When the first pale rays of dawn lit up the dusty streets of Salt-Pool Town, Old Blacksmith Tie, a skinny fifty-year-old ironsmith whose fingers were cracked and calloused from thirty years of hammering horse shoes, shuffled out of his low mud shack holding a chipped clay bowl and ten copper coins.
Every morning at sunrise, the twelve hundred poor residents of Salt-Pool Town had to line up outside the iron-caged brackish well in the central square, hand ten copper coins to Boss Qian’s vicious tax collectors, and receive a single wooden ladle of cloudy, bitter yellow water. If you dropped a coin or complained that there was mud at the bottom of the ladle, Boss Qian’s guards would smash your clay bowl with an iron club and make you pay another ten coppers.
“Sigh... another ten coppers gone,” Old Blacksmith Tie muttered, rubbing his dry, aching throat as he walked into the central square with his ten-year-old grandson, Little Hammer. “After buying three ladles of water today, we only have enough bran left for half a pancake...”
He stopped dead in the middle of the street.
The clay bowl in his hand nearly slipped from his fingers.
Around him, dozens of other early-rising townsfolk—weavers, brick-bakers, carpenters, and salt-carters—were also standing frozen at the entrance of the central square, rubbing their eyes as if they were still dreaming.
First of all, the thick iron cage that had locked up the central town well for ten long years had been sliced clean in half like soft tofu! The heavy iron bars lay twisted on the ground, and the two fist-sized brass padlocks had been crushed into flat metal pancakes!
Second, right in front of the unlocked well stood ten massive oak barrels with their wooden lids pried open, along with twenty clean wooden ladles and a stack of fifty steamed Meat-Belly Giant Potato Buns that still gave off a faint, mouth-watering aroma of roasted lamb!
And third—and most shocking of all—high up on the thirty-foot wooden flagpole in the center of the square, where Boss Qian usually hung debtors by their wrists to bake in the sun, hung a giant, round white dumpling trussed up in hemp rope!
Wait—that wasn’t a dumpling!
Old Blacksmith Tie squinted up at the flagpole.
Hanging three feet off the ground by the back of his red silk underpants, with a big red apple stuffed in his mouth and his five gold rings missing from each stubby hand, was none other than the tyrant of Salt-Pool Town himself—Boss Qian (Qian Wanguan)!
Wait—he wasn’t actually left behind for long! Hanging on the flagpole right now was Boss Qian’s giantstuffed silk effigy wearing Boss Qian’s outer coat, while ten yards away at the western edge of the square, the real Boss Qian—stripped down to his red silk underpants and wearing a bright yellow vest that said SUPER DEBTOR #000—was locked inside a heavy wooden prisoner cage on the back of Pei Xuan’s last wagon!
Right before Pei Xuan’s caravan pulled out of the western gate, Pei Xuan stood on top of the wagon with Captain Hu and Batu, while a huge wooden billboard was nailed straight into the town flagpole above the ten open water barrels:
Inside the wooden cage on the back of the last wagon, Boss Qian finally spat out the gag in his mouth as the wagon rolled toward the western gate, screaming at the top of his lungs at the stunned crowd of townsfolk:
“Don’t drink that water! That’s Pei Xuan, the exiled ninth brat from the Marquisate! He robbed my north granary while my guards were asleep! Town guards! Where are my town guards?! Come rescue me!”
From the gatehouse of Boss Qian’s main manor down the street, twenty hungover town guards poked their heads out—took one look at Captain Hu (Rank 2 Peak) and Old Wei (Rank 2 Early) riding beside the cage with five-foot black-iron sabers resting on their shoulders, plus a hundred fierce Giant Sand-Wolves baring their fangs—and immediately slammed the manor doors shut and bolted them from the inside!
Pay ten coppers a day to die under Captain Hu and Old Wei’s blades for a fat miser who owed them two months of back wages? Not a chance!
Even more hilarious, standing right beside Pei Xuan on the back wagon was Captain Hu himself!
Wearing his yellow DEBTOR #131 vest with his chest puffed out proudly, Captain Hu cupped his hands and shouted back at the crowd in the square:
“Folks of Salt-Pool Town! Listen to me, Hu Biao! Yesterday I was foolish enough to take Boss Qian’s dirty silver to attack Dry-Well Village! Not only did Lord Pei’s divine mud wall bounce our thousand-pound battering ram eighty yards through the air, but Lord Pei didn’t kill a single one of my two hundred brothers! Last night he fed us three bowls of Spicy Scorpion-Oil & Lamb-Potato Noodles with braised duck eggs and healed all our arrow wounds with miracle spring water!”
Captain Hu patted his stomach and pointed at the ten open oak barrels in the square.
“If you don’t believe me, take one sip from those ten barrels right now! And look in the ash pile under the flagpole—Lord Pei burned every single one of Boss Qian’s blood-interest slave contracts in front of my eyes an hour ago! Our wagons are driving slowly along the road—anyone who is tired of drinking Boss Qian’s salty mud for ten coppers a ladle, pack your pots and blankets and come with us!”
As the fifty heavily loaded wagons and wolf-riders rolled slowly out the western gate of Salt-Pool Town, the central square was dead silent for five breaths.
By now, all twelve hundred residents of Salt-Pool Town had poured out of their shacks into the square.
Old Blacksmith Tie walked hesitantly up to the ash pile at the base of the flagpole. Half-burned corners of red paper with Boss Qian’s official thumbprint seal lay in the ashes—including the exact page that had held Old Blacksmith Tie’s thirty-silver forge debt!
His hands trembling, Old Blacksmith Tie turned to the first open oak barrel.
Instead of the cloudy, foul-smelling yellow brackish water of Salt-Pool Town, the water inside this barrel was as clear as liquid crystal. A cool, sweet mist rose from the surface, smelling faintly of mountain snow and spring flowers.
“Grandpa, it smells so sweet...” ten-year-old Little Hammer whispered, licking his cracked, bleeding lips.
Old Blacksmith Tie picked up a clean wooden ladle, scooped up a full dipper of the Lv.2 Sweet-Spring Spirit Water, and held it to his grandson’s mouth, then drank the rest himself.
Gulp... gulp...
The moment the cool, sweet spring water slid down Old Blacksmith Tie’s parched throat, his eyes flew wide open!
It wasn’t just sweet and refreshing—a gentle wave of warm, pure life-force spread instantly from his stomach into his dry lungs and stiff, fifty-year-old back! The painful cracks on Little Hammer’s lips closed up before the boy’s eyes, and the chronic black-smoke cough Old Blacksmith Tie had suffered from thirty years at the forge vanished in three breaths!
“M-Miracle water!” Old Blacksmith Tie dropped to his knees beside the barrel, tears gushing down his weathered cheeks. “It’s real! My back pain is gone! Little Hammer’s cracked lips healed in one sip! This isn’t ordinary water—this is Immortal Spring Water!”
“Let me try a sip!”
“Give some to my sick mother!”
Within two minutes, all twelve hundred residents of Salt-Pool Town crowded around the ten huge barrels, passing the twenty wooden ladles from hand to hand and breaking the fifty warm Meat-Belly Giant Potato Buns into small pieces so everyone could taste a bite.
Cries of shock and weeping echoed from every corner of the square!
“My leg ulcers from digging salt mud are drying up!”
“This red potato inside the bun tastes just like braised lamb belly! Look how big and soft it is!”
“And the signboard says Lord Pei gives every worker in Dry-Well Village FREE sweet water for life, three hot meat meals a day, and a stone house?!”
Old Blacksmith Tie stood up on top of the broken iron well-cage and swung his heavy forging hammer into the air.
“Neighbors! Why have we stayed in this miserable Salt-Pool Town all these years?!” Old Blacksmith Tie roared, his voice ringing like iron now that the spring water had cleared his lungs. “Because Fat Pig Qian locked up the wells and held our debt contracts! Now Lord Pei has captured Boss Qian, burned our slave contracts, and opened his oasis gates to us! If we stay here, another greedy official from Black-Rock City will just come lock the wells again next month! Who is coming with me to Dry-Well Village?!”
“WE ARE!!”
“Pack the looms and the carpenter saws! Don’t leave a single nail behind!”
“Let’s go! Follow Lord Pei’s wagons before they get too far ahead!”
In less than half an hour, the most spectacular mass migration in the history of the eastern Red-Sand Wastes began!
All twelve hundred abused residents of Salt-Pool Town—twenty-four blacksmiths with their anvils loaded on handcarts, eighty skilled weavers carrying their wooden looms, a hundred carpenters and masons, and hundreds of tough salt-haulers carrying their children on their shoulders—marched right out the western gate of Salt-Pool Town like a joyful festival parade!
Wait—what about the twenty hungover town guards who had locked themselves inside Boss Qian’s manor?
When they peeked out the window at seven in the morning and saw that every single baker, cook, water-carrier, and resident in the entire town had packed up and left—leaving Salt-Pool Town completely empty except for dry scorpions and blowing sand—the twenty town guards looked at each other in panic.
“Wait for us! We want to apply for yellow Debtor Vests too! Don’t leave us here to starve!”
Throwing away their Boss Qian uniforms, the twenty town guards sprinted out the western gate carrying their bedding rolls, chasing desperately after the dust cloud of the twelve hundred townsfolk!
Half a mile ahead on the road, sitting comfortably on the back of Old Yellow the Camel while the fifty loot-filled wagons rumbled steadily westward, Pei Xuan watched his RTS Territory Screen light up with a golden cascade of incoming population alerts:
Behind Pei Xuan’s camel, inside the wooden prisoner cage on the last wagon, Boss Qian pressed his fat face against the wooden bars and stared back down the road.
Watching all twelve hundred of his former tax-payers, tenants, and even his own twenty manor guards marching happily behind Pei Xuan’s caravan while singing a song about digging ditches and eating braised eggs, Boss Qian felt his heart seize up like a dried walnut.
“My silver... my grain... my twelve hundred water-customers...” Boss Qian whimpered, slumping onto the floor of the cage in his red silk underpants as two fat tears rolled down his triple chin. “He didn’t even leave me a single person in Salt-Pool Town...”
Hong Ling leaned down from the driver’s bench of the wagon, clicked her brass abacus twice right in Boss Qian’s ear, and smiled sweetly.
“Don’t cry, Debtor #000! Wait until we get back to Dry-Well Village and calculate your Fifty-Thousand-Silver Wall-Scratching & Mercenary-Hiring Fine! One-Eyed Jack already saved the best wooden toilet brush in the village just for you!”
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.