Steam rose in thick, fragrant clouds inside the Grand Royal Bathhouse behind the Dry-Well Civic Hall.
The main soaking pool had been carved out of a single block of warm white jade thirty feet wide. At the bottom of the pool, brass heating grates connected directly to the underground Sweet-Spring Well where Ao Ming lived.
Right now, the ancient Flood Dragon had his snout pressed against the main underground hot-water pipe, breathing steady, gentle waves of blue dragon-fire while chewing on a midnight snack of thirty spicy skewered lamb kidneys that Old Guo had just dropped down the well chute.
“Warm enough up there, kid?” Ao Ming’s voice rumbled cheerfully through the brass speaking-tube beside the pool. “If that big iron-headed general wants it hotter, I can add a little bit of my Rank 4 Dragon-Scale Essence to the water!”
“Add it in, Ao Ming! Tomorrow morning I’ll have Old Guo bake you a hundred-pound honey-glazed spirit-boar!” Pei Xuan called back with a laugh.
Standing beside the steaming white jade pool were the four people who formed the unbreakable backbone of Dry-Well Village:
First was Old Wei, fifty-four years old, wearing clean gray cotton training trousers. His scarred chest was packed with tough, iron-like muscle, and his fused mechanical left arm gleamed with newly drawn Rank 4 chalk runes.
