“Five... five copper coins a catty?!”
Outside the north gate of Dry-Well Village, at the head of the newly paved sixty-foot-wide Salt-Brick Highway, a white-bearded caravan master named Boss Lin held a small wooden saucer of [Grade-2 Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt] in his trembling hands.
Behind Boss Lin stood forty heavily loaded pack-camels carrying bolts of coarse cotton cloth and pig-iron ingots from the southern border towns. Originally, Boss Lin had only detoured toward Dry-Well Village because his camel drivers were running low on water and had heard a rumor that Salt-Pool Town’s water baron had been overthrown.
He had never expected to ride onto a six-lane highway made of gleaming white salt-bricks—or to be handed a free bowl of ice-cold sweet-plum soup and a sample saucer of crystal salt that sparkled like crushed diamonds in the sun!
“Young lady, are you playing a joke on this old man?” Boss Lin stammered, looking across the wooden counter of the North Gate Salt Exchange at fifteen-year-old Hong Ling and her new assistant clerk—Steward Jia, who was wearing a bright red “Deputy Invoice Clerk” armband over his yellow Debtor Vest. “In the county capital, palace-grade snow salt half as pure as this costs five silver taels—five hundred copper coins—per catty! Even the bitter yellow mud-salt sold by Third Young Master Pei Lie’s Salt Bureau costs fifty copper coins a catty! How can you sell snow-white Spirit Salt that boosts martial blood-qi for only five copper coins?!”
“Because our Young Master Pei Xuan says clean salt and sweet water are basic necessities for living human beings, not tools to squeeze poor folks’ bones dry!” Hong Ling said proudly, patting the giant wooden salt-scale beside her. “However, Boss Lin, the five-copper-per-catty retail price is limited to ten catties per person for desert residents. Since you are a commercial merchant buying in bulk to resell in the south, wholesale orders over one thousand catties are priced at ten copper coins per catty, plus our standard Municipal Highway & Market Invoice!”
Right beside Hong Ling, Steward Jia pushed his spectacles up his nose, flicked the beads of his brass abacus with flying fingers, and handed Boss Lin a neatly written invoice slip with a polite bow:
“Respected Boss Lin, welcome to Dry-Well Village! Here is your itemized commercial entry bill: Item One: Forty pack-camels using our smooth Grade-2 Salt-Brick Highway (saving your camels thirty percent leg fatigue): Forty copper coins. Item Two: Shaded camel-parking stall with free Sweet-Spring water trough access and manure collection: Twenty copper coins. Item Three: Four thousand catties of Grade-2 Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt packed in moisture-proof hemp sacks at ten copper coins per catty: Forty silver taels. Grand Total: Forty silver taels and sixty copper coins! Would you like to pay in silver ingots or barter with your southern pig-iron and cotton cloth at fair market rates?”
Pei Xuan, who was standing on the stone balcony above the Salt Exchange watching Steward Jia work, couldn’t help smiling as he glanced at Steward Jia’s floating tooltip:
Down at the counter, Boss Lin didn’t complain for a single breath about the sixty-copper-coin highway and parking invoice.
In fact, the old merchant was practically jumping up and down in terror that someone else might buy the salt first!
“I’ll pay! I’ll pay right now!” Boss Lin slammed two heavy crates of southern pig-iron and a bag of silver ingots onto the counter. “Ten copper coins a catty for Grade-2 Spirit Salt?! Even with the road toll, when I haul these four thousand catties south to Red-Maple Pass, the martial clans there will fight each other to buy it from me at two hundred copper coins a catty! Wait—Clerk Jia, can I pre-pay the highway toll for my brother-in-law’s caravan too?! He has eighty camels ten miles behind me!”
“Pre-paid highway passes are available at a five percent discount for groups over fifty camels!” Steward Jia beamed, stamping Boss Lin’s receipt with a bright red ink seal while two Armored Scorpion Dump Trucks gently lowered eighty fifty-pound sacks of glittering Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt right beside Boss Lin’s camel train.
That single transaction lit a fuse across the entire Red-Sand Wastes.
Out in the scorching desert, news among camel caravans and wandering nomad scouts traveled faster than the wind.
Within forty-eight hours, every oasis, crossroads tavern, and nomad tent within a hundred miles heard three earth-shattering pieces of news: First: Lord Pei Xuan of Dry-Well Village had tamed the twelve giant Rank 2 Armored Scorpion Kings of Red-Rock Valley and built a sixty-foot-wide white highway across the dunes! Second: Dry-Well Village was selling snow-white, blood-strengthening Spirit Salt for just five copper coins a catty to commoners and ten copper coins to merchants—one-tenth the price of Third Young Master Pei Lie’s bitter poison-salt! Third: Anyone who moved to Dry-Well Village as a citizen received a cool stone house, three hot meat-potato meals a day, icy sweet-plum soup in the afternoon, and free daily Spirit Salt rations!
On the morning of the third day, right after sunrise, the blue RTS Fog-of-War Map in Pei Xuan’s vision suddenly lit up like a lantern festival!
From the east, west, and north desert trails, hundreds upon hundreds of green friendly dots converged onto the gleaming white ribbon of the Salt-Brick Highway!
“Young Master! Come look from the north watchtower!” Old Wei called out, his voice ringing with excitement as he stood beside the battlements of the Elastic Iron-Mud Wall.
Pei Xuan walked up the stone steps to the top of the gatehouse.
Stretching two miles down the white Salt-Brick Highway was a sight that nobody in the barren Red-Sand Wastes had ever seen before.
In the right-hand commercial lanes, eighteen wealthy merchant caravans—over six hundred camels and ox-wagons flying the banners of trading houses from across the western border—were lined up in neat, orderly rows waiting to trade wagonloads of raw iron ore, cured leather, timber, tea bricks, and chests of silver for Dry-Well Village’s Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt! Not a single merchant dared cut in line or make a fuss, because parked right beside the toll booth sat Scorpion Bus #1 and Scorpion Bus #2, their fourteen-foot black-red shells shining in the sun and their anvil-sized pincers folded politely over their “Municipal Traffic Police” signs!
And in the four wide left-hand lanes of the highway marched a vast, rolling sea of people and livestock!
Sixteen tattered wolf-skin and eagle-feather banners fluttered in the morning breeze. Walking beneath those banners were sixteen desert nomad tribes—one thousand six hundred sun-bronzed men, women, elderly folks, and bright-eyed children—driving four thousand fat-tailed desert sheep, three hundred fast steppe horses, and two hundred pack-camels loaded with their rolled-up felt tents!
At the head of the sixteen tribes strode sixteen burly nomad chieftains—seven of them at Rank 2 Early Martial and nine at Rank 1 Peak!
Just as the sixteen chieftains approached the north gate, a loud, booming whistle echoed from the highway ahead of them.
SKREEE—HISS!
Scorpion Bus #3 glided to a smooth forty-mile-an-hour stop right in front of the sixteen tribal chiefs. Standing proudly on the front platform of the giant twelve-foot scorpion was Batu, wearing a suit of polished black-leather captain’s armor, his bronze arms thick as oak trunks and gleaming with vigorous Rank 2 blood-qi as he held a giant frosted wooden bucket of [Chilled Sweet-Plum Spirit Soup] in one arm and a sparkling ten-pound block of [Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt] in the other!
“Brother Batu!”
The tallest of the sixteen tribal leaders—a one-eyed Rank 2 hunter named Chief Cang Lang (Gray-Wolf)—stared up at Batu in utter disbelief.
“Batu! Twenty days ago when our tribes parted ways near the dry river-bed, your people were covered in itchy red Sand-Rot Blisters and your ribs were sticking out through your vest!” Chief Gray-Wolf shouted, touching the smooth, unscratched bronze skin on Batu’s forearm as Batu hopped down from the giant scorpion’s steps. “Look at you now! Every single blister is gone, you’ve put on twenty pounds of solid iron muscle, and you’re riding a Rank 2 Armored Scorpion King like a horse! Were the rumors true?!”
“True? The rumors don’t even tell half of it, Brother Gray-Wolf!”
Batu laughed heartily and set the frosted bucket down on a table while twenty kitchen helpers handed out bowls of icy sweet-plum soup and warm, snow-salted Meat-Belly Potato Buns to the sixteen chieftains and the crying children behind them.
“Taste that soup and eat that meat bun!” Batu boomed, gesturing up toward the gatehouse where Pei Xuan stood in clean dark robes. “When my four hundred people came to Dry-Well Village dying of blisters, Lord Pei washed away our sickness with Jade-Clear Healing Soap, gave every family a cool stone house with zero water tax, taught us the flawless Iron-Anvil Body Art, and now gives us snow-white Spirit Salt that clears every cramp from our bones! Out in the wastes, Third Young Master Pei Lie’s tax collectors wanted us to trade our daughters for ten bags of bitter yellow salt. Here in Dry-Well Village, Lord Pei treats every hunter and herd-boy like his own family!”
Chief Gray-Wolf and the other fifteen nomad chieftains took one bite of the steaming, snow-salted lamb-potato bun and one gulp of the icy-cold sweet-plum soup.
As the rich spirit-salt and meat-potato energy flooded their tired, salt-starved bodies, the sixteen fierce desert chiefs—men who had never bowed their knees to bandits or Marquisate tax officials even with blades at their throats—looked back at their children licking snow-white salt crystals off their fingers and laughing in the shade of the stone wash-tents.
Without needing a single word of persuasion, Chief Gray-Wolf and all fifteen tribal chieftains turned toward the gatehouse, dropped to both knees on the white salt-brick road, and slammed their foreheads against the pavement three times!
“The sixteen tribes of the Red-Sand Steppe—one thousand six hundred souls, four thousand sheep, and three hundred horses—beg to join Dry-Well Village and serve Lord Pei Xuan for ten thousand generations!”
“We beg to serve Lord Pei Xuan!”
One thousand six hundred voices roared in unison outside the gate, sending a visible ripple of sound across the desert dunes!
Up on the gatehouse, Pei Xuan raised both hands and projected his voice smoothly across the crowd:
“Rise, brothers and sisters of the sixteen tribes! From the moment your feet step onto Dry-Well Village’s road, there are no longer outsiders or refugees—only citizens of Dry-Well! One-Eyed Jack, open the twenty wash-tents with Jade-Clear Healing Soap and assign the sixteen tribes to the new North District Cool-Breeze Stone Houses! Old Guo, light all twenty cauldrons for a three-day Welcome Lamb & Snow-Salt Feast!”
“LONG LIVE LORD PEI!”
As the gates swung wide and the sixteen hundred cheering nomads streamed through the wash-tents into the neat rows of stone houses—driving their four thousand sheep into the new fenced pastures guarded by the two hundred tamed Village Guard Wolves—a dazzling golden torrent of notifications exploded across Pei Xuan’s RTS screen:
And right as the 4,480th citizen’s Loyalty bar locked into bright green above 60, an unprecedented surge of warm golden territory feedback—combined with the five days of refined [Grade-2 Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt] energy circulating inside Pei Xuan’s own muscles and bones—erupted inside Pei Xuan’s chest!
THUMP—THUMP—HUMMMMM!
Standing atop the stone gatehouse, Pei Xuan felt his heart beat like a giant war-drum.
Inside his blood vessels, his hot red blood—which had already nourished his Rank 2 Early Iron Bones—suddenly condensed, thickened, and took on a heavy, shimmering silver-red weight, flowing through his veins with the dense, unstoppable momentum of liquid mercury!
Every single meridian in his limbs widened by half an inch, and when Pei Xuan casually clenched his right fist, the air in front of his knuckles popped with a crisp sonic crack!
Pei Xuan let out a long, refreshing breath that blew a small swirl of dust ten feet across the battlements.
Before Old Wei and Hong Ling could even finish congratulating him on his breakthrough, a giant, flashing golden button—bigger and brighter than anything Pei Xuan had seen since arriving in Dry-Well Village thirty-nine days ago—materialized right in the center of his RTS Territory Screen: