Early the next morning, the flat plains west of Dry-Well Town looked like a completely different world.
Where dry yellow sand and cracked stones had baked under the sun for a hundred years, crystal-clear water from the White-Jade Snow River now rushed down the ten-mile granite canal, splashing merrily against the floodgates.
Even better, because Ye Guhan had “accidentally” chipped a two-inch corner off a stone curb the night before to earn three more days of free braised beef noodles, Abacus Su had immediately assigned him a follow-up punishment: slicing two hundred smaller irrigation ditches across the ten thousand acres of flat plains so the canal water could reach every single field!
Up in the morning sky, a streak of icy silver light flashed back and forth like a sewing needle.
Riding on his Rank 5 Spirit Sword Frost-Star, Ye Guhan held a honey-roasted lamb rib in his left hand while steering his flying sword with two fingers of his right hand.
ZZZZT! ZZZZT! ZZZZT!
Every time he flew from east to west, a neat, three-foot-wide irrigation ditch opened up across the dirt, connecting directly to the main stone canal. What would have taken three thousand farmers ten days of back-breaking shovel work took the Rank 5 Sword Genius less than two hours before breakfast!
Standing on the wooden watchtower by the west gate, Pei Xuan watched Ye Guhan intentionally slow his flying sword down to a crawl on the last ten ditches so he could stretch the job out until lunchtime.
“Look at him,” Pei Xuan said to General Tie Zhan, shaking his head with a laugh. “A dignified Foundation Establishment Sword Immortal slowing down like a lazy mule just so he doesn’t miss the noon noodle bell—and he still refuses to admit he wants to live here!”
“Don’t worry, My Lord,” Tie Zhan chuckled, patting his broad chest. “No man can resist Old Guo’s cooking forever. Once we harvest our first batch of wheat and make steamed pork buns with fresh flour, that kid will probably smash our city gate just so he can sign a ten-year labor contract!”
Just then, frantic footsteps sounded on the watchtower stairs.
Old Man Liu, the seventy-year-old village elder whom Pei Xuan had appointed as Chief Supervisor of the Town Granary, hurried up the steps carrying a cloth sack of dull, grayish-yellow wheat seeds.
“My Lord! Bad news!” Old Man Liu gasped, his bronze Rank 1 skin glistening with sweat. “We just opened the fifty sacks of winter wheat seeds we took from Lord Zhao’s old warehouse in Green-Willow Suburb! Look at them!”
Pei Xuan reached into the cloth sack and scooped up a handful of wheat kernels.
Half of the seeds were shriveled and hollow, and the other half smelled faintly of damp mold. As soon as Pei Xuan focused his eyes on them, an RTS Item Tooltip popped up:
“Lord Zhao was a greedy bastard who kept his tax grain in a leaky basement,” Old Man Liu said anxiously. “Even if these seeds weren’t moldy, normal wheat takes four whole months to ripen. With the winter wind already turning cold at night, anything we plant today will freeze to death in two weeks! My Lord, what should we do with our ten thousand acres of newly watered fields?”
Abacus Su stepped forward, his brow furrowed behind his brass spectacles.
“My Lord, our Meat-Belly Potatoes are wonderful, high-yield food,” Abacus Su said. “However, potatoes cannot be ground into dry flour for long-term military rations, steamed buns, or noodles. Right now, the flour in our granary is only enough for Old Guo’s canteen for five more days! And because Lord Zhao’s cousin in the border city cut off our trade routes, no merchant caravan dares to sell us grain seeds.”
Pei Xuan rubbed his chin, looking out at the ten thousand acres of damp, dark soil watered by the snowmelt canal, and then glanced at his massive `285,000 LP` balance.
“Five days of flour left, and winter frost coming in two weeks?” Pei Xuan smiled calmly. “Old Man Liu, don’t panic. Have the farmers stack all ten thousand catties of those moldy wheat seeds inside Barn Number One. While you’re at it, have the butcher shop roll over ten barrels of fresh blood and bone marrow from the Rank 2 Armored Scorpions we culled at the salt mine, plus a hundred cartloads of bottom silt from our Sweet-Spring Well.”
Old Man Liu blinked in confusion. “Scorpion blood and well mud? My Lord, are we making fertilizer?”
“Better than fertilizer,” Pei Xuan grinned. “We are making a miracle.”
Twenty minutes later, inside the locked stone walls of Barn Number One, Pei Xuan stood alone in front of a mountain of moldy wheat sacks, ten huge wooden barrels of glowing red Rank 2 Scorpion blood, and a pile of sweet-smelling black mud dug from the bottom of the Spirit Well.
Pei Xuan placed both hands on the grain sacks and opened his Level 3 Three-Slot Fusion Cube!
Five thousand LP to seed all ten thousand acres? That’s only a seventh of one day’s income!
“Fuse!” Pei Xuan tapped [YES].
WHOOOOOOSH—HUMMMMM!
A blinding dome of warm golden light expanded from Pei Xuan’s palms, wrapping around the entire barn interior!
Inside the golden light, the ten barrels of scarlet scorpion blood and the black spirit silt dissolved into millions of tiny golden runes. Those runes drilled straight into every single shriveled, moldy wheat kernel!
The gray mold vanished into thin air. Each wheat seed plumped up until it was the size of a peanut, its outer shell turning a brilliant, metallic yellow-gold with a faint red blood-vein pattern running down the center!
When the golden light faded, a rich, mouth-watering aroma of warm honey and toasted grain filled the entire barn.
“Ten million catties of Rank 2 Spirit Wheat in seven days!” Pei Xuan pumped his fist in excitement.
He walked over and pulled open the heavy wooden doors of the barn.
Outside, Old Man Liu, General Tie Zhan, Abacus Su, and three thousand waiting farmers were standing with wooden seed-baskets. The moment the barn doors swung open, a blinding golden glow and the sweet smell of toasted honey washed over the crowd.
Old Man Liu walked in, scooped up a handful of the peanut-sized golden wheat kernels, and dropped one into his mouth to bite it.
CRUNCH!
A warm stream of sweet, nutty juice burst across his tongue, instantly making his old knees feel twenty years younger!
“Golden seeds! Each grain is as big as a peanut and warm like little stoves!” Old Man Liu fell to his knees, tears streaming down his wrinkled cheeks. “The heavens have blessed Dry-Well Town! No—our Lord IS the Living Grain God!”
“Everyone listen up!” Pei Xuan shouted, jumping onto the back of the lead Armored Scorpion Bus. “We have ten thousand catties of Golden-Blood Spirit Wheat! Attach the wooden seed-plows to the twelve Scorpion Buses and mobilize all three thousand farmers! Anyone who helps plant three acres today gets five red paper flowers and double beef noodles tonight!”
“YEAAAAAH!!”
Three thousand farmers roared with excitement.
For the rest of the day, the western plains outside Dry-Well Town turned into a scene of frantic, joyful work.
Twelve giant Armored Scorpion Buses scuttled across the fields at thirty miles per hour, dragging ten-row iron plows behind their armored tails to cut neat furrows in the soft, wet soil. Behind them, three thousand farmers marched in tidy rows, dropping the glowing golden seeds into the earth while water from Ye Guhan’s canal trickled gently down the two hundred side-ditches.
By sunset, all ten thousand acres were completely planted!
What happened over the next six days left every single person in the town—including the proud Sword Immortal Ye Guhan—speechless.
On Morning One after planting, green-gold shoots broke through the wet soil, already six inches tall and shimmering with tiny drops of morning dew.
On Morning Three, the wheat stalks stood waist-high, their stems as thick as bamboo chopsticks and tough as iron wire! Even when a strong desert gale blew across the plains, the golden stalks barely bent an inch.
By Morning Six, all ten thousand acres had grown four feet tall and turned into a boundless ocean of shining yellow gold!
Heavy, six-inch-long wheat ears hung from every stalk. When the autumn breeze blew across the ten-thousand-acre plains, the plump golden grains clinked against each other with a crisp ting-ting-ting sound like millions of tiny gold coins ringing in unison, while a rich fragrance of warm butter and honey drifted five miles in every direction!
Out on the desert highway, five hundred starving border farmers who had fled from high taxes in the neighboring county smelled the honey-wheat wind, followed their noses to the west gate of Dry-Well Town, and begged Abacus Su to let them register as farmhands on the spot!
Even Ye Guhan stopped pretending to fix canal rocks and hovered thirty feet above the golden wheat ocean on his flying sword, staring down in total shock.
At noon on the sixth day, Old Man Liu cut the very first ripe patch of Golden-Blood Wheat by the canal bank, ground fifty pounds of golden flour at the stone watermill, and rushed it straight to Old Guo’s Number One Canteen.
Half an hour later, Old Guo lifted the giant bamboo steamer lid and pulled out the first batch of [Golden-Blood Butter Rolls] and [Golden-Blood Hand-Pulled Beef Noodles]!
The rolls were the size of a man’s two fists, glowing with a natural golden sheen, so soft and fluffy they bounced when poked, and smelling so strongly of sweet milk and roasted wheat that half the street started drooling.
“General Tie! Try the first roll!” Old Guo tossed a steaming golden roll to Tie Zhan.
Tie Zhan caught it and bit off half the roll in one chomp.
HUMMMMMM!
Before Tie Zhan even finished swallowing, a deep, muffled rumble like rolling thunder echoed from inside his chest and spine!
His bronze skin turned bright red, steam shot three feet straight out of the top of his buzzed head, and the Rank 3 Internal Qi inside his meridians surged forward like a flood breaking a dam!
“HA! HAHAHAHA!”
Tie Zhan threw his head back and laughed as a visible ring of golden air-waves blasted outward from his boots, sweeping the dust off the street for thirty feet!
“One bread roll pushed me into the Mid Grandmaster stage!” Tie Zhan stared at the remaining half of the roll in his hand as if it were an immortal elixir. “Old Guo! Give me twenty more! I’m going to eat my way to the Peak stage!”
Sitting at Table Four, Ye Guhan watched Tie Zhan break through from a single bread roll, and his eyes locked onto the steaming bowl of Golden-Blood Hand-Pulled Beef Noodles that Hong Ling had just placed in front of him.
The noodles were no longer white—they were bright, translucent gold, swimming in spicy braised scorpion-beef broth.
Ye Guhan picked up his chopsticks, took one big slurp of the golden noodles, and froze.
The bouncy, chewy texture of the golden wheat, combined with the warm blood-tempering Qi exploding on his tongue, was ten times more delicious than the ordinary flour noodles he had eaten six days ago!
SLUUUURP! GULP! SLUUUURP!
In three minutes flat, Ye Guhan polished off fifteen bowls of Golden-Blood Noodles!
Setting down the fifteenth empty bowl, Ye Guhan wiped his mouth and looked urgently down at the street bricks beside his boot, secretly wondering how many bricks he needed to crack to stay until New Year’s—
When suddenly, the bright noon sun overhead went pitch black!
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ—!!
A terrifying, deafening buzzing sound—like ten million iron saws grinding against metal—echoed from the western sky!
Everyone on Main Street looked up in horror.
Stretching five miles wide across the western horizon, a boiling black cloud was flying straight toward the ten thousand acres of ripe Golden-Blood Spirit Wheat!
Pei Xuan narrowed his eyes and scanned the black cloud with his RTS Tooltip:
“IRON-JAW LOCUSTS!!” Old Man Liu screamed, his face turning white as ash. “Ten million iron-shelled locusts! Swords and arrows can’t kill a cloud that big—they will eat our entire ten thousand acres of golden wheat down to bare dirt in half an hour!!”