For three full breaths, the only sound outside the mouth of Red-Rock Salt Valley was the snorting of four hundred and twenty horses and the creaking of a painted wooden sign swinging in the hot desert breeze.
[STOP! DRY-WELL MUNICIPAL SALT MINE — ALL CARTS & HORSES MUST WEIGH IN AT TOLL WINDOW #1!]
Sitting atop his tall black stallion at the front of the four-hundred-man smuggler column, Viper-Boss Diao—a hulking, one-eared cutthroat with a green viper tattooed across his bare chest and a Rank 2 Peak iron broadsword strapped to his back—rubbed his eyes hard with his leather gauntlet.
“Am I drunk on scorpion wine?” Viper-Boss Diao growled, turning his scarred head toward his second-in-command. “Isn’t this Red-Rock Salt Valley? Where are the wild red scorpions? Why is there a whitewashed stone fence, a striped wooden gate-bar, and a guy in a straw hat sitting behind a desk?!”
Beside him on a plumed white horse, Steward Jia of the Iron-Wolf Marquisate’s Western Salt Tax Bureau frowned so hard his narrow eyebrows almost touched. Behind Steward Jia rode twenty elite Marquisate Salt-Tax Guards in gleaming black leather armor, each at Rank 1 Peak Martial.
Originally, the Sand-Viper Smugglers only came to Red-Rock Salt Valley in the dead of winter when the terrifying Rank 2 Armored Scorpion Kings hibernated deep underground.
However, four days ago, a runaway clerk from Salt-Pool Town had fled to the county border and reported to Third Young Master Pei Lie that Boss Qian’s water business had collapsed because the exiled Ninth Young Master, Pei Xuan, had somehow opened a sweet water well at Dry-Well Village!
When Third Brother Pei Lie heard that the crippled trash brother he had mocked at the city gate was actually living comfortably in the desert, Pei Lie had flown into a jealous rage. He immediately dispatched his trusted tax hound, Steward Jia, with twenty elite guards and fifty barrels of foul-smelling “Bug-Chasing Sulfur Smoke” to link up with Viper-Boss Diao’s four hundred Sand-Viper Smugglers.
Pei Lie’s orders were simple and vicious: First, use the sulfur smoke to drive back the scorpions in Red-Rock Salt Valley and haul out a hundred thousand catties of rock salt to flood the border market at fifty copper coins a catty. Second, march all four hundred smugglers down to Dry-Well Village, slap Pei Xuan with a fake “Ten-Year Unpaid Desert Well & Breathing Tax,” confiscate the Sweet-Spring Well in the name of the Marquisate Salt Bureau, and leave Pei Xuan in a wooden cage to dry up in the sun!
Yet before they could even light a single barrel of sulfur smoke or march south to Dry-Well Village, someone had already built a toll booth right across the entrance of Red-Rock Salt Valley!
Wait—not just someone!
Viper-Boss Diao squinted under the bright morning sun at the burly, square-jawed man wearing a wide straw sun-hat and a crisp blue uniform vest who was walking out of the wooden toll booth holding a bamboo clipboard.
“Hold on! Isn’t that Captain Hu of the Black-Arrow Mercenaries?!” Viper-Boss Diao barked in surprise. “Hey, Old Hu! Last month Boss Qian paid you five hundred silver to guard his water wagons! What the hell are you doing wearing a straw hat and holding a wooden board in my salt canyon?!”
Captain Hu stopped right behind the red-and-white striped wooden drop-gate. He adjusted his straw sun-hat, tapped his bamboo clipboard politely, and looked at Viper-Boss Diao as if looking at an uncivilized country bumpkin.
“First of all, Viper-Boss Diao, the Black-Arrow Mercenary Company has been officially dissolved and reorganized into the Dry-Well Village Third Municipal Road & Mine Patrol Squad,” Captain Hu said in a loud, textbook-proper voice that he had practiced thirty times that morning. “Second of all, Red-Rock Salt Valley is no longer an unowned wasteland. By decree of Lord Pei Xuan of Dry-Well Village, this entire canyon and all fifty million catties of mineral salt within it are registered municipal property! State your business: are you here to purchase wholesale salt, or are you applying for seasonal quarry labor?”
“Purchase salt?! Apply for quarry labor?!”
Viper-Boss Diao threw his head back and roared with laughter, while the four hundred bare-chested Sand-Viper Smugglers behind him banged their curved sabers against their wooden cart wheels, howling with mocking jeers.
“Did the desert sun cook your brains inside your helmet, Captain Hu?!” Viper-Boss Diao spat a wad of betel-nut juice toward the gravel road—stopping just short when Captain Hu’s eyes flashed cold and he clicked a brass counter on his clipboard. “My four hundred brothers have been digging salt out of this canyon for five winters! Even the wild scorpions have to give me face when I burn sulfur! Who the hell gave that crippled ninth bastard of the Marquisate the guts to put a wooden fence in front of my mine?!”
Beside him, Steward Jia urged his white horse forward two steps, pulling a heavy silver-plated token carved with a snarling wolf head from his embroidered belt and holding it high in the air.
“Presumptuous!” Steward Jia shouted in a shrill, haughty voice, looking past Captain Hu toward the shaded wooden watchtower twenty yards inside the fence.
Up under the watchtower canopy, Pei Xuan sat comfortably in a cushioned rattan chair with Old Wei standing behind his left shoulder and Hong Ling standing behind his right shoulder holding a three-foot-long hemp ledger scroll. Pei Xuan didn’t even bother standing up; he simply took a slow sip of iced Sweet-Spring tea from a porcelain cup.
Seeing Pei Xuan sitting there like a grand magistrate while he had to crane his neck upward from horseback, Steward Jia’s face flushed dark red with anger.
“Ninth Young Master Pei Xuan! Why are you not kneeling when you see the official token of the Iron-Wolf Marquisate’s Western Salt & Iron Tax Bureau?!” Steward Jia barked, puffing out his thin chest. “I am Steward Jia, Special Tax Envoy appointed by your third brother, Third Young Master Pei Lie! According to Marquisate Law Article Seven, every drop of underground water and every grain of rock salt within five hundred miles of the Red-Sand Wastes belongs to the Marquisate Tax Bureau! You have illegally dug a sweet water well without a permit, illegally harbored Salt-Pool Town debtors, and illegally fenced off the Marquisate’s Red-Rock Salt Mine!”
Steward Jia pulled a pre-written piece of yellow silk paper from his sleeve and shook it noisily.
“By order of Third Young Master Pei Lie, you are hereby fined fifty thousand silver taels for Ten Years of Unpaid Desert Well Taxes and Illegal Salt Mining! Since a poor exiled branch son obviously cannot pay fifty thousand silver, you must immediately hand over the Sweet-Spring Well, dismantle this fence, and sign over all your villagers as indentured salt-serfs to Third Young Master Pei Lie!”
As Steward Jia finished shouting, Pei Xuan’s blue RTS Inspection Window popped up over both Steward Jia’s and Viper-Boss Diao’s heads:
Pei Xuan set his teacup down on the small rattan table with a gentle clink.
He leaned forward against the wooden railing of the watchtower and looked down at Steward Jia with a warm, polite smile—the exact smile a butcher gives a fat pig walking into the slaughterhouse on its own four legs.
“Steward Jia, is it?” Pei Xuan called down calmly. “You came all the way from my third brother’s tax office to talk about law and itemized bills? What a coincidence! Here in Dry-Well Village, we respect the law and clear bookkeeping more than anything else in the world.”
Pei Xuan turned his head slightly. “Hong Ling, since Steward Jia just read us his bill, it would be rude not to read him ours. Please read out Assessment Invoice Number Zero-Zero-One from the Red-Rock Salt Valley Municipal Management Office.”
“Yes, Young Master!”
Fifteen-year-old Hong Ling stepped up to the front railing of the watchtower. Now that she had broken through to Rank 2 Early Martial (Iron-Bone Stage) after eating the Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt, her voice carried across the canyon cliffs like a clear bronze bell.
With a flick of her wrist, she unrolled a six-foot-long hemp paper scroll that hung all the way down the front of the watchtower, cleared her throat, and read aloud:
“Official Municipal Invoice issued to the Sand-Viper Smuggler Gang and Steward Jia of the Western Salt Bureau! Item One: Four hundred and twenty unregistered horses, times four iron-shod hooves each, equals one thousand six hundred and eighty hooves stepping onto Dry-Well Village’s newly swept Grade-2 Salt-Valley Gravel Road without a Highway Permit! At ten silver taels per hoof for gravel-crushing and horse-manure risk, subtotal: Sixteen thousand eight hundred silver taels!”
Down on the road, Viper-Boss Diao’s jaw dropped so hard he bit his own tongue. “Ten silver taels per horse hoof?! You just swept some red dirt to the side of the canyon! Is your dirt made of gold dust?!”
“Quiet in the court! interrupting an official reading adds a surcharge!” Hong Ling snapped, slapping her wooden ruler against the railing before pointing to the second line on the scroll:
“Item Two: One unauthorized wad of betel-nut spit expectorated by Viper-Boss Diao onto Municipal Pebble Number Four-Hundred-and-Twelve! Biohazard cleaning fee: Two hundred silver taels! Item Three: Four hundred and twenty-one armed trespassers breathing purified Dry-Well Valley spirit-air at an average of twenty breaths per minute for the past five minutes! At two silver taels per nostril per minute for Unlicensed Oxygen & Salt-Ion Consumption, subtotal: Eight thousand four hundred and twenty silver taels!”
“Breathing tax?! Two silver taels per nostril?!” Steward Jia shrieked, his voice cracking like an old rooster’s as he pointed a trembling finger up at the watchtower. “Even the corrupt eunuchs in the Royal Capital never thought of charging people per nostril to breathe desert air! Pei Xuan, are you completely insane?!”
“Don’t interrupt Item Four, that’s the expensive one,” Pei Xuan said mildly from his rattan chair.
Hong Ling took a deep breath and pointed to the bottom of the scroll in bold red ink:
“Item Four: Blowing an unwashed brass war-horn within five hundred yards of a municipal livestock zone! Your ugly horn blast startled our twelve Grade-2 Municipal Armored Scorpion Buses, causing emotional distress, antenna twitching, and potential appetite loss! Vet inspection and mental comfort fee at two thousand five hundred silver per scorpion: Thirty thousand silver taels! Grand Total Due Immediately: Fifty-five thousand four hundred and twenty silver taels! Subtracting the fifty-thousand-silver fake tax bill you just tried to hand my Young Master, you still owe us a net balance of five thousand four hundred and twenty silver taels—Wait! No, my Young Master doesn’t recognize your fake bill, so you owe the full fifty-five thousand four hundred and twenty silver taels! Will you be paying in silver ingots, or will all four hundred and twenty-one of you be putting on yellow Debtor Vests to dig salt for the next six months?!”
Dead silence fell over the canyon entrance.
Behind the wooden drop-gate, Captain Hu and the fifty Dry-Well Village guards had to bite the insides of their cheeks until they bled to keep from bursting out laughing.
Out on the gravel road, four hundred vicious desert smugglers and twenty elite Marquisate Tax Guards stared up at the fifteen-year-old maid with their mouths wide open. They had robbed hundreds of caravans in their lives, but this was the very first time someone had handed them a fifty-five-thousand-silver bill for breathing air, spitting betel-nut juice, and hurting the feelings of giant scorpions!
“Wait—look inside their fence!”
Suddenly, one of the sharp-eyed smuggler scouts sitting on top of a baggage cart pointed past the watchtower toward the wide loading yard fifty yards inside the canyon.
Parked beside the mouth of the main salt cave stood four open-top wooden storage bins that had been filled with refined salt brought back on the return bus trip to feed the mine garrison. And sitting right next to those bins were twenty thousand pounds of freshly cut, glittering crystal blocks waiting for the next dump-truck run—along with two open barrels of blindingly pure, snow-white [Grade-2 Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt] glistening like diamonds in the sunlight!
“Snow... snow-white crystal salt?!”
Steward Jia stood up in his stirrups, his greedy little eyes nearly bulging out of his skull as he stared at the two open barrels of Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt inside the yard. As an experienced salt official, he could tell from thirty yards away that the white salt sparkling inside those barrels wasn’t fifty-copper-a-catty coarse salt—that was palace-grade spirit salt worth at least five silver taels a catty in the Marquisate capital!
And right beside Viper-Boss Diao, the smuggler chief’s greed completely swallowed his last shred of caution.
He looked at the fifty guards standing behind Captain Hu at the wooden gate, then looked up at Pei Xuan sitting calmly in the watchtower. In Viper-Boss Diao’s eyes, Pei Xuan had only brought fifty men to guard the canyon!
“Hahaha! Fifty-five thousand silver for breathing air? Fine! I’ll pay you with my broadsword!”
Viper-Boss Diao ripped the heavy Rank 2 Peakghost-head saber off his back, the jagged iron blade gleaming fiercely in the sun.
“Brothers!” Viper-Boss Diao roared to the four hundred Sand-Viper Smugglers and twenty Marquisate guards behind him. “That crippled ninth boy only has fifty guards at this wooden fence, and he’s hoarding palace-grade snow salt inside! Smash down that gate, chop off Captain Hu’s head, and grab the white salt! Whatever you load onto your carts today is half yours!”
“Kill them! Grab the snow salt!”
“Charge!”
Greedy bloodlust erupted across the canyon road. Four hundred Sand-Viper Smugglers and Steward Jia’s twenty elite Marquisate Tax Guards spurred their horses and whipped their battle-mounts forward in a thundering wave of flashing sabers and iron spears, charging straight toward the wooden toll gate!
Up on the watchtower, Pei Xuan didn’t even blink.
“Hong Ling,” Pei Xuan said calmly, reaching into his breast pocket and pulling out a shiny, three-inch brass traffic whistle. “Add ‘Destruction of a Municipal Toll Gate’ and ‘Attempted Robbery of State Vehicles’ to their invoice. Four hundred and twenty-one new salt miners—approved!”
Pei Xuan placed the brass whistle between his lips and blew a single, ear-splitting blast that echoed deep into the dark salt caverns at the back of the valley:
TWEEEEEEEEEEET!