By three o’clock in the afternoon, the sandy plain outside the eastern wall of Dry-Well Village had turned into a bustling canal construction site.
All two hundred members of the once-feared Black-Arrow Mercenary Company had been stripped of their leather and iron scale-armor. In its place, every man wore a clean pair of coarse grey cotton trousers, a fused [Yellow Debtor Collar] around his neck (cost: 40 LP for a batch of 200), and a bright yellow sleeveless vest with big black numbers painted on the front and back:
DEBTOR #131 through DEBTOR #330.
As for Steward Liu, since he had already been fined ninety-five silver yesterday and joined an illegal siege today, Hong Ling gave him a special red-striped vest that read REPEAT OFFENDER #001 and chained him to a wheelbarrow used for hauling donkey manure to the potato fields.
Right now, One-Eyed Jack and Scarface Wolf—both of whom had worn the exact same yellow Debtor Vests two weeks ago before becoming proud citizens of Dry-Well Village—were walking up and down the newly marked Twenty-Foot Outer Moat & Irrigation Canal holding wooden measuring rods.
“Dig deeper, Debtor #188!” Scarface Wolf barked at Lieutenant Ma, who had woken up from his eighty-yard flying trip with a big purple bump on his bald head and was now swinging a heavy iron shovel in the ditch. “The Young Lord’s canal blueprint calls for six feet deep and twenty feet wide! If your section is half an inch shallow, you only get one potato at dinner instead of two!”
Lieutenant Ma opened his mouth to curse—until he remembered how the seventeen-year-old village lord had caught Captain Hu’s steel broadsword with two fingers and snapped it in half like a dry twig.
Lieutenant Ma swallowed his curse, lowered his bald head, and shoveled a massive thirty-pound scoop of red sand onto the bank.
“Wait a minute...” A young mercenary archer next to Lieutenant Ma—Debtor #205, whose thigh arrow wound had just been washed by the village medics with Lv.2 Sweet-Spring Spirit Water and smeared with Jade-Clear Healing Soap—blinked in shock as he moved his leg. “Lieutenant Ma! Look at my leg! An hour ago, my own iron arrow went two inches into my thigh muscle! After that old village grandma washed it with their spring water and green ointment, the bleeding stopped completely and it doesn’t even hurt when I squat!”
“Mine too!” another mercenary gasped, touching his shoulder. “In our mercenary camp, an arrow wound in the summer heat always festers with pus for half a month and costs five silver taels of medicine! Here, they washed our wounds with miracle water for free just so we could hold shovels before sunset!”
Above the canal trench, green and yellow Loyalty bars began to wiggle upward in Pei Xuan’s vision:
[Prisoner: Debtor #205 (Archer Xiao Wu) | Rank 1 Early | Loyalty: 18 -> 38/100]
[Current Thought: They didn't beat us or starve us, and their healing water is like immortal medicine! Plus, look at those stone houses inside the wall—they look cooler than the inns in Black-Rock City!]
Only one person among the two hundred mercenaries refused to pick up a shovel.
Locked inside a sturdy wooden cage cart parked beside the ditch was Captain Hu (Hu Biao)—now wearing vest DEBTOR #131.
Because Captain Hu was a Rank 2 Peak Martial fighter whose iron bones were hard to zap with a standard Rank 1 collar, Pei Xuan had spent 50 LP to fuse [Three Iron Cart Chains] + [Rank 2 Scorpion King Numbing Stinger] into a heavy [Rank 2 Bone-Numbing Shackle] around Captain Hu’s wrists and ankles.
Even more humiliating, because Captain Hu had landed butt-first in the ten Needle-Spitting Guard Cactuses, his backside was still swollen to twice its normal size. He couldn’t even sit down in the wooden cage—he had to lie flat on his stomach like a big black turtle, glaring out through the wooden bars with bloodshot eyes!
Hong Ling walked up to the cage cart, tapped her brass abacus, and pasted a three-foot-long yellow paper bill onto the wooden bars right in front of Captain Hu’s nose.
“Three thousand silver?!” Captain Hu roared from his stomach, his hands rattling the iron bars of the cage. “And sing a village song before meals?! Kill me if you want, Pei Xuan! I, Hu Biao, am a famous Rank 2 Peak blade of the Red-Sand Wastes! Even if I starve to death in this cage, I will NEVER dig a peasant ditch for you, and I will NEVER eat a single bite of your dirty peasant food!”
Standing outside the cage, Pei Xuan didn’t get angry at all. He simply looked at the floating status bar above Captain Hu’s head:
“Oh?” Pei Xuan raised an eyebrow as he read the [Hidden Weakness] line on the tooltip. “He refuses to eat peasant food and wants to starve to death?”
“Let me whip him ten times with a thorn branch, Young Master!” One-Eyed Jack volunteered eagerly. “Back when I was a bandit, nobody acted tougher than me until I tasted Old Guo’s stew!”
“Whipping a Rank 2 Peak fighter only wastes your arm strength,” Pei Xuan said with a warm, gentle smile that made Hong Ling shiver because she knew someone was about to suffer terribly. “Since Captain Hu is a man of iron backbone who wants to go on a hunger strike, we must respect his wishes. Do not give him a single drop of soup.”
Captain Hu snorted proudly from the floor of his cage. “Hmph! At least you know a real warrior cannot be bowed!”
“However,” Pei Xuan continued smoothly, pointing to the flat open patch of ground just five feet upwind from the front of Captain Hu’s wooden cage, “the two hundred mercenaries digging the canal and our hundred guard militiamen have worked hard all afternoon. Old Guo, set up the main dinner stove right here in front of Captain Hu’s cage. Tonight, we are celebrating our wall victory with a new fused dish: [Spicy Scorpion-Oil & Lamb-Potato Hand-Pulled Noodles]!”
“Right away, Young Master!”
Old Guo’s fat face beamed like a blooming chrysanthemum. With twenty kitchen helpers moving like clockwork, they rolled out three massive iron cauldrons, built roaring charcoal fires right in front of Captain Hu’s cage, and poured in ten buckets of crystal-clear Sweet-Spring Spirit Water.
Earlier that afternoon, Pei Xuan had spent 100 LP in the Fusion Cube to combine [50 Catties of Coarse Flour from Boss Qian's Cart] + [200 Catties of Meat-Belly Giant Potatoes] + [Red-Tail Scorpion Chili Oil] into [Rank 1 Chewy Spirit-Sinew Noodle Dough & Ten-Mile Chili Broth].
Within twenty minutes, as the desert sun dipped toward the horizon and a cool evening breeze blew straight from the cooking stove into Captain Hu’s face, the torture began.
SIZZLE—SPLASH!
Old Guo scooped a giant ladle of boiling, ruby-red scorpion-and-mutton chili oil and poured it over a mountain of chopped green onions, crushed garlic, cumin seeds, and diced Meat-Belly Giant Potatoes that smelled exactly like slow-roasted tender lamb ribs!
A fragrance so rich, spicy, numbing, and mouth-watering that it could make a vegetarian monk jump over a temple wall exploded into the evening air!
Right in front of Captain Hu’s nose, Old Guo grabbed an arm-thick cylinder of fused Spirit-Sinew Noodle Dough, stretched his muscular arms wide, and slapped the dough against the wooden flour-board:
PA-PA-PA! WHOOSH!
In three breaths, the glossy white dough stretched into hundreds of long, springy, translucent noodles that flew into the bubbling golden lamb-bone soup!
Inside the wooden cage five feet away, Captain Hu’s nostrils flared involuntarily.
Sniff... sniff...
GURGLE-ROOOOAR!
Captain Hu’s empty stomach let out a rumble so loud that three guard wolves sitting next to the cage tilted their heads in surprise.
“What... what is in that pot?!” Captain Hu stared through the wooden bars with wide, trembling eyes as Old Guo scooped out the first giant wooden bowl of noodles.
The hand-pulled noodles were glossy and chewy, swimming in rich milky-white lamb-potato broth topped with a thick spoonful of glistening red chili oil, tender chunks of roasted-lamb-flavored potato, green coriander, and three golden, crispy Deep-Fried Red-Tail Scorpions on top!
Even worse, whenever someone ate a bowl of these fused noodles, a warm stream of Rank 1 Qi-Blood Energy washed through their fatigued muscles, soothing every ache from a whole day of digging!
“Dinner time! Debtors #132 to #330, line up with your wooden bowls!” Hong Ling banged a brass ladle against an iron bucket. “Everyone who dug their full ten yards of ditch today gets one giant bowl of Spicy Lamb-Potato Noodles! And anyone who sings the Dry-Well Village Work Song loudly and clearly gets a free braised wild-duck egg on top!”
In the canal trench, the one hundred and ninety-nine hungry mercenaries who had been swinging shovels for three hours dropped their tools and scrambled up the bank like starving wolves!
Lieutenant Ma (Debtor #188) was at the very front of the line. He took one big slurp of the spicy, numbing lamb noodles—SLUUUURP—and his eyes rolled back in sheer bliss as warm blood-Qi coursed through his tired back.
“Heavens! What kind of divine noodles are these?!” Lieutenant Ma cried out with his mouth full. “The broth tastes like ten-year-old mountain mutton boiled with spirit herbs, the noodles bounce on my teeth, and my bruised ribs from flying eighty yards this afternoon stopped hurting after two bites!”
“Look at the sign! If we sing the village song, the little girl gives us a braised egg soaking in that meat gravy!” Debtor #205 shouted, wiping red chili oil from his chin. “Lieutenant Ma, lead us in the song! I want that braised egg!”
“Give me the lyric sheet!” Lieutenant Ma grabbed the piece of paper from One-Eyed Jack, cleared his throat, and bellowed at the top of his lungs along with one hundred and ninety-eight burly mercenaries right in front of Captain Hu’s cage:
“DIG THE DITCH, LAY THE STONE! DRY-WELL VILLAGE IS OUR HOME! WORK HARD UNDER YOUNG LORD PEI, THREE HOT MEALS OF MEAT A DAY! WHOEVER BREAKS A SINGLE BRICK, GETS THE SHOVEL AND THE STICK!”
“Good! Loud and neat!” Hong Ling clapped her hands and tossed a shiny, dark-brown braised egg into every single mercenary’s bowl!
Instantly, a tidal wave of green notifications flooded Pei Xuan’s RTS screen:
One hundred and fifty mercenaries sat on the ground in a semicircle right around Captain Hu’s wooden cage, slurping chewy noodles, crunching crispy fried scorpions, and biting into juicy braised eggs while moaning with happiness:
SLUUUURP! CRUNCH! Ahhhh, so spicy, so fragrant!
Inside the cage, Captain Hu lay on his stomach gripping the wooden floorbars so hard his fingernails nearly cracked. Saliva poured out the corners of his mouth like a broken faucet, dripping onto the cage floor in a wet puddle.
By eight o’clock at night, the mercenaries had gone to sleep in the warm, bug-free Cool-Breeze Stone Dormitories.
Yet Pei Xuan had Old Guo leave a single small iron pot of Spicy Lamb-Potato Noodles simmering over a low charcoal brazier five feet outside Captain Hu’s cage, with a wooden bowl, a pair of chopsticks, and two fat braised eggs sitting right on the lid.
Only Old Wei and One-Eyed Jack sat nearby playing dice under a lantern.
Nine o’clock passed. Captain Hu swallowed his own spit three hundred times.
Ten o’clock passed. Captain Hu’s stomach cramped so hard he curled into a ball.
At eleven-thirty at night—just thirty minutes before Pei Xuan’s midnight LP settlement—Captain Hu couldn’t take it for one more second. The heavenly smell of Shanxi-style chili oil and lamb broth had completely shattered his twenty years of martial pride!
“Brother Wei! Brother Jack!” Captain Hu pressed his bruised face between the wooden bars of the cage, tears streaming down his scarred cheeks as he reached both shackled hands toward the simmering noodle pot. “I was wrong! I’m not a famous blade of the desert—I’m Debtor #131! Please give me one bowl of spicy noodles! I’ll sing the song! I’ll sing it right now!”
Before Old Wei could even stand up, the fierce Rank 2 Peak commander of the Black-Arrow Mercenary Company took a deep breath and sang at the top of his lungs into the quiet desert night, beating time against the wooden cage bars with his iron shackles:
“DIG THE DITCH, LAY THE STONE!! DRY-WELL VILLAGE IS OUR HOME!! WORK HARD UNDER YOUNG LORD PEI, PLEASE GIVE ME NOODLES AND AN EGG TODAY—!!”
Up on the balcony of his stone house, Pei Xuan laughed softly as a bright golden popup flashed across his vision right before the midnight chime:
Five minutes later, as Captain Hu was licking the very last drop of red chili oil from the bottom of his third wooden bowl, he suddenly looked up at Pei Xuan and wiped his mouth on his yellow Debtor Vest.
“Lord Pei!” Captain Hu whispered eagerly through the cage bars. “Do you want to get back at that fat pig Boss Qian in Salt-Pool Town? Because I know where he hides his secret underground warehouse—and right now, almost all of his town guards are drunk at his concubine’s birthday banquet!”