that echoed across the wide water of Silver-Fork Port.
On the iron top deck, Old Guo stood in front of a six-foot flat iron griddle, flipping thirty river-shrimp pancakes at once with two heavy iron spatulas. Fat sizzled and popped. The smell of toasted green onions, crushed garlic, and sweet soy sauce drifted across the busy wooden docks.
“Line up, line up!” Hong Ling shouted into a brass megaphone, her twin kitchen cleavers tucked neatly into her red apron belt. She tapped a wooden sign painted in big black letters. “One copper coin for two hot shrimp pancakes and a bowl of sweet mung-bean soup! Show your new Dry-Well Citizen Wooden Tag and get an extra ladle of pickled radishes for free!”
Down on the docks, ten thousand former dock slaves and newly arrived river folks cheered, waving their wooden tags and copper coins. Behind them, Guild Master Qian—the former ruler of the Southern Canal Guild—was down on his hands and knees in a bright yellow Debtor Vest, scrubbing green river barnacles off the bottom of Cargo Barge Four with a wire brush.
[Prisoner Tooltip: Qian Wanli (Former Canal Guild Master)]
[Realm: Rank 4 Mid (Qi Gathering Stage 4) — Sealed by Shock Collar]
[Remaining Debt: 1,199,965 Silver Taels]
[Loyalty: 58/100]
[Current Thought: "My fingernails are broken! Wait... why does that shrimp pancake smell so good? If I scrape ten more square feet of hull before noon, will that fierce little maid give me half a pancake?"]
Pei Xuan sat in a bamboo deck chair under a canvas sun-umbrella, sipping a cup of iced spirit-well tea while looking over his glowing blue RTS Territory Screen.
“Nine million points a day,” Pei Xuan murmured, smiling as he set his teacup down. “A month ago we were counting copper coins in the sand, and now we own the biggest fleet on the Silver River.”
“My Lord! Look at the southern dock!”
Su Suanpan—Abacus Su—pushed his round brass spectacles up his nose and hurried across the iron gangplank, his golden abacus clacking against his hip. He pointed a slender finger toward the wooden ferry bridge on the south bank of the Silver River.
Across the bridge lay the Five Southern Basin Counties: Willow-Mist, Mud-Carp, Green-Reed, Toad-Hollow, and Black-Water. Together, those five counties held half a million farmers. For the past three days, ever since Pei Xuan dumped one-copper white rice into Silver-Fork Port, thousands of southern farmers had been sneaking across the bridge at night to board the Dry-Well steamships.
Right now, a long column of nearly twenty thousand southern villagers was rushing toward the bridge, pushing wheelbarrows piled high with bedding, iron pots, and crying children. Every single one of them had greenish-gray skin and dark circles under their eyes, and half of them were coughing into dirty cloth rags.
Behind the fleeing villagers, the muddy southern road shook with the sound of heavy wooden drums.
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
Three hundred soldiers dressed in slimy green crocodile-leather armor rode out of the willow forest on the backs of six-legged swamp lizards. Every soldier carried a long iron whip and wore a thick pig-snout breathing mask stuffed with wet moss. At the front of the column rode a tall, skeletal man with purple fingernails and a black iron cauldron strapped to the back of his giant horned lizard.
Above the skeletal rider’s head floated a crimson system warning box:
[Enemy Officer Detected: Tax Bailiff Du (Poison-Swamp Duchy)]
[Realm: Rank 3 Peak (Martial Grandmaster)]
[Loyalty: 0/100 (Hostile)]
[Current Thought: "Half the tax sheep in Willow-Mist County are running away to these desert boats! If I don't drag them back today, Duke Wu will throw me into the centipede pit!"]
“Stop! Stop right there, you ungrateful mud-rats!” Bailiff Du roared through his pig-snout mask, cracking his twenty-foot iron whip in the air.
CRACK!
The whip lashed down toward an old farmer whose wheelbarrow had gotten stuck in a wagon rut. Before the iron tip could touch the old man’s back, a bulky shadow dropped from the bow of Dry-Well Number One like a falling cannonball.
BOOM!
General Tie Zhan landed boots-first in the mud between the old farmer and the lizard riders. He didn’t even draw his heavy black-iron saber; he simply raised one thick, scarred hand—wrapped in swirling red Furnace-Blood Qi—and caught the tip of the twenty-foot iron whip in his bare palm.
“Hey,” Tie Zhan growled, chewing on the last bite of a pork bun. “Did you read the wooden sign by the bridge? This road is managed by Dry-Well Port Authority. No whipping pedestrians, and no riding ugly lizards without a manure-bag tied to their tails.”
Bailiff Du’s eyes bulged behind his glass mask lenses. He yanked hard on his whip handle, channeling all his Rank 3 Peak internal Qi into his arm, but the whip didn’t budge an inch. It felt like it was welded to an iron mountain.
“Who are you?!” Bailiff Du shrieked. “These five counties belong to His Grace, Duke Wu of the Hundred-Mile Poison Swamp! Today is the first day of the Sixth Month—the day of the Summer Miasma Tax! None of these peasants have paid their grain tax or bought their monthly Antidote Mud-Pills! If they cross that bridge, who is going to farm the Duke’s fields?!”
The old farmer on the ground trembled, clutching his little granddaughter to his chest, and spat on the mud. “Spit on your Antidote Mud-Pills! Last month you charged five sacks of rice for one black mud-ball that tastes like ditch dirt and only stops the coughing for three days! This month you demanded ten sacks of rice, or you take our daughters to wash poison herbs in the swamp! Who wouldn’t run to Lord Pei’s boats?!”
“Yeah!” shouted a young blacksmith among the refugees, coughing until his face turned red. “Every summer when the wind blows north, Duke Wu opens the sluice gates of his Poison Swamp and blows that green Rot-Lung Miasma Fog into our five counties on purpose! You poison us yourselves and then sell us the cure! We’d rather die on the river than give Duke Wu another grain of rice!”
Up on the steamship deck, Pei Xuan narrowed his eyes. He tapped the old farmer’s head on his RTS screen to check the medical status.
[Refugee Status: Chronic Rot-Lung Miasma (Tier 2 Man-Made Poison)]
[Source: Brewed from rotting swamp-toad slime and corpse-grass in Duke Wu's cauldron pits. Causes constant coughing, weak muscles, and lung rot unless treated every 10 days.]
[Cure Needed: Basic Detoxifying Spirit Water or Cooling Herbs.]
“So that’s how Duke Wu rules five counties,” Pei Xuan said coldly, standing up from his bamboo chair. “He doesn’t build walls or dig canals. He just pumps poison smoke into five hundred thousand people’s bedrooms every summer so they have to crawl to him for mud-pills.”
“A terrible business model, My Lord,” Abacus Su said, shaking his head in disgust as he clicked his golden abacus. “Sick farmers work at thirty percent efficiency and die before forty. Over ten years, Duke Wu reduces his own tax base by sixty percent just to squeeze out short-term pill money. It is a crime against good bookkeeping!”
“Not only that,” Hong Ling said, hopping down from the wooden crate with her brass megaphone tucked under her arm and marching up to the bridge entrance. She pulled out a small leather notebook and glared at the three hundred lizard riders sitting in the mud. “Every single one of those six-legged swamp lizards just stepped on our newly laid gravel road! Do you know how much crushed river stone costs per cartload? Plus, your lizards are dripping green swamp slime all over the wooden bridge planks!”
One of the front lizard riders—a scarred corporal with a bronze nose-ring—snorted through his moss-stuffed pig mask and raised his iron spear. “Little girl, are you crazy? We are the Green-Scale Tax Guard of Poison-Swamp Duchy! When we ride into a town, the county magistrate has to get down on his knees and lick our lizard boots clean! Who dares charge us road fees?!”
Before the corporal could even thrust his spear forward, Old Wei stepped out from behind General Tie Zhan like a silent gray ghost.
Old Wei’s left sleeve was pinned neatly to his shoulder, but his right hand gripped the hilt of his heavy black-iron broadsword. With a single flick of his wrist—powered by Rank 4 Early Furnace-Blood Qi—a blazing crescent of crimson blade-light flashed across the bridge!
SHING—CLANG!
Thirty iron spear-tips snapped clean off at the exact same height and rained down onto the wooden planks like scrap iron! Not a single lizard was cut, and not a single drop of blood was spilled, yet the sheer heat of Old Wei’s blade-wave singed the whiskers right off the front row of swamp lizards. The ugly beasts let out high-pitched squeals, tucked their tails between their six legs, and flattened their bellies into the mud, refusing to move another step!
[Enemy Troop Morale Collapsed: Green-Scale Tax Guard]
[Fear Level: 92/100]
[Current Thought: "That one-armed old man is a Rank 4 Qi Gathering master! Why is a Qi Gathering Immortal guarding a wooden toll bridge and yelling about lizard poop?!"]
“Thirty spears,” Abacus Su said cheerfully, flipping a page in his ledger and writing with a charcoal pencil. “Illegal weapons discharge in a commercial port zone: fifty silver taels per spear. Unauthorized exotic pet entry without quarantine tags: one hundred silver taels per lizard. Plus bridge-cleaning fees. Bailiff Du, your unit already owes Dry-Well Port Authority forty-five thousand silver taels!”
Down on the bridge, Bailiff Du realized he couldn’t pull his whip out of Tie Zhan’s hand, nor could his men fight past a Rank 4 sword master. His purple-nailed hand dropped to his belt and pulled out a green bone whistle.
“You dare steal Duke Wu’s tax sheep?!” Bailiff Du screamed, blowing three shrill blasts on the bone whistle. “His Grace is already waiting on the Southern Ridge! Since these peasants want to board your boats so badly, let them breathe a full dose of the Hundred-Mile Rot-Lung Fog without any pills!”
Three miles south of the river, on top of a dark hill overlooking the basin, stood a huge iron watchtower shaped like a grinning green skull.
At the top of the watchtower stood Duke Wu, a short, pot-bellied man wearing robes stitched from ten thousand shiny green beetle shells. His face was pale as wax, two live green vipers were wrapped around his wrists like bracelets, and his cultivation aura pulsed at Rank 4 Late (Qi Gathering Stage 8).
Around Duke Wu sat twelve giant bronze cauldrons, each ten feet tall and boiling over green ghost-fire. Inside the cauldrons bubbled a thick, foul stew of green swamp-sludge, crushed spider sacs, and venomous toad oil.
“Running away to that desert brat Pei Xuan?” Duke Wu sneered, his voice sounding like two dry bones rubbing together as he looked through a brass spyglass at the crowded river docks. “Fifty thousand peasants already crossed the river last night, and another twenty thousand are at the bridge right now! If they all leave, who will dig my poison-ore mines?”
“Your Grace,” whispered a hunched old man standing beside the cauldrons—an alchemist in scorched gray robes whose hands were covered in chemical burns and whose eyes twitched wildly. “If you tip all twelve Miasma Cauldrons at once and use a Rank 4 Wind-Pushing Array, the green fog will roll all the way across the Silver River! The concentration is three times stronger than the normal tax fog—everyone on those docks will be coughing up green foam within ten breaths!”
Duke Wu glanced sideways at the twitching old alchemist. This was Sun Baolu’s estranged cousin—no, wait, it was Master Sun’s old guild rival, or rather, Boom-Pot Sun down on Pei Xuan’s boat was already sniffing the air!
Wait—down on the deck of Dry-Well Number One, Sun Baolu (“Boom-Pot Sun” / “Pill-Crazy Sun”) poked his soot-stained head out of the steamship’s boiler room, holding a long iron ladle in one hand and a bubbling clay jar of chili oil in the other. His eyes went wide as he stared toward the southern ridge.
“My Lord!” Boom-Pot Sun shouted, jumping up and down so hard his round belly jiggled. “Look at those twelve giant bronze cauldrons on the hill! That old bastard Duke Wu is using Triple-Belly Bronze Pill Stoves to boil cheap toad-snot! What a waste of good kitchenware! If you let me have those twelve bronze cauldrons, I can stew six tons of spicy beef brisket at the same time!”
Up on the southern hill, Duke Wu raised his bone staff and slammed it down onto the stone platform.
“Open the vents! Rank 4 Poison Art: Ten-Mile Rot-Lung Gale!”
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Twelve iron chains pulled the giant bronze cauldrons sideways. A massive wall of thick, oily, yellow-green fog poured down the hillside like an avalanche. Duke Wu took a deep breath, his dantian spinning with dark green Qi, and waved his wide beetle-shell sleeves.
WHOOOOOOSH!
A howling wind pushed the thirty-foot-high wall of green poison fog straight across the southern fields toward Silver-Fork Port!
Everywhere the green fog touched, green willow leaves shriveled and turned black in three seconds. Wild grass hissed as if splashed with boiling oil, and the clear water at the edge of the river turned a murky, bubbling purple.
On the southern road, the twenty thousand refugees screamed in terror.
“It’s the Rot-Lung Fog! Duke Wu released the concentrated fog!” “Cover the children’s mouths! Don’t breathe it in!” “We don’t have any Antidote Pills! We’re going to choke to death!”
Even Bailiff Du and his three hundred lizard riders turned their mounts around and galloped wildly toward the side hills to get out of the main path of the green cloud—except Tie Zhan swung the twenty-foot iron whip like a lasso, wrapped it around Bailiff Du’s ankle, and yanked the screaming bailiff right off his lizard into the mud!
“Where do you think you’re going?” Tie Zhan barked, stepping on Bailiff Du’s chest. “You haven’t paid the bridge toll yet!”
“Let me go, you idiot!” Bailiff Du shrieked, pointing a trembling purple finger at the rolling wall of green smoke that was now less than half a mile away. “That’s Duke Wu’s Rank 4 Late Rot-Lung Miasma! Once it hits the docks, your lungs will turn into green soup in five minutes unless you kneel to Duke Wu and buy his Thousand-Gold Antidote!”
Tie Zhan looked down at Bailiff Du, then reached over and plucked the moss-stuffed pig-snout breathing mask right off Bailiff Du’s face.
“Wait—no! Give me back my mask!” Bailiff Du screamed, covering his nose and mouth with both hands as his eyes watered in sheer terror. “I’m a tax collector, I didn’t eat the inner-court antidote pill this morning! Only the Duke’s personal guards get the real pills—the rest of us just get wet moss dipped in garlic vinegar!”
“Look at that,” Tie Zhan said, tossing the stinky pig-snout mask into a trash bucket and clapping a yellow linen Debtor Vest over Bailiff Du’s crocodile-leather armor. “Your boss doesn’t even give his own running dogs real medicine, and you still whip old men for him? Put this yellow vest on! If you survive the next five minutes, you’re shoveling lizard manure for the next three years!”
[Prisoner Captured: Tax Bailiff Du]
[Loyalty: 0 -> 18/100]
[Current Thought: "Duke Wu didn't even wait for us to get off the bridge before tipping all twelve cauldrons! He wants to poison his own tax collectors along with the peasants!"]
On the docks of Silver-Fork Port, the newly hired boat-pullers and merchants started to panic, dropping their cargo sacks and backing toward the iron steamships.
Pei Xuan didn’t take a single step back. Instead, he walked to the front rail of the flagship, where OldWei stood steady with his hand on his broadsword and Hong Ling was already tying wet towels around the faces of the nearest children.
“Open the steamship gates and let all twenty thousand refugees onto the north plaza!” Pei Xuan ordered calmly, his voice amplified by a fused megaphone-shell so every single person at the port could hear him clearly. “Nobody push, and nobody panic! Old Guo, hand out a ladle of Sweet-Spring Spirit Water mixed with crushed ginger to everyone who crosses the bridge!”
“Right away, Young Master!” Old Guo boomed. With one Rank 4 Furnace-Blood palm strike, he tapped the side of a ten-ton wooden water tank on the dock. Ten brass faucets popped open at once, pouring out sparkling, ice-cold water drawn straight from Dry-Well City’s upgraded Spirit Well.
The first coughing refugees who stumbled across the bridge scooped up the water in wooden bowls and gulped it down.
Instantly, a warm golden glow spread from their stomachs into their chests. The black-green veins on their necks faded away, and they coughed up lumps of dark phlegm before taking their first deep, clear breath in five years!
“My chest doesn’t hurt anymore!” the old farmer gasped, staring at his empty wooden bowl with tears streaming down his face. “One cup of Lord Pei’s free water works ten times better than Duke Wu’s ten-bag mud-pills!”
[Ding! 20,000 Willow-Mist County Refugees have drunk Sweet-Spring Water!]
[Refugee Loyalty: 45 -> 88/100 (Devoted!)]
[Daily Income Increased: +400,000 LP/day!]
[Current Daily Income: 9,400,000 LP/day!]
However, the thirty-foot-high wall of dark green Rot-Lung Miasma was still roaring across the river like a tidal wave of poison, blotting out the noon sun and turning the sky a sickly green. Drinking water could cure what was already inside the body, but if that ten-mile cloud of Rank 4 poison settled over the port, no one would be able to open their eyes or breathe for days!
“My Lord!” Boom-Pot Sun yelled, waving a handful of fresh green peppermint leaves he had been using to garnish the cold noodles. “The wind is blowing straight into the harbor! Should we turn on the steamships’ soap-foam cannons?”
“Soap foam can wash decks, but it can’t eat ten miles of poison gas,” Pei Xuan said, a grin spreading across his face as he looked down at the muddy reed bank beside the dock, where dozens of fat green river toads were croaking and jumping into the water to escape the smell.
Pei Xuan opened his Fusion Cube interface in his mind.
“Duke Wu thinks he owns the swamp and its creatures?” Pei Xuan chuckled. “Let’s show him what a real swamp cleanup crew looks like.”
“Fuse!” Pei Xuan commanded silently.
HUMMMMMM—
A blinding golden light flashed inside the covered warehouse barge beside the flagship as one million Loyalty Points vanished from Pei Xuan’s balance. Inside the barge, the floor began to shake with a deep, rhythmic rumbling that sounded like a hundred bass drums beating at once:
CROOOOOOAK—!