BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ—!
The sound coming down the southern willow road didn’t sound like insects at all. It sounded like ten thousand rusty saw-blades grinding against sheet iron at the same time.
Half a mile south of the Silver-Fork Bridge, General Centipede stood on top of an armored war-wagon pulled by four giant swamp lizards. Behind him marched two thousand Poison-Fang Infantry—elite swamp soldiers wearing thick leather hoods, tall rubber wading boots, and carrying hooked poison-tipped halberds.
General Centipede grabbed the red wax plug on top of his six-foot purple gourd, channeled his Rank 4 Early (Qi Gathering Stage 3) dark insect Qi into the gourd’s runes, and yanked the plug out with a loud POP!
“Go, my little babies!” General Centipede cackled, his tattooed face twisting into a cruel grin. “Drink every drop of blood on that dock! Leave them swollen like bloated river pigs!”
WHOOOOOOSH!
A spinning black funnel shot out of the purple gourd and expanded into a terrifying black hurricane three hundred yards wide.
Inside that black cloud flew five million Blood-Sucking Corpse Mosquitoes. Each mosquito was the size of a man’s thumb, with a striped black-and-yellow belly, red glowing eyes, and a three-inch proboscis made of black bone as sharp and hard as a cobbler’s iron awl!
To show off the terror of his swarm, General Centipede pointed a black-nailed finger at a stray wild boar that was rooting for acorns near the edge of the willow trees.
“Feed!”
A tiny sliver of the black cloud—barely a few thousand mosquitoes—dipped down and touched the three-hundred-pound wild boar.
SQUEEEEEAL!
Within three seconds, the wild boar’s tough hide was pierced in a thousand places. Red fever-boils popped up all over its snout, its legs went stiff with burning paralysis, and the boar keeled over into the ditch, snoring and twitching as its body temperature shot up like a boiling kettle!
On the Silver-Fork Bridge, the newly registered southern villagers gasped and shrank back behind the iron barricades.
“Heaven help us! It’s General Centipede’s Corpse-Fever Mosquito Swarm!” cried a middle-aged weaver from Mud-Carp County, clutching his wife’s arm. “Two years ago, Green-Reed Town refused to pay the extra autumn hemp tax, and General Centipede let out just half a gourd of those thumb-sized mosquitoes! Nobody died, but the whole town lay in bed with burning swamp-fever for a month, scratching their skin until it bled! Even bamboo shields get poked right through by their iron beaks!”
“And don’t let the big green frogs suck them in!” shouted Bailiff Du from behind the barricade, waving his yellow Debtor Vest frantically to earn good behavior points with Pei Xuan. “Lord Pei! Those corpse mosquitoes have iron needles on their noses and fire-poison in their tails! If your Mint-Breath Bullfrogs swallow them raw, the mosquitoes will sting their throats from the inside out!”
Up on the bridge command tower, Pei Xuan looked at the approaching black tornado through his RTS System screen.
“Five million thumb-sized mosquitoes?” Pei Xuan raised an eyebrow, not looking worried in the slightest. Instead, he turned toward Old Guo and Sun Baolu (“Boom-Pot Sun” / “Pill-Crazy Sun”), who were standing beside a stack of empty bamboo grain sieves and copper wire spools from the steamship repair shop.
“Master Sun,” Pei Xuan asked, “how many bags of dried wild wormwood and citronella grass did we loot from Guild Master Qian’s spice warehouse yesterday?”
“Thirty full sacks, My Lord!” Boom-Pot Sun grinned, rubbing his soot-blackened hands together as his wild eyes gleamed with alchemical madness. Before joining Dry-Well City, the orthodoxy pill guilds had called him “Pill-Crazy Sun” because every time he tried to refine a normal healing pill, he couldn’t resist adding gunpowder, chili pepper, or thunder-stone powder until the furnace blew the roof off. “I was just about to boil them with sulfur and lemon peel to make mosquito-repellent bath soap for the troops!”
“Even better,” Pei Xuan said, clapping his hands. “General Tie! Have two thousand Furnace-Blood soldiers step forward! Today we aren’t fighting a war—we’re playing a game of badminton!”
“Badminton?” General Tie Zhan blinked his big bull-eyes, scratching his iron helmet. “My Lord, what kind of battlefield formation is that? Do we chop them overhead or sideways?”
“Both!” Pei Xuan laughed and opened the Fusion Cube.
He looked at the equipment piles on the supply barge: two thousand long-handled bamboo grain-sieves, fifty rolls of conductive red copper wire, a crate of low-grade Lightning-Spark Spirit Stones from the Crimson Cloud outpost, thirty sacks of citronella grass, and twenty blacksmith suction-bellows carts.
FLASH!
Six hundred thousand Loyalty Points vanished, and two thousand gleaming, purple-sparking Thunder-Grid Electric Fly-Swatters appeared in the weapon racks, each one sporting a comfortable leather-wrapped handle and a three-foot-wide oval copper grid that hummed with tiny blue lightning arcs.
At the same time, twenty heavy iron Giant Vacuum Bug-Catcher Wagons rolled off the steamship ramps, each one fitted with a spinning brass fan-blade powered by a steam-cauldron and a wide funnel nozzle painted like a smiling frog mouth!
“Soldiers of the First Furnace-Blood Brigade!” General Tie Zhan roared, grabbing two massive gold-plated Electric Fly-Swatters—one in each hand—and swinging them through the air with a loud BZZT-CRACKLE! “Put on your Citronella Backpacks! Grab your lightning rackets! Lord Pei says whoever zaps the most mosquitoes today gets an extra pound of braised pork belly and two cups of iced mung-bean wine at dinner!”
“HOOOOOO-HAH!”
Two thousand burly soldiers—all trained in the Furnace-Blood Scripture with iron-hard skin and hot blood-Qi—strapped on the lemon-scented smoke backpacks, grabbed their three-foot electric rackets, and marched across the Silver-Fork Bridge in four neat columns!
Behind them hopped the ninety-six Mint-Breath Giant Bullfrogs, and rolling right down the center of the road were the twenty Giant Vacuum Bug-Catcher Wagons manned by Old Guo’s kitchen apprentices and Boom-Pot Sun!
From the southern side of the bridge, General Centipede watched the two thousand Dry-Well soldiers march out holding what looked like bamboo noodle-strainers on sticks.
“Bwahahaha!” General Centipede laughed so hard tears came out of his tattooed eyes. “Look at those desert bumpkins! They didn’t even bring shields or heavy spears! They came out with kitchen colanders and teapot backpacks to catch my Rank 4 Blood-Sucking Corpse Mosquitoes! Tear them apart! Drink them dry!”
General Centipede pointed his bone sword forward.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ—!
The black tornado of five million thumb-sized mosquitoes dove straight down at the two thousand marching soldiers like a living storm of iron needles!
“Turn on the Citronella Backpacks!” General Tie Zhan bellowed. “And sing the Dry-Well Potato Marching Song!”
PUFF! PUFF! PUFF! PUFF!
Two thousand brass chimneys on the soldiers’ backpacks popped open at once, releasing a thick, golden-white cloud of warm lemon-citronella and wild wormwood vapor into the air.
The moment the front wave of one million Blood-Sucking Corpse Mosquitoes plunged into the lemon-scented cloud, their sensitive smell-antennas went completely haywire!
Mosquitoes hunt by smelling warm blood and sweat. Suddenly hit by two thousand concentrated jets of spirit-grade citronella oil, the five million vicious bugs felt as if someone had shoved spicy mustard straight up their noses!
Bzz—bzz—bonk!
Millions of thumb-sized mosquitoes started flying in drunken circles, crashing into each other in midair, sneezing tiny sparks of venom, and tumbling down toward the soldiers’ heads like slow, dizzy snowflakes!
“Now! Swing!” General Tie Zhan roared, leaping ten feet into the air with both oversized Thunder-Grid Rackets blazing with purple lightning!
ZAP-CRACKLE-POP-POP-POP!
With a single double-handed cross-slash, Tie Zhan swept his two electric rackets through the thickest part of the black cloud.
A blinding sheet of purple electric arcs jumped three feet out from the copper mesh, chaining from mosquito to mosquito across ten thousand bugs at once!
BZZZZT—SNAP!
Ten thousand iron-beaked mosquitoes didn’t even get a chance to squeak. They lit up like tiny holiday firecrackers in midair, popped with a sound like a giant pan of roasting chestnuts, and rained down onto the road as harmless gray ash!
“Hahahaha! That feels incredible!” Tie Zhan landed on his boots and immediately did a spinning backhand swing—ZAP-CRACKLE-POP!—frying another fifteen thousand mosquitoes into a puff of smoke!
Behind him, all two thousand Furnace-Blood soldiers stepped forward in rhythm, swinging their Thunder-Grid Tennis Rackets left, right, up, and down while singing at the top of their lungs:
“One swing left, two swings right! Fry the bugs till the sky is bright! General Tie gets the biggest bun, Dry-Well Army is number one!”
ZAP! CRACKLE! SNAP! POP! BZZZZZT!
The entire southern highway turned into a blinding purple-and-blue lightning disco!
Every time a soldier swung his racket, the magnetic lightning stone in the handle pulled hundreds of dizzy, lemon-drunk mosquitoes straight onto the triple-layer copper mesh. Sparks flew, thunder crackled, and the satisfying sound of POP-POP-POP-POP echoed across the valley like ten thousand strings of New Year firecrackers going off at once!
Not a single mosquito beak managed to touch a soldier’s skin!
And for the mosquitoes that tried to fly higher to escape the rackets, Boom-Pot Sun and Old Guo were waiting on top of the twenty Giant Vacuum Bug-Catcher Wagons.
“Full steam on the suction fans!” Boom-Pot Sun cackled, cranking the brass valve on Wagon Number One until the steam-cauldron whistled. “Suck ’em in, boys! Don’t let those high-protein blood-bugs go to waste—their dried shells make top-grade fire-starter powder for my pill stoves!”
WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRR—SHHHHHHH!
The twenty giant brass funnel nozzles aimed up at the sky and sucked in air with the force of a desert tornado!
Whole dark ribbons of fleeing mosquitoes—hundreds of thousands at a time—were yanked downward out of the sky kicking and buzzing, pulled straight down the wide brass funnels, and slammed against the electrified copper mesh cages inside the wagons!
BZZZZZZZZT—POP-POP-POP-POP!
Inside the glass viewing windows of the vacuum wagons, purple lightning danced non-stop, instantly roasting the trapped mosquitoes into neat, sterile piles of dry carbon ash that dropped down a chute into fertilizer sacks!
Meanwhile, along both flanks of the road, the ninety-six Mint-Breath Giant Bullfrogs had been waiting patiently with their big golden eyes locked on the stragglers.
Because the mosquitoes were already stunned by the citronella smoke and singed by the stray lightning arcs from the vacuum wagons, their sharp beaks were soft and harmless.
“Ribbit!”
THWIP! THWIP! THWIP! THWIP!
Ninety-six sticky pink tongues—each thirty feet long and as wide as a carpet roll—lashed out into the air faster than bullwhips!
Every single tongue slap swept up five thousand dizzy, half-toasted mosquitoes at once, rolling them up like sesame seeds on a sticky rice cake and snapping them back into the frogs’ mouths!
Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!
“Burp!”
The giant frogs chewed the crispy, lightning-toasted mosquitoes like popcorn, their Loyalty bars shining bright gold as they hopped forward asking for more!
Less than ten minutes after General Centipede had uncorked his gourd, the sky over the southern road was crystal clear again.
The terrifying black hurricane was gone.
In its place floated a pleasant smell of roasted sesame, fresh lemon citronella, and cool peppermint frog-breeze.
Two thousand Dry-Well soldiers stood in neat rows, resting their glowing electric tennis rackets on their shoulders without even breaking a sweat. Several young soldiers were even looking around the sky in disappointment:
“Aw, are they all gone already? I only got to swing my racket forty times!” “Hey, Corporal Zhang! You stepped into my lane and stole at least three hundred of my mosquitoes! You owe me half a pork bun tonight!”
Behind the soldiers, on the elevated wooden viewing stands of Silver-Fork Bridge, seventy thousand southern refugees burst into thunderous applause!
“Did you see that?! General Centipede’s invincible Corpse-Fever Swarm got fried into fertilizer ash in ten minutes!” “Not a single soldier got stung! And those vacuum carts sucked the rest right out of the sky!” “Long live Lord Pei! With lightning rackets and giant mint frogs, the Poison Swamp doesn’t stand a chance!”
Across the willow fields on both sides of the highway, another thirty thousand farmers who had been hiding on their rooftops watching the battle threw their straw hats into the air. Until ten minutes ago, they had been afraid that if they joined Pei Xuan, General Centipede’s bugs would hunt them down and give their children swamp fever. Now, seeing the terrifying five-million-bug plague wiped out by singing soldiers holding electrified bamboo sieves, their last bit of fear vanished completely!
[Ding! 30,000 Observing Farmers in Willow-Mist & Green-Reed Counties have crossed 80 Loyalty!]
[500 Furnace-Blood Soldiers broke through to Rank 2 Peak during the Lightning-Racket Drill!]
[Daily Income Increased: +600,000 LP/day!]
[Current Daily Income: 10,600,000 LP/day!]
Abacus Su stood on the side of the bridge holding a clipboard, watching twenty kitchen helpers tie up the forty bulging sacks of sterilized mosquito-ash fertilizer that had dropped out of the bottom chutes of the Giant Vacuum Bug-Catcher Wagons.
“Marvelous, truly marvelous!” Abacus Su beamed, adjusting his brass spectacles as his abacus beads clicked furiously. “Forty sacks of pure, lightning-refined high-nitrogen insect ash! In the spirit-herb markets, a single sack of sterilized spirit-insect fertilizer sells for fifty silver taels! General Centipede just donated two thousand silver taels of top-grade farm fertilizer to our autumn potato fields for free! Wait—I should still bill him ten taels per wagon for the steam-coal we burned to vacuum up his litter!”
Three hundred yards down the road, General Centipede stood frozen on top of his lizard wagon, holding his empty six-foot purple gourd in both hands.
A single surviving mosquito—missing one wing and half its tail—wobbled out of the lemon smoke, landed on the tip of General Centipede’s nose, let out a tiny pitiful bzz, and then got snagged out of midair by the thirty-foot pink tongue of the nearest Mint-Breath Bullfrog!
THWIP—SMACK!
The frog’s sticky tongue accidentally slapped General Centipede across the cheek as it reeled the last mosquito in, leaving a big wet streak of peppermint saliva across his five-venom facial tattoo and spinning his iron helmet backward on his head!
[Enemy Commander Status: General Centipede (Rank 4 Early)]
[Mental Damage: 999+!]
[Current Thought: "Five million Corpse Mosquitoes! It took me three years of sleeping in graveyard mud to raise five million mosquitoes! And they killed all five million in ten minutes with bamboo noodle sieves and giant frogs?!"]
Behind General Centipede, his two thousand Poison-Fang Infantry soldiers looked at the two thousand burly Dry-Well warriors holding crackling purple lightning rackets, then looked at the ninety-six buffalo-sized bullfrogs licking their lips, and slowly took three steps backward.
“G-General...” one of the swamp captains stammered, his hooked halberd shaking in his hands. “We... we’re out of mosquitoes. Should we retreat to the swamp?”
“Retreat?! If I go back after losing five million mosquitoes in ten minutes, Duke Wu will skin me alive!”
General Centipede’s eyes turned blood-red. He threw his empty purple gourd onto the ground, pulled a sharp bone dagger from his belt, and sliced a deep cut across his own left palm. Dark purple blood dripped onto the muddy ground as he dropped to one knee and slammed both hands into the wet swamp earth!
“You think kitchen sieves can beat real Rank 4 Spirit Beasts?!” General Centipede howled at the sky, his dantian Qi boiling wildly. “Those mosquitoes were just small fry! Come out, my iron-armored beauties! Chew their boots off! Bite their legs in half! Hundred-Beast Blood Summon: Three Hundred Iron-Back Centipedes!”
RUMBLE—CRACK!
The wet mud along both sides of the southern road exploded upward!
Out of the dark underground burrows crawled three hundred hideous, six-foot-long Iron-Back Giant Centipedes!
Each centipede was as thick as a man’s thigh, covered from head to tail in shiny, overlapping plates of dark red-black iron carapace that could deflect ordinary sword slashes. A hundred pairs of sharp, yellow-orange legs clattered against the stones like iron scissors—CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK—and their venomous pincers dripped with sizzling green acid as they charged straight toward Pei Xuan’s front line!
The watching southern refugees screamed in terror: “Run! Those are Rank 3 Iron-Back Centipedes! Electric fly-swatters can’t zap through shells that thick!”
However, up on the lead Vacuum Bug-Catcher Wagon, Pei Xuan didn’t even reach for his sword.
Because standing right next to him, Old Guo and Boom-Pot Sun both gasped at the exact same time—and two pairs of eyes lit up like hungry wolves staring at a fat sheep!
Old Guo wiped a drop of drool from his chin, hefted his hundred-pound Rank 4 Black-Iron Wok in one hand, and pointed a trembling spatula at the three hundred charging six-foot centipedes:
“Young Master! Look at those plump red shells! Look at all those meaty legs! That’s not an enemy army—that’s three hundred six-foot Wild Swamp Lobsters running straight toward our woks!”