Up on the stone battlements of the north gatehouse, the morning breeze carried the cheerful clinking of silver ingots, the bleating of four thousand fat-tailed sheep, and the excited laughter of four thousand five hundred people settling into their new home.
Just before Pei Xuan reached out to press the glowing golden [UPGRADE TERRITORY] button floating in his vision, quick footsteps pattered up the stone stairs behind him.
Steward Jia—still wearing his bright yellow DEBTOR vest, though he had neatly brushed every speck of dust off it and pinned his red “Deputy Invoice Clerk” armband straight over his heart—hurried onto the platform carrying a small bamboo tube and a ledger book.
“Ninth Young Master!” Steward Jia bowed ninety degrees with a beaming smile on his narrow face. “The carrier hawk from the Western Salt Tax Bureau just landed on the post outside the gate! According to Third Young Master Pei Lie’s original schedule, I was supposed to send back a carrier-hawk report today confirming that the Sand-Viper Smugglers had seized Red-Rock Salt Valley and that your well had been confiscated!”
Beside Pei Xuan, Old Wei’s eyes narrowed coldly and his mechanical iron hand rested on the hilt of his heavy saber. “If you don’t send the hawk back, Pei Lie will know something went wrong. What do you plan to write, Steward Jia?”
“Commander Wei, please don’t misunderstand! I already wrote the report for the Young Master’s inspection!”
Steward Jia hurriedly handed a small slip of rice paper to Pei Xuan while his floating tooltip glowed bright green:
Pei Xuan unrolled the small slip of rice paper and read it aloud:
> “To Respected Third Young Master Pei Lie: Disaster at Red-Rock Salt Valley! When Viper-Boss Diao and I entered the canyon, we ran into a once-in-a-century Red Alkali Poison Sandstorm and a tide of enraged Rank 2 Giant Scorpion Kings! All four hundred horses bolted into the deep desert, the sulfur barrels exploded, and my leg was broken in three places! Viper-Boss Diao and I are currently hiding in a cave waiting for the scorpions to calm down. As for Ninth Young Master Pei Xuan’s Dry-Well Village, our scouts saw from afar that their well water turned bitter and half their huts collapsed in the wind! Please do not waste troops marching into the scorching desert this month—wait until I crawl back in autumn!”
Hong Ling burst out giggling behind her hand. “Steward Jia, you even smudged a drop of lamb grease and red salt-dust on the paper to make it look like blood and sandstorm dirt!”
“A good bookkeeper always provides matching physical evidence, Miss Hong Ling!” Steward Jia puffed out his chest proudly. “Third Young Master Pei Lie hates heat and sand more than anything in the world. Once he reads that Red-Rock Valley is full of rampaging scorpions and thinks Ninth Young Master is starving in a collapsed mud hut, he won’t bother sending a single soldier out here for at least two months! Instead, he’ll focus on squeezing Green-Willow Oasis thirty miles south!”
“Well done, Steward Jia. Knock five thousand silver off his debt tab and upgrade his quarters to a single stone room with an ice-brick pantry,” Pei Xuan praised, tying the fake report onto the carrier hawk’s leg and tossing the bird into the eastern sky.
As the hawk flapped away toward the Marquisate, Pei Xuan turned back to the front of the gatehouse.
Down below, stretching from the central square all the way out along the gleaming white six-lane Salt-Brick Highway, all four thousand five hundred and twenty-one residents of Dry-Well Village—original villagers, former bandits under One-Eyed Jack and Scarface Wolf, former mercenaries under Captain Hu, Salt-Pool Town settlers, Sand-Viper mine debtors under Viper-Boss Diao, and sixteen hundred newly arrived desert nomads under Batu and Chief Gray-Wolf—looked up at the young lord standing against the morning sun.
Twelve colossal Armored Scorpion Buses and Dump Trucks stood parked in two neat ceremonial rows along the highway, while two hundred tamed Village Guard Wolves and sixty golden-led pack-camels stood at attention beside the pastures.
Pei Xuan took a deep breath, opened his RTS Territory Screen, and pressed his finger firmly against the flashing golden button:
[UPGRADE TERRITORY -> LEVEL 3: RED-SAND OASIS TOWN (-5,000 LP)]
BOOM—HUMMMMMMMMMM!
The moment the 5,000 Loyalty Points were deducted from Pei Xuan’s balance, a deep, melodious roar—like a sleeping earth dragon stretching its spine after three thousand years of slumber—echoed from a thousand feet beneath Dry-Well Village!
(Deep in the pitch-black subterranean abyss beneath the village well, where a colossal, ancient black-iron spike—the Planetary Spirit-Draining Nail—pinned the scales of a slumbering silver Flood Dragon, the golden territory upgrade wave struck the ancient spike like a giant hammer! CLANG!* Three rusted seal-rings on the black nail cracked open by half an inch, and a vast torrent of sealed wood-and-water vitality that had been locked beneath the desert for ten thousand years gushed upward through the earth veins!)*
Up on the surface, a visible ring of emerald-and-gold light expanded outward from the center of Dry-Well Village, sweeping across five miles of scorching red sand dunes in every direction!
“Look at the well! Look at the central square!”
In the center of the village, the stone rim of the [Sweet-Spring Spirit Well] rose and expanded outward with a rumble of shifting white stone, transforming in ten seconds flat into a thirty-foot-wide [Lv.3 Jade-Spring Fountain Plaza]!
Four carved stone spouts shaped like spouting flood-dragons rose from the center of the plaza, shooting crystal-clear arcs of sweet spirit water fifteen feet into the air! The water splashed down into four stone-lined street canals that ran neatly past every single residential block, bathhouse, and workshop in the town, filling the air with cool, rainbow-tinted mist!
And the miracle didn’t stop at the fountain.
Where the emerald-and-gold upgrade ripple passed over the dry, scorching sand around the town walls and along both sides of the fifteen-mile Salt-Brick Highway, the parched yellow earth turned rich, dark, and moist!
Shhhhh-rustle!
Before the incredulous eyes of four thousand five hundred townspeople and eighteen visiting merchant caravans, millions of tender green blades of [Lv.2 Cool-Carpet Spirit Grass] sprouted straight out of the sand around the outer walls, turning two hundred acres of barren desert into a lush, emerald-green meadow in less than three minutes!
Right along the banks of the new stone canals and lining both sides of the white Salt-Brick Highway, three hundred thick green shoots burst out of the ground, growing upward at a speed visible to the naked eye—five feet, ten feet, twenty feet tall—unfolding into three hundred towering [Desert-Shade Weeping Willow Trees] with lush green canopies that swayed gently in the breeze!
As the three hundred willow trees spread their branches, a natural, cool oasis breeze began to circulate around the entire territory, permanently dropping the scorching desert temperature inside the town from 110 degrees down to a comfortable, spring-like 75 degrees Fahrenheit!
POP! CRACK-POP! BOOM!
As the cool, emerald-green Oasis Earth Qi washed through the streets, a massive chain reaction of martial breakthroughs erupted across the entire town!
Down at the gatehouse steps, Old Wei let out a booming roar as his blood-qi boiled like a furnace, pushing him cleanly from Rank 2 Early Martial into Rank 2 Mid Martial (Mercury-Blood Stage) right alongside Pei Xuan!
Beside the fountain plaza, Batu, Scarface Wolf, and One-Eyed Jack all felt their bones and blood surge forward a minor stage, while across the barracks and road crews, thirty-five more Rank 1 Peak guards and nomad hunters broke through into Rank 2 Early Martial, and over four hundred civilians and debtors stepped into Rank 1 Early Martial!
Out on the highway, the eighteen visiting merchant caravan masters—including white-bearded Boss Lin—fell onto their knees on the newly sprouted green grass, staring up at the twenty-foot weeping willow trees that had just grown out of dry sand in three minutes flat.
“An Immortal miracle! Lord Pei Xuan isn’t just a mortal branch son of the Marquisate—he has the blessing of an Ancient Oasis God!”
“Clerk Jia! Do you have any merchant shop-lots for rent in Red-Sand Oasis Town?! I don’t want to go back to the county capital anymore—I want to move my trading house here permanently!”
By the time the cheers echoed across the green willow groves and every Loyalty bar in the town locked between 80/100 and 100/100, Pei Xuan looked at the updated income line on his RTS screen and couldn’t help grinning from ear to ear:
From thirty points a day in a broken mud pit with one dry well, to fifteen thousand points a day in a green oasis town with four thousand five hundred people and a fleet of twelve-legged Scorpion Buses in just forty days!
“Old Guo!” Pei Xuan called down from the gatehouse to the fat chef, who was wiping happy tears from his face under the shade of a brand-new weeping willow tree. “Open the Underground Ice-Cellars, bring out fifty vats of [Chilled Sweet-Plum Spirit Soup], roast fifty fat-tailed sheep seasoned with [Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt], and boil ten thousand catties of [Meat-Belly Potatoes]! Today, all of Red-Sand Oasis Town celebrates for free!”
“Hooray! Long live Lord Pei! Long live Red-Sand Oasis Town!”
Four thousand five hundred voices cheered so loudly that the willow leaves danced overhead. Tables were set up all along the green grass banks of the stone canals, and soon the mouthwatering smell of cumin-and-snow-salt roasted lamb mixed with sweet iced plum soup drifted miles across the desert.
Even Boss Qian—who had finally paid off enough work points scrubbing toilets to be promoted from Deputy Toilet-Scrubber #4 to Chief Latrine Inspector (Loyalty: 66/100)—sat under a willow tree holding a huge roasted lamb leg in both hands, crying into his beard: “Even when I was the richest man in Salt-Pool Town, I never ate lamb this tender or drank soup this cold! If anyone tries to rescue me back to Salt-Pool Town, I’ll hit them with my toilet brush!”
Up on the shaded pavilion of the gatehouse, Pei Xuan ate a skewer of sizzling snow-salted lamb while casually zooming out on his newly expanded 25-Mile RTS Fog-of-War Map.
To the north, Red-Rock Salt Valley gleamed like a busy fortress. To the south, thirty miles away, the outer border of Green-Willow Oasis (ruled by his stepmother’s greedy cousin, Lord Zhao) was now just five miles outside his radar edge.
Then, suddenly—
PING!
At the southern edge of the 25-Mile RTS Radar, twelve miles south along the dusty imperial transit road, a slow-moving caravan of six heavy, iron-barred prisoner wagons guarded by thirty whip-wielding imperial slave traders entered Pei Xuan’s map range.
Because the slave caravan was running out of water and smelled the rich oasis breeze drifting from the north, they were turning their horses toward Red-Sand Oasis Town to buy water before heading to the southern death-mines.
Pei Xuan zoomed his RTS Inspection Tooltip in on the six rusty iron cages—and froze with his lamb skewer halfway to his mouth.
Inside the third and fourth iron cages, surrounded by eighty starving prisoners, shone two blinding, golden-bordered SSR Specialist Names:
Pei Xuan’s eyes lit up brighter than the noon sun.
A Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster general whose crippled legs could be healed in five minutes with a fused medicinal bath—and the legendary Abacus Su, a demonic accountant who could organize the entire town’s work-points and bankrupt neighboring cities with a single ledger—both sitting in a slave cart heading straight for his front gate!
And the slave trader only thought they were worth two bags of salt!
Pei Xuan stood up from his chair, wiped his hands, and looked down at the mountains of glittering white salt stacked in the exchange warehouse—where Dry-Well Town refined ten thousand pounds every fifteen minutes.
“Old Wei, Hong Ling,” Pei Xuan said with a wide, predatory grin as he watched the slave caravan pitch camp twelve miles south along the highway for the night, “have the salt refinery set aside two fifty-pound sacks of our shiniest [Snow-Crystal Spirit Salt] for tomorrow morning. When that caravan rolls up to our South Gate after sunrise, we’re going to make the biggest bargain purchase in the history of the Red-Sand Wastes!”