“Wait a minute! Wait just a dragon-blessed minute!”
Ao Ming nearly choked on the giant steamed crab leg in his mouth. The hundred-foot golden Flood Dragon shrank down to his human-sized form—a burly, bearded old man in a flashy golden silk bathrobe with two shiny dragon horns sticking out of his hair—and waddled over to Pei Xuan as fast as his flip-flops could carry him.
“Lord Pei! Did I hear you right?!” Ao Ming pointed a trembling finger toward the northern horizon. “When I lived at the bottom of your village well three years ago, I only had to heat thirty-five mud huts and fifty acres of winter cabbage! Now you want this old dragon to blow hot air across three thousand miles of frozen wasteland?! Even if I breathe fire until my lungs turn inside out and my horns fall off, I can’t heat a whole continent by myself!”
Above Ao Ming’s head, his floating RTS status bar flickered indignantly:
Pei Xuan read the tooltip without blinking and turned to Old Guo.
“Uncle Guo,” Pei Xuan said casually, “didn’t the Kraken Sea-King’s shark scouts bring in three ten-ton Rank 6 Deep-Sea Butter-Tuna this morning? Brush them with honey, chili oil, and desert cumin, and roast them whole over applewood for Chief Plumber Ao Ming.”
