Inside the quiet stone workshop behind the village gatehouse, two oil lamps burned with a steady yellow flame.
On the long wooden workbench in front of Pei Xuan sat three very strange things: a sealed clay jar pickled with one hundred dried red glands, a wooden bowl of shiny golden camel-feed pellets, and a five-pound block of chalky white limestone dug up from the south ridge.
Standing beside the door, Old Wei, Hong Ling, and Old Guo watched with wide eyes, holding their breath so they wouldn’t disturb their young master. Even though none of them could see the glowing blue RTS screen floating in front of Pei Xuan’s face, they had already seen enough miracles over the past month—from the Sweet-Spring Well to the Meat-Belly Giant Potatoes and the Elastic Iron-Mud Wall—to know that whenever Pei Xuan locked himself in the workshop at midnight, something amazing was about to happen.
“Old Guo, are you sure all one hundred of these glands came from female Red-Tail Scorpions?” Pei Xuan asked, tapping the sealed clay jar.
“One hundred percent sure, Young Master!” Old Guo patted his fat belly proudly. “Back when that first swarm of five hundred scorpions crawled out of the gully to eat our potato fields, you told me to save the scent glands from the biggest female scorpions before throwing them into the frying wok. Female scorpions have a broader tail-joint and a little orange stripe under their belly. I picked out the hundred biggest ones myself and preserved them in dry salt-sand!”
“Good job. That saves me a lot of trouble,” Pei Xuan praised.
Over Old Guo’s round head, his floating Loyalty bar pulsed warmly:
Pei Xuan chuckled silently at Old Guo’s thoughts, then turned his attention to the spinning blue Fusion Cube hovering above the workbench.
With a mental command, he dragged the three materials on the table into the Cube’s glowing slots.
Confirm!
Pei Xuan pressed the golden [Y] button in his mind.
HUMMMMMM!
To Old Wei, Hong Ling, and Old Guo, it looked as if Pei Xuan simply clapped his hands over the workbench while circulating a mysterious secret art passed down by his late mother’s ancestors. A flash of warm golden light enveloped the clay jar, the bowl of feed, and the white limestone block.
Three seconds later, the jar and the bowl vanished into thin air. Sitting neatly in the center of the wooden table was a box of twelve thick, six-inch-long sticks of chalk that gleamed like carved white ivory with faint golden veins running through them. A strange, dry, musky scent—completely harmless to humans, yet carrying an invisible weight that made the small spiders in the roof corners drop dead of fright—drifted out of the box.
“Twelve sticks of chalk?” Hong Ling leaned forward on her tiptoes, sniffing the air curiously. “Young Master, it smells like dried cinnamon and roasted sesame! Can a stick of white chalk really make a twelve-foot monster scorpion stop trying to pinch our heads off?”
“Seeing is believing,” Pei Xuan said, picking up one ivory-gold chalk stick from the box. “Old Wei, bring in the clay pot by the door and call Old Yellow over to the window.”
Outside the open stone window of the workshop, Old Yellow—the eight-foot-tall, brass-furred Rank 2 camel—was lazily chewing on a mouthful of dried potato vines in the moonlight. Hearing Pei Xuan’s voice, the big camel poked his long golden head through the wide window frame and let out a low, wet bluurgh of greeting.
Meanwhile, Old Wei carried over a covered clay pot with breathing holes poked in the lid. Inside the pot were three fist-sized Red-Tail Poison Scorpions and two hard-shelled Black Dune Beetles that Batu’s scouts had caught near the perimeter earlier that evening. As soon as Old Wei lifted the lid and dumped them into a wide iron basin on the floor, the three red scorpions raised their venomous stingers and hissed angrily at the lamplight, clacking their pincers against the iron wall of the basin.
“Watch closely,” Pei Xuan said.
He reached out the window with the stick of [Royal Bug-Boss Chalk] and drew a neat little white circle—about the size of a copper coin—right in the middle of Old Yellow’s flat forehead.
“Now, Old Yellow,” Pei Xuan patted the camel’s nose. “Stick your head down by that iron basin and glare at those scorpions.”
Old Yellow blinked his big, long-lashed eyes, lowered his long neck into the workshop, and puffed a warm snort of breath right over the edge of the iron basin.
The moment the faint golden chalk dust on Old Yellow’s forehead drifted down into the basin, all three ferocious Red-Tail Scorpions and both Black Dune Beetles froze as if struck by lightning!
Clack-clack-clack!
Their raised stingers dropped flat against the bottom of the iron basin. Their eight legs trembled violently, and all five desert bugs pressed their heads flat against the cold iron directly beneath Old Yellow’s nose—shaking like tiny subjects bowing before a supreme emperor!
When Old Yellow shifted his head three inches to the left, all three scorpions and both beetles scrambled sideways in a neat little line so they could keep bowing directly toward his nose!
“By the ancestors!” Old Wei’s jaw dropped open, his mechanical iron fingers clicking in shock. “Those wild poison scorpions don’t have a brain bigger than a mung bean, yet they’re kowtowing to a camel!”
“Not just kowtowing—look!” Hong Ling pointed into the basin, giggling behind her hand.
The biggest of the three scorpions had picked up a tiny crumb of dried mud in its pincers and was holding it up over its head toward Old Yellow like a tribute offering!
Old Yellow looked down at the five bowing bugs in the basin, then slowly raised his head. A look of unbearable arrogance spread across the camel’s long face. Look at that—even the terrifying poison bugs of the desert recognized his royal majesty! Old Yellow puffed out his furry golden chest, turned his head toward the courtyard outside, and spat a celebratory glob of sticky golden phlegm straight onto the wooden fence post.
“Alright, wipe that smirk off your face, or you’re pulling the night-soil cart with Boss Qian,” Pei Xuan laughed, rubbing the chalk mark off Old Yellow’s forehead with a rag before placing the chalk stick back into the box.
With the scorpion problem solved, Pei Xuan turned to the corner of the workshop where twenty heavy iron pickaxes and a basket of sharp white fangs—pulled from the dead skulls of old desert beasts found around the nomad camps—were piled up.
“Old Wei,” Pei Xuan said, picking up one of the ordinary iron pickaxes and testing its blunt tip with his thumb. “Scarface Wolf said the salt deposit in Red-Rock Valley isn’t loose sand salt—it’s solid crystal rock salt baked hard by thousands of years of canyon heat. If our miners swing these ordinary iron pickaxes against solid rock salt, the tips will curl up in half an hour, and it’ll take all day just to load one cart.”
“That’s true, Young Master,” Old Wei nodded. “Rock salt in deep desert canyons is nearly as tough as quarry granite.”
“Then let’s give our miners sharper teeth.”
Pei Xuan stepped in front of the pile of twenty pickaxes and opened the Fusion Cube a second time. Because the twenty pickaxes were identical standard tools, the Cube allowed him to batch-fuse the entire pile at once for 20 LP per pickaxe:
A low metallic zing echoed through the room as the twenty blunt iron pickaxes elongated slightly. Their dull gray tips turned a gleaming, curved ivory-black, looking just like the hooked fangs of a giant wolf fused seamlessly into black steel shafts.
Old Wei picked one up and lightly tapped the tip against a spare gray stone brick on the floor.
Shhhk!
Without Old Wei even using his Rank 2 internal strength, the curved black-ivory tip sank three inches deep into the solid stone brick as smoothly as a hot knife sinking into butter! When Old Wei pulled the pickaxe back out, not a single scratch showed on the gleaming tip.
“Incredible!” Old Wei breathed, his eyes shining. “With twenty of these Wolf-Fang Pickaxes, twenty strong men can cut out ten thousand catties of rock salt in a single hour!”
“Go get four hours of sleep,” Pei Xuan told the three of them, closing the wooden box of chalk and strapping it securely to his belt. “At first light, we march north to Red-Rock Salt Valley. Before sunset tomorrow, Dry-Well Village will never lack salt again!”
---
At dawn the next morning, before the fiery desert sun had even cleared the eastern horizon, the main gate of Dry-Well Village swung open with a low rumble.
Two hundred picked fighters stood in four neat columns of fifty outside the Elastic Iron-Mud Wall.
Every single one of them had drunk a warm bowl of Old Guo’s pickled-turnip salt broth and carried two five-pound roasted Meat-Belly Potatoes wrapped in oiled cloth strapped to their backs. At the head of the column stood Pei Xuan in light leather battle armor, flanked by Old Wei carrying his huge [Rank 2 Heavy Mountain-Cleaver Saber], Batu riding his tamed Rank 2 Silver-Back Wolf King, Captain Hu, and Scarface Wolf.
Behind them trotted Old Yellow and twenty strong pack-camels carrying coils of heavy iron chains, the twenty [Wolf-Fang Rock-Cutter Pickaxes], and twelve stacks of pre-cut wooden planks and rubber-vine cushions that One-Eyed Jack’s carpenters had sawed during the night.
Even Hong Ling marched right behind Pei Xuan, wearing a small straw sun-hat, two shiny kitchen cleavers on her hips, and a canvas satchel stuffed with thirty newly written “Red-Rock Salt Valley Municipal Toll & Fine Books.”
Before Old Wei gave the order to march, Captain Hu jogged up to the front of the column, glancing curiously at the twelve stacks of wooden wagon planks and rubber-vine cushions tied to the pack-camels.
“My Lord,” Captain Hu asked, scratching his helmeted head, “I understand bringing the heavy iron chains to tangle up the Giant Scorpions’ legs, and I understand bringing those new curved pickaxes to dig salt. But why are we hauling twelve disassembled wooden wagon boxes and sixty seat cushions into a monster nest without any wheels or axles?”
Behind him, Scarface Wolf also leaned in. “Yeah, Lord Pei! Did Foreman Jack forget to pack the wagon wheels? Without wheels, how are twenty camels supposed to drag twelve wooden boxes full of heavy rock salt across fifteen miles of soft sand?”
“Wheels?” Pei Xuan glanced back at the two former desert bosses with a pitiful look, as if looking at two country bumpkins who had never seen a city bus. “Why would we put wooden wheels on a desert cart when wooden wheels just sink into soft sand Dunes? Each of our new carts comes with twelve self-powered, armor-plated legs and built-in shock absorbers.”
Captain Hu and Scarface Wolf stared at each other blankly.
Twelve self-powered legs?
Wait a second—a scorpion has eight walking legs, two big front pincers, and two smaller mouth-claws... doesn’t that add up to twelve?!
Both men sucked in a cold breath at the exact same moment, their eyes widening to the size of copper bells.
“M-My Lord!” Scarface Wolf stammered, his voice cracking. “Yesterday when you said those twelve Rank 2 Armored Scorpion Kings were ‘dump trucks and buses,’ I thought you were making a joke to cheer up the men! You actually want us to nail wooden seats onto the backs of live twelve-foot poison scorpions and ride them home?!”
“Not nail them—strap and fuse them comfortably so we don’t hurt their shells,” Pei Xuan corrected seriously. “A healthy Rank 2 Armored Scorpion King can live for fifty years, eats desert weeds and crushed limestone, never asks for overtime pay, and runs forty miles an hour without sweating. Do you know how much silver it would cost to buy twelve Rank 2 spirit horses that can haul ten thousand pounds each? At least fifty thousand silver taels! Out here in the Red-Sand Wastes, wasting good monster labor is a crime against our village budget.”
Floating above Captain Hu’s and Scarface Wolf’s heads, their blue RTS Loyalty bars gave a hard twitch and jumped up by two points each:
“Stop daydreaming and move out! Double-time march!” Old Wei shouted, trying to hide the grin tugging at his scarred cheek.
Because all two hundred fighters were at least Rank 1 Early Martial—with thirty of them at Rank 1 Peak and four leaders at Rank 2—their feet barely kicked up dust as they jogged northward across the cool morning dunes in neat formation.
As they passed the ten-mile mark where Dry-Well Village’s Level 2 Map Fog ended, the yellow sand underfoot gradually turned a deep, rusty blood-red. The air grew noticeably hotter and drier, carrying a sharp, metallic tang that made everyone lick their dry lips.
“Lord Pei, look ahead!” Batu pointed from atop his giant silver wolf. “Those red cliffs are the mouth of Red-Rock Salt Valley!”
Half a mile ahead, two towering cliffs of jagged red rock rose three hundred feet out of the desert floor, forming a narrow canyon entrance shaped like the open jaws of a sleeping beast. Strange white-and-red crystal veins, thick as tree trunks, sparkled along the lower cliff walls under the rising morning sun.
“Hold the column at the canyon mouth!” Pei Xuan raised his hand.
Captain Hu and Scarface Wolf immediately ran forward with ten wolf-riding scouts to check the sandy road leading into the canyon. Two minutes later, Captain Hu jogged back with a grin on his weathered face.
“My Lord, the road is clear! There are old campfire ashes and broken wine jars from last winter near the outer cave, which belong to the Sand-Viper Smugglers, but there are no fresh horse tracks from the past two weeks,” Captain Hu reported. “Just as Boss Qian said, the Sand-Viper Gang doesn’t dare come into the valley during the hot summer months while the Giant Armored Scorpions are awake!”
“What about the scorpions?” Old Wei asked, tightening his grip on his heavy saber and flexing his mechanical left arm.
Scarface Wolf swallowed hard and pointed two hundred yards inside the canyon, where the red rock walls widened into a huge, bowl-shaped valley floor glittering with giant boulders of red rock salt. Half a dozen dark cavern mouths yawned at the base of the inner cliffs.
“They’re inside those deep salt caves staying out of the morning glare, My Lord,” Scarface Wolf whispered nervously. “Three years ago, when my men and I rode fifty yards past that big salt boulder in the middle, the vibrations of our horses’ hooves woke them up—”
Before Scarface Wolf could even finish his sentence, Old Yellow—who was trotting proudly at the front of the camel line—spotted a patch of crunchy salty moss growing at the base of the big salt boulder fifty yards inside the canyon.
Ignoring Batu’s shout, the greedy golden camel trotted straight up to the boulder, planted his heavy Rank 2 hooves into the hollow salt-crust floor, and stomped twice with a loud BOOM-BOOM to knock the dust off the moss!
Silence fell over the canyon for two heartbeats.
Then, deep beneath the red salt floor of the valley, a sound like twenty iron grinding wheels scraping across stone echoed through the cliffs.
SKREEEEEEE—CRACK!
The ground under the big salt boulder split open! Cascades of red sand and salt rocks poured off the cavern roofs as twelve massive, twelve-foot-long shadows—each armored in glossy black-red shells thicker than castle gates, with twin pincers the size of blacksmith anvils and curved poison stingers raised ten feet into the air—burst out of the six salt caves at the same time!