Out in the purple mud of East Suburb Cabbage Plot #4, Silver-Spear Commander Zhao and his 999 Heavenly Soldiers stood in their bright yellow Debtor Vests, leaning stubbornly on their iron hoes and refusing to dig a single inch of dirt.
Even though they had been stripped of their Cold-Moon Silver armor and wore dantian-locking iron cuffs around their wrists and ankles, they still had the stubborn pride of Upper-Realm cultivators.
“Listen to me, brothers!” Commander Zhao barked, turning his nose up toward the sky and closing his one good eye. “In the Upper Realm, mortal grain and cooked meat are full of earthly turbid filth that clogs a cultivator’s meridians! That is why for the past three hundred years in Lord Xue Sha’s barracks, we have only eaten pure Inedia Fasting Pills made of powdered white stone and dry pine needles!”
In the second row, Squad Leader Chen swallowed hard and pulled a single leftover Inedia Fasting Pill out of his cotton pocket.
It was the size of a goat turd, gray as fireplace ash, and so hard that if you threw it at a dog, the dog would yelp and run away. Whenever they ate one in the Upper Realm, it tasted like chewing dry blackboard chalk mixed with bitter tree bark, and it sat in the stomach like a cold rock for ten days so they wouldn’t feel hungry.
