“Great Warlord! Why are you laughing?”
Captain Tie-Hu and a dozen vanguard commanders crowded around Hu Ba on the warm red-carpet porch of the Buffet Hall. Across the street in the five-mile-long heated barn, their two million Iron-Rhinos and Saber-Wolves were still grunting in bliss under the spinning back-scratchers, completely ignoring every horn call.
“You bunch of thick-skulled muscle-brains!”
Warlord Hu Ba slapped his armored chest and laughed so hard his white tiger ears flapped. He pointed his thumb at the glowing golden sign above the open glass doors of the Dry-Well All-You-Can-Eat Buffet Hall.
“Look at what that sign says!” Hu Ba lowered his voice to a conspiratorial roar that could still be heard half a mile away. “New Customer Promo: First Dish 1 Copper, All-You-Can-Eat, Pay When You Leave! Don’t you see what a fatal blunder this human lord Pei Xuan has just made?!”
Captain Tie-Hu blinked his one good eye and rubbed his broken tooth. “A blunder, Great Warlord? Isn’t it a trap to poison us?”
“Poison two million soldiers with Rank 5 Spirit-Pork?!” Hu Ba scoffed, sniffing the rich, mouth-watering steam pouring out of the doorway. “My Golden Core nose can smell fifty kinds of blood-warming spirit herbs and pure ten-year rock sugar in that pork belly! There isn’t a drop of poison in it! The humans only built this fancy restaurant because they thought small merchant caravans of fifty or a hundred skinny humans would stop here!”
