At dawn the next morning, a thick gray mist hung over the northern border of the Hundred-Mile Poison Swamp.
Ten yards inside the bubbling black mire, five hundred of Duke Wu’s elite Mud-Belly Ambush Divers were hiding underneath the surface of the mud, breathing through hollow green reed-straws stuck between their teeth.
Their commander, Captain Toad (a Rank 3 Peak martial practitioner whose skin was coated in slippery black swamp grease), peered through a patch of rotting cattails at the firm ground on the edge of the swamp.
“Hehehe,” Captain Toad chuckled silently around his breathing straw. “His Grace said that desert brat Pei Xuan loves riding heavy iron carts and giant scorpions. Look at this black mud—it’s thirty feet deep and sticky as glue! The moment their front soldiers step off the dry bank, their iron boots will sink past their knees, and we’ll pull them under by their ankles!”
Right at that moment, the ground to the north began to tremble.
RUMBLE—CLANK—CHUG-CHUG-CHUG!
Out of the morning mist marched Pei Xuan’s army—followed by fifty thousand eager southern rice farmers carrying bamboo baskets of Fragrant Purple Spirit-Rice seedlings!
At the front of the column walked Sword Genius Ye Guhan, still wearing his blue Chief Highway Engineer vest and carrying his dull iron sword at his waist. Next to him rode Pei Xuan on Old Yellow, accompanied by General Tie Zhan, Abacus Su, and the newly recruited General Centipede (who was proudly wearing a red armband that read Swamp Guide &…
