Ten miles west of Dry-Well Town, the jagged black cliffs of Black-Stone Mountain Ridge rose three hundred feet into the scorching desert sky like the spine of a dead iron dragon.
At the eastern foot of the ridge, five hundred burly laborers from the Town Construction Brigade stood wiping sweat from their foreheads. Using wooden stakes and bags of white lime powder, One-Eyed Jack and Scarface Wolf had just finished drawing two parallel white lines, thirty feet apart, stretching up the rocky slope.
“Foreman Jack,” Scarface Wolf muttered, hitting the black rock with a heavy Rank 1 iron pickaxe. CLANG! A tiny white spark flew off the stone, leaving nothing more than a fingernail-sized white dot while the wooden handle vibrated so hard Scarface Wolf’s palms went numb. “This black granite is harder than pig iron! Even with five hundred men swinging pickaxes day and night, we won’t dig ten feet a day! Can that skinny white-robed kid who couldn’t even pay for his noodles really cut ten miles of this stuff in a week?”
“Don’t ask me,” One-Eyed Jack grunted, squinting his single good eye as he checked his water-tube level. “Lord Pei said the kid’s sword is sharp. If he slacks off or cuts a crooked line, I have my yellow vest right here in the cart!”
Just then, the heavy thud-thud-thud of twelve giant legs shook the sand dunes.
The lead Armored Scorpion Bus skidded to a halt at the base of the mountain.
Ye Guhan stepped off the wooden passenger platform first, followed by Pei Xuan, General Tie Zhan, and Abacus Su.
Standing in front of the massive black granite mountain, Ye Guhan took a deep breath. Inside his belly, the [Rank 3 Heavy-Earth Sword-Marrow Soup] Pei Xuan had given him was still radiating waves of warm, heavy golden energy through his healed chest meridians.
“Brother Ye,” Pei Xuan said, pointing at the two white lime lines running up the mountain ridge. “Between these two white lines is the path of the ten-mile canal. Thirty feet wide at the top, twenty feet wide at the bottom, fifteen feet deep, and every cut stone block must be three feet by three feet. Whenever you are ready, please begin your Supreme Earth-Splitting Sword Cultivation!”
Five hundred laborers leaned on their shovels and pickaxes, whispering and waiting to see how this skinny youth was going to dig rocks without a single shovel in his hands.
Ye Guhan didn’t say a word.
His pale face grew solemn. Reaching behind his shoulder with his right hand, he untied the faded gray linen cord and pulled off the cloth wrapping that hid his weapon.
SHINGGGG!
A blinding beam of icy blue-silver light flashed across the desert, dropping the air temperature around the mountain foot by ten degrees!
In Ye Guhan’s hand rested a four-foot-long ancient spirit sword. Its blade was clear as winter ice, with seven tiny silver stars inlaid along the fuller and the two ancient characters [ FROST-STAR ] carved near the hilt.
“A Rank 5 Spirit Sword!” General Tie Zhan sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes widening in respect. “Just the cold aura leaking off that blade could freeze an ordinary martial artist’s blood solid!”
“All workers, step back fifty paces behind the safety rope!” Pei Xuan ordered loudly.
Once the five hundred workers backed away, Ye Guhan tapped the toes of his cloth boots against the ground.
WHOOSH!
Instead of jumping like a martial artist, silvery-white Foundation Spirit Qi surged beneath his boots, lifting his body fifty feet straight up into the air! He hovered above the rocky mountain slope without moving a muscle, his patched white robe fluttering in the high mountain wind like a real immortal descending from a painting.
Down below, five hundred former bandits and nomads dropped their jaws so hard their chins hit their chests.
“He... he is flying!” Scarface Wolf stammered, his legs shaking as he grabbed One-Eyed Jack’s arm. “Foreman Jack! We surrounded a flying Immortal at the noodle stall this morning and threatened to shave his eyebrows off for sixty-six copper coins?!”
“Shut up!” One-Eyed Jack swallowed hard, discreetly stuffing the [ DEBTOR #581 ] yellow vest deep into the bottom of his tool bag. “Our Lord isn’t scared, so why are you shaking?!”
Up in the sky, Ye Guhan closed his eyes for three seconds.
He remembered Pei Xuan’s words:
Your sword floats in the clouds... What lacks in your dantian is the Heavy Virtue of the Great Earth!
Instead of using his usual fast, flashy starlight slashes, Ye Guhan sank his breath deep into his dantian, blending his silver Foundation Sword Qi with the heavy golden marrow energy in his blood.
When he opened his eyes, he swung Frost-Star downward with both hands along the left white lime line!
HUMMMMM—BOOM!!
A thirty-foot-long crescent of heavy, silver-gold Sword Qi shot out of his blade and slammed into the solid black granite ridge!
There was no wild explosion of broken rubble. Instead, there was a low, ear-ringing ZZZZZT sound—like a red-hot iron wire slicing through a block of cold lard!
Sparks shot a hundred feet into the air like golden fireworks!
With a single downward swing, a razor-straight trench one hundred feet long and fifteen feet deep opened up along the left white lime line!
Before the echoes even faded, Ye Guhan shifted his wrist three inches to the right and swung a second time along the right lime line.
ZZZZZT—BOOM!
Then, his figure blurred through the air as his sword flashed horizontally, vertically, and diagonally like a silver weaving shuttle!
SWISH! SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!
Forty-eight strikes! Fifty strikes! Sixty strikes!
In the past, Ye Guhan’s chest meridian would start burning and drying up by his forty-eighth strike. Today, because he was channeling steady, heavy strokes into solid mountain rock while powered by Pei Xuan’s fused marrow soup, his sixty-fifth strike was even heavier and smoother than his first!
“Rise!”
Ye Guhan sheathed his sword with a crisp clang and stomped his foot in mid-air.
RUMBLE-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!
Along the entire first hundred-foot section of the granite ridge, five hundred neat, three-foot-by-three-foot black granite cubes popped loose from the mountain bed at the exact same time!
Behind them remained a hundred-foot section of stone canal with seventy-five-degree walls polished so smooth that the workers could see their own reflections in the black rock!
Dead silence hung over Black-Stone Mountain Ridge.
One-Eyed Jack walked forward like a sleepwalker, pulled his brass ruler out of his belt, and laid it across the nearest black granite cube.
“Thirty-six inches wide... thirty-six inches long... thirty-six inches high...” One-Eyed Jack whispered in a daze. He laid his water-tube level along the bottom of the stone trench. The air bubble sat dead center at the one-inch-per-hundred-feet slope mark! “Zero error! Not even a hair’s breadth of error! He cut five hundred building blocks and a hundred feet of polished stone canal in ten breaths!”
“What are you all standing around gaping for?!” Abacus Su yelled excitedly, waving his ledger book at the twelve Armored Scorpion Dump Trucks. “Load those three-foot granite blocks onto the Scorpion Trucks and haul them back to town! Every block is worth ten silver taels of building material! Our town wall upgrade is completely free!”
“HURRAH FOR IMMORTAL BROTHER YE!!”
Five hundred workers cheered at the top of their lungs and rushed forward with iron crowbars and pulleys to load the smooth granite cubes onto the giant scorpions’ backs.
Landing lightly on a flat boulder, Ye Guhan wiped a tiny bead of sweat from his forehead. Even though his face stayed cold and proud, his dark eyes shone with excitement as he looked at his own hands.
Standing beside the boulder, Pei Xuan looked at the 59 / 100 on the tooltip and gritted his teeth.
Still 59?! You just raised your sword limit by seventeen strikes and you still won’t give me one single point of Loyalty?!
Pei Xuan refused to accept defeat.
Over the next six days, as Ye Guhan worked his way mile by mile through the ten-mile granite mountain range, Pei Xuan launched Operation: One More Point.
On Day Two, when Ye Guhan had sliced two full miles into the mountain, Pei Xuan had Old Guo move his biggest iron stove directly to the construction site.
That evening, right as Ye Guhan landed from cutting his ten-thousandth granite cube, Old Guo presented him with twenty-two bowls of extra-rich Braised Scorpion-Beef Noodles, plus two whole golden-roasted lamb legs brushed with cumin and honey!
Ye Guhan devoured every single bite until his belly was warm and round.
Pei Xuan popped his head out from behind a rock and checked the tooltip:
Fifty-nine point four?! The System rounds down decimals?! Pei Xuan almost threw his teacup at a cactus.
On Day Four, Ye Guhan had cut five miles deep into the mountain ridge. His white robe was dusty, and he was sleeping on a cold granite slab at night to “temper his willpower.”
Pei Xuan spent 100 LP in the Fusion Cube to fuse [10 Bags of White Goose Feathers], [Warm Lamb Wool], and [Calming Lavender Herb] into a [Lv.2 Cloud-Dream Silk Mattress & Pillow Set] and had Hong Ling sneak it under Ye Guhan while he was asleep.
At midnight, Pei Xuan tiptoed over to the tent and peeked inside.
The proud Rank 5 Sword Genius was curled up like a shrimp on the fluffy mattress, hugging the goose-down pillow tightly with both arms, a line of happy drool trickling down his chin as he snored softly.
Pei Xuan checked the tooltip with shining eyes:
“Testing the mattress for poison with your drool?!” Pei Xuan whispered, clutching his chest in frustration. Zero point three left! Just three tenths of one point!
On Day Six, with eight and a half miles of the stone canal completed, Pei Xuan pulled out his trump card.
Knowing how much Ye Guhan cared about face and pride, Pei Xuan had Abacus Su hire fifty little kids from the town school, give them red silk drums and gongs, and march them up to the edge of the canal holding a thirty-foot golden silk banner that read:
> [ HAIL YE GUHAN — THE NUMBER ONE HANDSOME SWORD IMMORTAL OF THE NORTHWEST! ]
“Big Brother Ye is the strongest!” “Big Brother Ye’s sword is brighter than the sun!” “One swing cuts a mountain, two swings split the sea!”
Up in the air above the eighth mile of the canal, Ye Guhan nearly missed his stroke and tripped over his own flying sword!
His icy face turned bright red from his cheeks to his neck. Pretending he didn’t hear the fifty cheering children at all, he coughed loudly, straightened his posture so he looked twice as heroic, and swung his sword fifty percent faster—sending silver-gold sword beams flying like a windmill!
Down on the canal bank, Pei Xuan stared furiously at the tooltip:
“Fifty-nine point nine!!” Pei Xuan ground his back teeth together so hard General Tie Zhan took a nervous step away from him. “Fine! Let’s see how you act tomorrow when the free beef noodles stop!”
Dawn broke on Day Seven.
At the western end of Black-Stone Mountain Ridge, only the final one hundred feet of solid granite stood between the newly carved ten-mile stone canal and the roaring, foaming waters of the White-Jade Snow River!
Nine thousand citizens had walked out from Dry-Well Town to line both banks of the wide stone canal, waiting with bated breath to see the mountain open.
Above the final rock wall, Ye Guhan hovered a hundred feet in the air.
After seven days of swinging Frost-Star tens of thousands of times into solid black granite, the change in him was astonishing. His once-thin, brittle starlight Sword Qi had condensed into a thick, heavy river of silver-gold liquid light that hummed like a ringing bronze bell!
He was no longer limited to forty-eight strikes. Even after five hundred continuous strikes today, his breathing was calm and deep!
“Senior Pei!” Ye Guhan’s voice echoed across the mountain valley as he raised Frost-Star high above his head with both hands. “Watch my final strike—Earth-Splitting Star River!!”
BOOOOOOOOM!!
Inside Ye Guhan’s dantian, his Foundation Spirit Qi boiled over and broke through the bottleneck that had trapped him for two years, stepping cleanly from Rank 5 Early into Rank 5 Mid Foundation Establishment!
A colossal, hundred-foot-long pillar of silver-gold Sword Qi dropped from the sky like a heavenly guillotine and sliced straight through the final hundred feet of granite cliff!
CRACK—RUMBLE—SPLASH!!
The final rock barrier split cleanly into neat three-foot cubes and flew onto the bank!
Behind it, the crystal-clear, snow-fed waters of the White-Jade Snow River roared through the opening like ten thousand galloping white horses! The foamy white water surged into the mirror-smooth stone canal, following the exact one-inch slope eastward through the mountain ridge and pouring straight toward the ten thousand acres of dry plains outside Dry-Well Town!
“WATER! THE RIVER WATER IS HERE!!”
“Ten miles of stone canal! We have an endless river now!!”
Nine thousand citizens threw their hats into the air, cheering, hugging, and scooping up the cool mountain river water as it rushed past their boots.
Up on the canal bank, Ye Guhan landed lightly on his feet and slid Frost-Star back into its scabbard.
Abacus Su walked over, pulled out the red-stamped 30,000-silver debt contract, and tore it cleanly in half right in front of Ye Guhan.
“Ten miles of standard canal completed on time!” Abacus Su announced. “Your 30,000-silver fine for the three broken road bricks and eighteen bowls of noodles is officially PAID IN FULL! You are free to go anytime, Sword Immortal Ye!”
“Good. Very good,” Ye Guhan said coolly, tucking his hands behind his back. “Now my Pure Heart Sword Dao has zero karmic debt, and I have broken through to the Mid Foundation Realm. Farewell, Lord Pei—”
Just as Ye Guhan turned to walk away, Old Guo’s loud voice drifted over from the mobile field kitchen fifty yards away:
“Dinner is ready! Tonight to celebrate the canal opening, we are serving Double-Thick Braised Scorpion-Beef Brisket Noodles with Crispy Honey-Roasted Lamb Ribs! Only for town workers and contractors!”
Ye Guhan’s right foot froze in mid-step.
He had already eaten his noon meal four hours ago, and now that his debt was paid off, he wasn’t a town contractor anymore—and he STILL had zero copper coins in his pocket!
If he walked away right now, he would have to go back to chewing dry wild berries in the desert!
Keeping his face completely cold and expressionless, Ye Guhan casually loosened his fingers on the hilt of his sword.
Thunk!
The heavy iron tip of his sword scabbard slipped “by accident” and dropped straight onto the edge of a freshly laid stone curb beside the canal gate!
CRACK!
A tiny, two-inch corner of the stone curb chipped off and rolled into the grass.
Without changing his icy expression by a fraction of an inch, Ye Guhan turned around and held out his right thumb toward Abacus Su’s red ink box.
“How careless of me,” Ye Guhan said in a deadpan voice while his ears turned slightly pink. “My hand slipped after breaking through a minor realm, and I chipped your canal curbstone. According to Town Law Number Three, I suppose I owe you another three days of canal maintenance—with three free meals of braised beef noodles and honey-roasted lamb ribs included, right?”
Pei Xuan stared at the floating tooltip above Ye Guhan’s head and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry: