Next to the stone water-channel of the [Sweet-Spring Spirit Well], a small stone millhouse stood open to the morning breeze.
Inside the millhouse sat a heavy, three-foot-wide gray stone soy-milk grinder that the refugees had hauled over from Salt-Pool Town. Because one of the ox-carts had hit a rut on the way over, the top grinding stone had a deep crack running down the middle, making it useless for grinding beans.
“Old Wei, bring the quartz-sand water filter box from the well channel,” Pei Xuan instructed as he walked into the millhouse, followed by Hong Ling and Old Guo. “And Hong Ling, fetch that red lacquer box we confiscated from Boss Qian’s bedroom safe.”
“Right away, Young Master!”
Two minutes later, Hong Ling came trotting back holding a velvet-lined red lacquer box. Inside the box sat six gaudy white-jade belt buckles, four thumb-rings, and a pair of carved jade back-scratchers.
Down in the drainage ditch twenty yards away, Boss Qian stretched his fat neck like a turtle and let out a heartbreaking wail: “My ancestral white-jade belt buckles! My sheep-fat jade thumb-rings! Each of those cost me two hundred silver taels in the county capital!”
Pei Xuan picked up one of the jade belt buckles and scanned it with his RTS Tooltip:
“Ancestral sheep-fat jade?” Pei Xuan raised an eyebrow and tossed the belt buckle onto the stone anvil beside Old Wei. “Boss Qian, the antique dealer in the county capital saw you coming from ten miles away. Nine-tenths of this buckle is white marble dust glued together with boiled pig bones, with barely two silver taels’ worth of real jade powder mixed in. Old Wei—smash all of them into fine white powder.”
“Noooo! Not the pig-bone glue!” Boss Qian wept, though his floating tooltip read: [Thought: Wait, that bastard Antique Shop Wang told me those were royal palace treasures! Good thing Lord Pei caught it—wait, why am I thanking Lord Pei for smashing my belt buckles?!]
BANG! BANG! CRACK!
With three casual strikes of his [Rank 2 Blood-Iron Mechanical Arm], Old Wei smashed the tacky belt buckles and back-scratchers into a pile of shimmering, snow-white stone and jade dust inside a clean iron basin.
“Everyone step outside the millhouse for a moment,” Pei Xuan said, closing the wooden half-door so the crowd in the square only saw him standing before the cracked stone grinder with his hands pressed against its rim.
Inside his vision, the glowing blue Fusion Cube spun open and sucked the three materials into its slots:
Confirm!
HUMMMMM—CLANK-WHIRRRRR!
A deep, musical hum vibrated through the stone floor of the millhouse.
Under the golden flash of the Fusion Cube, the cracked three-foot stone grinder expanded upward and outward, fusing directly into the stone water-channel of the Sweet-Spring Well. Within five seconds, a gleaming ten-foot-tall machine made of polished black iron and translucent white jade—the [Lv.2 Snow-Crystal Salt Refinery]—stood proudly in the center of the millhouse!
At the top of the machine sat a wide iron loading hopper big enough to take an entire dump-truck load of raw rock at once. Below the hopper sat three spinning white-jade grinding drums fed by a pressurized pipe of Sweet-Spring Water, and at the bottom jutted three separate discharge chutes labeled in neat embossed letters:
1. Center Chute (White Jade): [Grade-2 Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt]
2. Left Chute (Red Iron): [Dry Red Alkali & Bitter Slag Dust]
3. Right Chute (Frost-Blue Iron): [Cold-Frost Saltpetre Crystals]
Pei Xuan pushed open the millhouse doors and knocked down the temporary wooden side-wall so the wide iron hopper faced the village square.
Outside, the two thousand five hundred villagers gasped as the sunlight hit the gleaming ten-foot-tall jade-and-iron refinery.
“Batu! Back Scorpion Dump Truck Number Eight up to the stone ramp!” Pei Xuan called out. “Dump the whole ten-thousand-pound load straight into the top hopper!”
“Yes, My Lord!”
Batu tapped Scorpion #8’s antennas. The twelve-foot Armored Scorpion King scuttled neatly backward up the stone ramp, stopped with its rear bumper right over the wide iron hopper, and arched its massive tail to pull the dump lever.
CRAAAAASH-RUMBLE!
Ten thousand pounds of ugly, jagged pink-and-red rock salt poured into the top of the [Snow-Crystal Salt Refinery].
Pei Xuan pulled the main brass water-valve on the side of the machine.
WHOOSH—WHIRRRRRR!
Through the translucent white-jade window on the front of the drum, everyone watched in amazement as a swirling vortex of Sweet-Spring Water and glowing white jade-light swallowed the ugly red boulders. There was no need for firewood, no fifteen days of boiling, and no clouds of black smoke. The internal jade rollers crushed the rock salt into microscopic crystals in seconds, while the spirit-jade screen stripped away every trace of toxic red alkali and bitter magnesium!
Less than a minute later, the three bottom chutes opened with a crisp clack.
From the left chute, dry red alkali dust poured neatly into waiting hemp sacks. From the right chute, frosty blue-white saltpetre crystals tumbled into wooden barrels, immediately frosting the outside of the barrels with white rime under the hot sun.
And from the main white-jade chute in the center—
Shhhhhhhhh!
A sparkling, blindingly white cascade poured out into a giant clean wooden trough like a waterfall of newly fallen winter snow!
Every single grain was shaped like a tiny, six-sided diamond crystal that glittered with a faint silver-white halo in the sunlight. Even from twenty feet away, a clean, fresh scent—like an ocean breeze mixed with sweet mountain spring water—drifted across the village square.
“Look at how white it is! It’s whiter than winter snow on the northern peaks!”
“Even the tribute salt sent to the King’s palace in the capital is dull gray compared to this!”
Down in the drainage ditch, Boss Qian dropped his toilet brush completely, his fat jaw hanging down to his collarbone. “I-Impossible! How can raw Red-Rock poison salt turn into snow-white crystal salt in one minute without boiling a single stick of firewood?! My fifty-copper-per-catty salt looks like mud next to that!”
Old Guo was already trembling with excitement beside the center trough. With both hands shaking like a man holding gold ingots, the fat cook scooped up a clean wooden bowl of the [Grade-2 Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt] and pinched a few glittering white crystals onto the tip of his tongue.
The moment the snow-white salt touched Old Guo’s tongue, it didn’t burn or sting at all. Instead, it melted instantly with a clean, savory freshness followed by a hint of natural sweetness!
Even more miraculously, a warm stream of pure mineral spirit-energy slid down Old Guo’s throat and spread straight into his limbs and meridians!
“Young Master! Taste it! It’s heavenly!” Old Guo shouted, his round cheeks flushing healthy red as the lingering soreness in his knees vanished completely.
Without waiting another second, Old Guo waddled over to the ten huge iron cauldrons of boiling Meat-Potato and Lamb-Bone Stew lined up in the square. He poured two full bowls of the glittering [Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt] into each cauldron, stirred the bubbling white broth with his giant iron ladle, and sprinkled another handful over twenty bamboo baskets of freshly fried crispy scorpions!
WHOOOOOSH!
As soon as the Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt dissolved into the boiling Meat-Potato stew, the savory aroma exploding from the ten cauldrons multiplied tenfold! A rich, golden-white steam rose thirty feet into the air, smelling so mouthwateringly delicious that every stomach within half a mile let out a synchronized, thunderous GRUUUUUMBLE!
“Line up by work teams!” Pei Xuan announced loudly. “Two bowls of Snow-Salt Lamb-Potato Stew and one scoop of salted crispy scorpions for every citizen and debtor!”
“Long live Lord Pei!”
Two thousand five hundred people lined up with their wooden bowls at lightning speed.
In the front row, Batu, Scarface Wolf, and Captain Hu—whose calf and thigh muscles were still stiff and twitching from the morning’s salt-cramps—blew on their steaming bowls and gulped down a huge mouthful of salted stew and tender meat-potato.
Gulp!
Batu froze with his wooden spoon halfway to his mouth.
The instant the warm, snow-salted broth hit his stomach, it felt as if a hundred tiny warm hands were massaging every knotted muscle fiber in his legs and back! The dry, hollow feeling in his blood vessels vanished like morning mist under a hot sun, replaced by a surging, rhythmic pulse of rich blood-qi!
“My leg cramps are gone!” Batu stomped his right boot hard against the stone pavement—not a trace of pain remained! In fact, his legs felt so full of explosive springiness that when he jumped to test them, he cleared six feet straight into the air!
Before the cheers around Batu could even die down, a sharp, crisp CRACK-POP-POP echoed from right beside the soup cauldrons!
Everyone turned their heads.
Standing beside the first cauldron with her wooden soup ladle in one hand and her kitchen cleaver on her hip, fifteen-year-old Hong Ling suddenly glowed with a faint bronze-and-silver sheen!
Over the past month, Hong Ling had eaten Spirit Well water and Meat-Potatoes every single day while practicing the Iron-Anvil Body Art until she was right at the peak of Rank 1. The only thing holding her back had been the lack of pure mineral salt to thicken her blood and harden her bone marrow.
Now, after drinking a full bowl of [Grade-2 Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt] broth, every bone in Hong Ling’s petite frame crackled like a string of New Year firecrackers! Her aura surged upward, blowing her twin braids into the air as she stepped cleanly into Rank 2 Early Martial (Iron-Bone Stage)!
“Huh?” Hong Ling blinked her big eyes and accidentally squeezed the handle of her heavy iron soup ladle—crushing the solid iron handle into a flat twist like soft dough! “Young Master! My bones feel so light and hard! I broke through to Rank 2!”
POP-POP-CRACK!
Right next to her, fat Old Guo let out a booming belly laugh as his own round frame rumbled like a heated iron stove, his bones hardening into Rank 2 Iron-Bone Stage at the exact same second!
And it didn’t stop with Hong Ling and Old Guo!
Across the square, a domino chain of bone-tempering pops echoed through the crowd of fighters who had been stuck at Rank 1 Peak:
Crack-pop! Crack-pop!
“I broke through! I reached Rank 2 Early Martial too!”
“Me too! The Snow-Crystal Salt pushed my blood-qi right through the bone barrier!”
One, five, fifteen, thirty, thirty-eight!
Counting Hong Ling and Old Guo, forty loyal fighters of Dry-Well Village broke through from Rank 1 Peak (10 LP/day) to Rank 2 Early Martial (100 LP/day) during a single lunch break, while two hundred normal civilians broke through into Rank 1 Early Martial!
Even down by the drainage ditch, Boss Qian—who had been given a small bowl of salted potato stew as his prisoner ration—sat on his overturned bucket with tears rolling down his fat cheeks as the warm spirit-salt energy cured the chronic lower-back ache he had suffered from for ten years. Above his bald head, his Loyalty bar shot from 38/100 to 56/100 in ten seconds flat!
By the time the midnight bell chimed over the joyous village that night, Pei Xuan’s RTS screen lit up with a dazzling golden settlement report:
---
For the next three days, Dry-Well Village ran like a well-oiled machine.
Every hour, the six [Armored Scorpion Dump Trucks] roared back and forth between Red-Rock Salt Valley and the village refinery at forty miles per hour, piling up hundreds of thousands of pounds of glittering [Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt] in the new stone storehouses.
Then, on the morning of the third day, just as Captain Hu was sitting under a straw sun-hat at the wooden toll booth of Red-Rock Salt Valley checking work tickets, a harsh, brazen war-horn blasted across the northern desert dunes.
BWOOOOO—BWOOOOO!
A thick cloud of yellow dust rolled toward the canyon mouth.
Four hundred ferocious, bare-chested riders wearing snakeskin vests—the notorious Sand-Viper Smuggler Gang, led by the scarred Rank 2 Peak cutthroat Viper-Boss Diao—galloped up to the entrance of Red-Rock Salt Valley with four hundred empty salt-carts trailing behind them!
And riding right beside Viper-Boss Diao on a plumed white horse, wearing the embroidered silver wolf-crest robe of the Iron-Wolf Marquisate’s Western Salt Tax Bureau, was a narrow-eyed middle-aged man holding a golden abacus and an official tax token: Steward Jia, the trusted right-hand tax collector of Pei Xuan’s Third Brother, Pei Lie!
“Halt!” Viper-Boss Diao pulled back on his reins, expecting to see a wild, desolate canyon crawling with man-eating scorpions.
Instead, all four hundred smugglers and Steward Jia froze in their saddles, their eyeballs nearly popping out of their sockets.
Right across the mouth of their “secret” canyon stood a neatly whitewashed stone wall, a red-and-white striped wooden drop-gate, a shaded watchtower where Pei Xuan and Hong Ling were sipping cold spring tea, and former mercenary Captain Hu sitting behind a wooden desk with a big painted sign:
[DRY-WELL MUNICIPAL SALT MINE — VISITORS MUST PAY ROAD-WEAR & AIR-BREATHING TAX AT WINDOW #1!]