“DIE, LITTLE BRAT!”
Twenty-two feet above the desert road, Captain Hu plummeted down toward the wooden shade pavilion on top of the gatehouse like a black-armored hawk!
Both of his scarred hands gripped the hilt of his four-foot Hundred-Refined Steel Broadsword. As a Rank 2 Peak Martial veteran who had survived dozens of life-and-death battles along the border, Captain Hu didn’t hold back a single ounce of strength just because Pei Xuan looked like a clean, seventeen-year-old scholar.
HUMMM—!
Every bone in Captain Hu’s arms vibrated with a heavy iron ring as he poured his full blood-Qi into a downward mountain-splitting slash aimed straight at the top of Pei Xuan’s head!
The wind of his descending blade was so sharp that it sliced the green vine leaves on top of the shade pavilion in half before the steel edge even arrived!
Down on the desert floor, the seventy-nine standing mercenaries held their breath, waiting to see the young village lord chopped into two pieces.
Even Steward Liu, who had just wriggled half his chest out from under Lieutenant Ma’s unconscious backside, squinted up at the gatehouse roof and screamed hoarsely: “Cut him in half, Captain Hu! Don’t let him pull out an abacus!”
On the gatehouse roof, Old Wei’s fingers tensed on the hilt of his heavy saber, ready to intervene in a millisecond if anything went wrong.
Beside the watermelon table, however, Pei Xuan stood completely still.
Over the past twenty days since arriving at Dry-Well Village: - He had drunk pure Lv.2 Sweet-Spring Spirit Water every morning, washing away every trace of the chronic poison his stepmother had slipped into his food back at the Marquisate. - He had eaten dozens of Fused Deep-Fried Scorpion Kings and Meat-Belly Giant Potatoes, filling his muscles and marrow with rich vitality. - Most importantly, he had practiced the zero-flaw [Iron-Anvil Body Art] while receiving the daily Territory Lord Cultivation Bonus from over a thousand loyal citizens!
Wait—what happens when a martial artist who has accumulated ten times the foundation of a normal Rank 1 fighter finally unlocks the seal on his bones?
Right as Captain Hu’s steel broadsword descended within three feet of Pei Xuan’s forehead, Pei Xuan took a deep breath—the Sand-Turtle Deep Breath merged with the Iron-Anvil Forge Pulse—and clenched his right fist, which was wrapped in a simple pair of fused Black-Wolf Leather Gloves.
CRACK-POP-CLANG!
From the base of Pei Xuan’s spine all the way up to his neck and down to his ten fingers, all two hundred and six bones in his body let out a crisp, resonant metallic chime—like a row of black-iron anvils being struck by a golden hammer!
A wave of scorching, golden-red blood-Qi erupted from Pei Xuan’s marrow, blowing his blue cotton robes outward like a drum!
Three thousand five hundred pounds of raw force!
A normal Rank 2 Early fighter had around eight hundred pounds of force in one arm. Even a veteran Rank 2 Peak master like Captain Hu—whose old martial hall manual had three hidden meridian flaws—only hit with eighteen hundred pounds of force at full swing!
In mid-air, Captain Hu suddenly saw the seventeen-year-old youth beneath his blade raise his right hand.
Pei Xuan didn’t dodge. He didn’t block with a shield. He didn’t even draw a weapon.
Wearing a thin pair of black leather gloves, Pei Xuan simply reached up into the howling blade-wind and pinched the descending Hundred-Refined Steel Broadsword with his bare right hand!
“What?! Is he crazy?! Trying to catch my Hundred-Refined Steel Blade with his fingers?!”
Captain Hu grinned viciously, expecting to see five severed fingers fly through the air.
Instead—
CLAAAAAANG—!!
A deafening metallic crash echoed across the gatehouse roof, shooting a shower of bright orange sparks three feet into the air!
Captain Hu’s four-foot steel broadsword froze dead in mid-air, just six inches above Pei Xuan’s nose, clamped tightly between Pei Xuan’s leather-gloved thumb and four fingers as if it had been caught in a ten-ton blacksmith’s iron vise!
The wooden floorboards beneath Pei Xuan’s cloth shoes didn’t even creak, because Pei Xuan’s Iron-Anvil Body Art routed the downward impact straight through his iron bones into the [Lv.2 Elastic Iron-Mud Wall] beneath the gatehouse, which absorbed the shock with a tiny, harmless wobble!
Captain Hu’s eyes nearly popped out of his helmet.
“I-Impossible!!” Captain Hu gasped, every hair on his neck standing straight up. “My full-power Rank 2 Peak slash... caught by two fingers?!”
He tried to yank his broadsword backward.
It didn’t budge a millimeter!
He tried to push it downward with both hands, his face turning beet-red as the iron bones in his arms creaked under the strain.
Still, Pei Xuan’s right hand remained as steady as Mount Tai!
“You called this a Hundred-Refined Steel Broadsword?” Pei Xuan looked at the blade pinched between his fingers and tutted softly. “Look at the slag bubbles along the spine of the blade. At most, the blacksmith hammered this thirty times and cheated you out of seventy hammerings. Plus, you just swung an unlicensed lethal weapon inside our village shade pavilion and cut six of my shade-vine leaves.”
“Hong Ling,” Pei Xuan called out without turning his head. “How much for six cut shade-vine leaves and one ruined watermelon slice?”
“Sixty silver taels for damaging municipal greenery, and ten silver for the melon!” Hong Ling shouted back cheerfully, slapping her abacus. “Plus five hundred silver for illegal rooftop landing without a permit!”
“Y-You lunatics!” Captain Hu let out a panicked roar. Realizing he couldn’t pull his sword free, he raised his heavy iron-booted right leg to kick Pei Xuan in the stomach!
“Too slow,” Pei Xuan said calmly.
Pei Xuan twisted his right wrist by thirty degrees.
With three thousand five hundred pounds of Perfect Iron-Anvil Bone Force concentrated in his fingers—
CRACK—SNAP!!
The four-inch-wide, quarter-inch-thick Hundred-Refined Steel Broadsword snapped clean in half like a dry biscuit!
Before Captain Hu’s kick could even leave the ground, Pei Xuan tossed the broken steel tip into Hong Ling’s scrap-iron basket with his right hand, stepped half a pace inside Captain Hu’s guard, and pulled his own head back three inches.
Since practicing the Iron-Anvil Body Art, what was the hardest part of a cultivator’s body? The skull!
“Have a nice flight down, Captain Hu.”
BAM!
Pei Xuan delivered a crisp, textbook Iron-Anvil Headbutt straight into the center of Captain Hu’s iron helmet visor!
CRUNCH—CLANG!
Captain Hu’s thick iron helmet caved inward with the sound of a crushed tin can!
Even with Rank 2 Peak iron bones, Captain Hu saw a thousand golden stars explode in front of his eyes. His nose flattened, two molars flew out of his mouth, and his two-hundred-and-twenty-pound armored body was blasted backward off the twenty-foot gatehouse roof like a ragdoll!
“AAAAHHH—!”
Captain Hu sailed through the air in a high parabola over the outer ditch and landed butt-first right in the middle of the ten fat green Needle-Spitting Guard Cactuses planted beside the eastern road!
PUFF-PUFF-PUFF! THWIP-THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!
All ten Guard Cactuses, which had been holding their breath waiting for someone to fall into their thirty-foot trigger zone all afternoon, puffed up in joy and fired a point-blank crossfire of two hundred three-inch iron needles straight into the gaps of Captain Hu’s black scale-armor—especially his backside and thighs!
“OOOOOWWWWWWW—!!”
A howl so high-pitched that it made all two hundred Sand-Wolves cover their ears echoed across the desert!
When Captain Hu finally rolled out of the cactus patch into the dirt road, the fierce commander of the Black-Arrow Mercenary Company looked like a giant black hedgehog. Two hundred iron needles stuck out of his buttocks, thighs, and shoulders, and the cactus numbing-sap on the needle tips made his whole lower body twitch like a frog struck by lightning!
On the desert road fifty yards away, the remaining seventy-nine standing mercenaries stared at their invincible Rank 2 Peak captain twitching in the dirt like a giant pin-cushion, then looked up at the seventeen-year-old youth standing calmly at the edge of the twenty-foot wall brushing a speck of dust off his leather glove.
CLANG!
One mercenary spearman dropped his iron spear onto the sand and dropped straight to his knees with both hands raised high above his head.
“I SURRENDER! DON’T SHOOT THE CACTUSES! I’LL WEAR THE YELLOW VEST! I’LL DIG THE CANAL!”
Like a row of dominoes falling over, the remaining seventy-eight standing mercenaries threw down their swords, shields, and crossbows as fast as humanly possible, dropping to their knees in neat rows and shouting at the top of their lungs:
“WE SURRENDER! WE ONLY TOOK BOSS QIAN’S DEPOSIT! WE LOVE DIGGING DITCHES!”
Wait—even Steward Liu, who was still stuck waist-deep under Lieutenant Ma’s unconscious body, raised both trembling hands in the air and cried out: “I surrender too! Wait—don’t strip my underpants this time, I didn’t wear any under this borrowed coat!”
Up on the gatehouse roof, Batu, One-Eyed Jack, and the fifty village militiamen burst into a roar of cheering that shook the clouds!
Pei Xuan looked down from the wall at the two hundred captured mercenaries—all of whom were strong, trained Rank 1 and Rank 2 fighters who already knew how to march in formation and swing heavy tools—and his eyes lit up like he was looking at two hundred walking bags of gold.
Think about the math!
In Pei Xuan’s RTS System: - A mortal civilian at 60+ Loyalty gave `1 LP/day`. - A Rank 1 Martial fighter at 60+ Loyalty gave `10 LP/day`. - A Rank 2 Martial fighter at 60+ Loyalty gave `100 LP/day`!
Right here in front of his gate were 198 Rank 1 fighters (1,980 LP/day potential) and 2 Rank 2 commanders (200 LP/day potential)! Once Pei Xuan put them in yellow Debtor Vests, made them dig the new irrigation canal, and fed them Old Guo’s Fused Meat-Potatoes and Spicy Scorpion Noodles for a few days until their Loyalty crossed 60, this single mercenary company would boost his daily income by more than 2,100 LP every single day!
“One-Eyed Jack! Batu!” Pei Xuan called out briskly, snapping his paper fan open. “Take two hundred militiamen and a hundred guard wolves outside the gate! Confiscate every weapon, bow, and piece of armor, pull the needles out of Captain Hu’s backside, and bring out two hundred newly sewed [Yellow Debtor Vests]!”
“YES, LORD PEI!”
One-Eyed Jack rubbed his hands together like a greedy shopkeeper welcoming two hundred new apprentices. “Boys! Bring out the wooden shovels and the shock-collars! Our village canal project just got two hundred strong volunteers!”
Down along the torchlit perimeter of Dry-Well Village, the night watch guards marched past in crisp formation, their heavy boots thudding against the packed roadbed in a steady, reassuring rhythm. Inside the warm kitchen yard, Old Guo scraped the bottom of the giant iron soup cauldron with his long ladle and banked the red-hot coal embers with grey ash so the morning broth would stay piping hot until sunrise. Beside the stone counter, Hong Ling carefully tied a red cotton string around her thick stack of charcoal-written work ledgers, counting the neat rows of copper coins and silver bits one last time before locking the heavy iron cashbox with a satisfied click. Even the yellow-vested debtor laborers stretched out on their clean straw mats inside the wind-sheltered barracks let out long, grateful snores, their bellies full of hot meat-potato stew and sweet well water as the desert stars glittered peacefully overhead.