ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ—!!
The sky west of Dry-Well Town turned as dark as midnight at high noon.
Five miles wide and three hundred feet thick, the cloud of ten million Iron-Jaw Desert Locusts rolled over Black-Stone Mountain Ridge like a living black sandstorm. Every single locust was the size of a grown man’s thumb, covered in a shiny black shell as hard as pig iron, with jagged, saw-toothed mandibles that clicked together with a terrifying clack-clack-clack sound.
Down on the banks of the ten-mile stone canal, three thousand farmers beat copper washbasins and iron pots with wooden sticks, shouting until their throats went raw.
“Lord Pei! What do we do?!” Old Man Liu cried out, shielding his eyes against the fierce wind whipped up by twenty million beating insect wings. “If we light fire-ditches or shoot fire-arrows to burn the locusts, the sparks will set our ten thousand acres of dry golden wheat ablaze! In ten breaths, five thousand tons of spirit grain will burn to ash! If we don’t use fire, how can human hands kill ten million flying bugs?!”
Beside him, Scarface Wolf and One-Eyed Jack stood on top of an Armored Scorpion Bus, swinging big hemp fishing nets through the air.
“Forget it, Old Man Liu!” Scarface Wolf yelled back, pointing at the black horizon. “Even if all nine thousand people in town catch ten bugs every second, the other nine million nine hundred thousand locusts will chew the wheat stalks down to the roots before we finish our first swing!”
Up above the canteen roof, Ye Guhan leaped fifty feet into the air and landed squarely on the blade of his hovering Spirit Sword, Frost-Star.
His patched white robe fluttered in the dark wind, and his cold face was set like carved jade.
“Do not panic!” Ye Guhan shouted, his voice carrying clearly over the roar of the insect swarm. “I have just eaten fifteen bowls of Golden-Blood Beef Noodles! How can I sit back and watch filthy desert bugs ruin Senior Pei’s noodle flour?! Stand back and behold my Sky-Sword Sect’s wide-area technique—Thousand-Star Sword Curtain!”
SHING-SHING-SHING-SHING!
Riding Frost-Star straight toward the front edge of the locust cloud, Ye Guhan pinched a sword hand-seal with his left hand and swung his right arm in a wide arc!
One hundred beams of dazzling silver Foundation Sword Qi burst out from his blade, splitting into a thousand, and then ten thousand razor-sharp threads of silver starlight that wove together into a hundred-foot-wide net in mid-air!
SPLAT-SPLAT-SPLAT-SPLAT!
The front edge of the Iron-Jaw Locust swarm slammed directly into Ye Guhan’s silver sword net!
Like dry grass hitting a spinning lawnmower, more than fifty thousand Iron-Jaw Locusts were sliced cleanly into tiny black pieces in three seconds flat, raining down into the canal water like black hailstones!
“WHOAAA! Immortal Brother Ye killed fifty thousand bugs in one move!” the children on the town wall cheered, clapping their hands.
Up in the air, however, Ye Guhan’s proud smile froze on his face in less than two seconds.
Because behind those fifty thousand dead locusts were nine million nine hundred and fifty thousand MORE locusts!
Fifty thousand bugs was only half of one percent of the five-mile-wide swarm!
Worse still, the Iron-Jaw Locusts weren’t stupid enough to keep flying into his hundred-foot sword net. Guided by the irresistible honey scent of the ten thousand acres of Golden-Blood Wheat below, the five-mile-wide black cloud simply parted around Ye Guhan like river water flowing around a small pebble—diving down across a five-mile front that a single person’s sword could never cover at once!
And as the locusts flew past him, three hundred angry thumb-sized locusts near his head opened their iron mouths and spat streams of foul-smelling, sticky dark-green insect saliva straight at Ye Guhan’s clean white robe!
“Disgusting!!”
Ye Guhan gasped in horror, his [Extreme Face-Saving Pride] triggering at maximum speed!
Instead of swinging at the swarm, he spun Frost-Star in three frantic backflips to dodge the flying green bug-spit, waving his sleeves wildly as ten thousand bugs buzzed past his ears.
“Senior Pei!” Ye Guhan yelled down from the sky while dodging another volley of green bug-spit. “There are too many of them! Even if I drain every drop of Foundation Qi in my dantian, I can only guard fifty acres! The other nine thousand nine hundred and fifty acres are completely exposed!”
Down on the canal bank, General Tie Zhan roared like a thunder-god and swung his ten-foot heavy iron saber with both hands.
“Rank 3 Grandmaster Technique—Raging Gale Blade-Wave!”
WHOOOOOOSH—BOOM!
A thirty-foot-wide crescent of fiery red Internal Qi blasted upward into the diving black cloud, crushing three thousand locusts into powder with pure air pressure!
“Ha! Take that, you ugly bugs!” Tie Zhan grinned—and then gasped for breath as his stomach rumbled loudly. “Wait... shooting wide-area air waves takes ten times more Internal Qi than fighting men! Even with three Golden-Blood Butter Rolls in my belly, I can only swing fifty times before my arms cramp!”
All along the edge of the golden wheat fields, the shadow of the descending swarm covered the ground.
Only sixty seconds remained before ten million iron-jawed mouths landed on the priceless golden wheat!
“My Lord! Should we ring the retreat bell and have the farmers harvest whatever unripe stalks are nearest the gate?!” Abacus Su yelled, his spectacles slipping down his sweaty nose as he clutched his abacus like a shield.
“Nobody touches a single stalk of my wheat!”
Pei Xuan didn’t look up at the sky at all.
Instead, he sprinted fifty yards down the canal bank toward a fenced mud-pond right behind Old Guo’s outdoor butcher shed.
Inside that bamboo fence, two hundred plump, yellow-beaked desert farm ducks—which the weavers and farmers had brought over on the Scorpion Buses from Green-Willow Suburb two days ago—were paddling lazily in the canal water and quacking happily at the dark sky.
“Old Guo! Hong Ling! Open the duck pen gate and Herd all two hundred ducks into the stone feed-shed!” Pei Xuan shouted as he vaulted over the low bamboo fence.
“The ducks?!” Old Guo blinked, holding a big wooden cleaver. “My Lord, I was saving those two hundred ducks to make Roast Duck with Crispy Skin next week! If we let them out now, those Iron-Jaw Locusts will bite the feathers right off their backsides!”
“Not after I finish feeding them!” Pei Xuan grinned. “Hurry! We have forty seconds!”
Old Guo and Hong Ling didn’t ask another word. Swinging two wide bamboo brooms, they chased all two hundred quacking, flapping yellow-beaked ducks out of the water and into the enclosed stone feed-shed beside the canal.
QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
Pei Xuan stepped into the shed, slammed the wooden door shut for three seconds so nobody outside would get blinded by the system glow, and slapped his hands onto the floor while opening his Level 3 Three-Slot Fusion Cube!
What did an ordinary duck lack to fight ten million Iron-Jaw Locusts? 1. It needed iron-hard beaks and iron gizzards so it could chew iron-shelled locusts like crispy peanuts and digest them instantly without getting full! 2. It needed high-speed flight so it could chase locusts through the sky at sonic speed!
Pei Xuan immediately dragged three groups of materials into the glowing Fusion Cube slots:
- Slot 1: [200 Live Yellow-Beak Farm Ducks]
- Slot 2: [1 Copy of the Rank 2 Iron-Anvil Body Art Manual + 500 Catties of Refined Black-Iron Sand]
- Slot 3: [200 Rank 1 Wind-Falcon Tail Feathers + 10 Bags of Red-Hot Chili Blast-Powder]
“Fuse right now!!” Pei Xuan smashed the [YES] button with his mind!
BOOOOOOOM—QUAAAAACK!!
Inside the stone feed-shed, a blinding hurricane of bronze-gold light and fiery red wind erupted!
All two hundred farm ducks floated three feet into the air as the Iron-Anvil Body Art, black-iron sand, falcon feathers, and chili blast-powder fused directly into their feathers, bones, beaks, and stomachs!
In five seconds flat, every single duck puffed up to the size of a forty-pound fat piglet!
Their soft white feathers turned into sleek, overlapping plates of glossy bronze-iron armor that shone like polished battle-shields. Their flat yellow bills lengthened and hardened into six-inch spring-loaded steel shovel-beaks with serrated inner edges. Inside their bellies, their gizzards mutated into high-speed Rank 2 Iron Grinding Mills fueled by fiery chili-Qi, while under their tails grew twin hollow bronze exhaust feathers that hissed with jets of compressed white air!
“QUACK!!”
The lead duck—a forty-pound bronze-feathered boss duck with a natural red tuft of iron feathers on its head like a general’s helmet—saluted Pei Xuan with one wing and let out a metallic CLANG-QUACK that shook dust off the shed rafters!
Outside the shed, only ten seconds remained!
The vanguard of the ten-million-strong Iron-Jaw Locust swarm had already dropped to within twenty feet of the golden wheat tops! Old Man Liu fell to his knees covering his eyes, unable to bear watching their priceless grain get devoured, while General Tie Zhan swung his heavy saber until blood leaked from his tiger’s-mouth palm!
BANG!
The double wooden doors of the stone feed-shed flew wide open!
Pei Xuan strode out into the dark wind with two hundred gleaming, bronze-armored giant ducks waddling out behind him in ten neat military rows of twenty!
“What... what are those?!” Scarface Wolf rubbed his eyes, staring at the two hundred pig-sized metallic ducks lining up on the canal bank. “Why do Old Guo’s ducks look like they are wearing full-plate iron armor?! And why is white smoke shooting out of their butts?!”
Up in the air, Ye Guhan paused on his flying sword and looked down in utter bewilderment.
Iron ducks?! Senior Pei is sending two hundred ducks that can’t even fly against ten million flying locusts?!
Pei Xuan didn’t waste half a breath explaining.
He pulled his brass commander’s whistle from his belt, pointed his right arm straight up at the five-mile-wide black cloud of diving locusts, and blew a long, piercing blast:
TWEEEEEEEEET!!
“DUCK AIR FORCE—ALL UNITS SCRAMBLE! LEAVE ZERO BUGS ALIVE!!”
“QUACK—ROGER!!”
At the very front of the twenty-duck columns, the red-crested Duck General puffed out its broad bronze chest and tapped its right webbed iron foot against the stone canal bank three times like a drill sergeant calling cadence.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Behind the Duck General, all one hundred and ninety-nine bronze-feathered ducks snapped their spring-steel shovel beaks shut in unison, producing a deafening metallic CLACK that made even the diving Iron-Jaw Locusts overhead pause for a fraction of a second!
“Look at their eyes!” Hong Ling shouted from the canteen doorway, pointing her kitchen cleaver at the ducks. “Those aren’t ordinary poultry eyes anymore! They’re looking at those ten million iron locusts the exact same way General Tie looks at a basket of steamed pork buns!”
“Hey! Why bring me into this?!” General Tie Zhan protested, though as he stared at the glowing bronze runes along the ducks’ wings, his jaw dropped open again. “Wait a minute—is that the breathing rhythm of our town’s Iron-Anvil Body Art circulating inside those ducks’ gizzards?! How can a flock of ducks practice martial arts better than half my new recruits?!”
“Because ducks don’t talk back during squat training, General!” Pei Xuan laughed, waving his hand toward the sky as the shadow of the locust cloud swallowed the canal bridge. “Fire the tail thrusters! Go, go, go!”
Two hundred Jet-Powered Iron-Belly Ducks lowered their heads to a forty-five-degree angle, spread their bronze-iron wings like swept-back fighter blades, and ignited the chili-Qi thrusters under their tail feathers at the exact same moment!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Two hundred mini sonic booms shook the ten-mile stone canal!
Rings of white shockwave mist exploded across the water as two hundred bronze-armored cannonballs with beaks blasted straight up into the black locust sky at a hundred and fifty miles per hour!