QUACK—BOOOOOOM!!
Two hundred streaks of bronze light rocketed straight into the belly of the five-mile-wide black locust cloud!
Down on the banks of the ten-mile stone canal, three thousand farmers froze with their copper pots and wooden sticks raised in mid-air, their mouths hanging wide open as they stared up at the sky.
The Rank 2 Jet-Powered Iron-Belly Ducks didn’t flap their wings like ordinary birds.
Their bronze-iron wings were locked out straight like the swept-back blades of heavy crossbows, while the twin exhaust feathers under their tails blasted out five-foot-long jets of roaring red-and-white chili-Qi!
At the front of the V-formation, the red-crested Duck General opened its six-inch spring-steel shovel beak a full one hundred and eighty degrees—turning its head into a flying iron scoop-net two feet wide!
WHOOOOOOSH—CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRUNCH!
Traveling at a hundred and fifty miles per hour, the Duck General plowed straight through the thickest part of the Iron-Jaw Locust swarm!
Where the black insect cloud had been so thick that sunlight couldn’t pass through, a neat, round tunnel of clear blue sky suddenly punched straight from one end of the cloud to the other!
In a single three-second pass, the Duck General scooped three thousand thumb-sized Iron-Jaw Locusts straight into its mouth!
The fierce desert locusts tried to bite the duck’s tongue with their saw-toothed iron jaws—tink! tink! tink!—only for their teeth to snap clean off against the duck’s Iron-Anvil Body throat! Before a single bug could even wiggle, they were sucked down into the duck’s Bottomless Furnace Gizzard, where spinning iron muscle-walls and hot chili-Qi ground all three thousand iron-shelled bugs into a tiny spoonful of concentrated spirit-protein paste in half a second!
“QUAAAACK! (DELICIOUS!!)”
The Duck General let out a booming metallic quack of pure joy, banked hard in a ninety-degree mid-air turn that left a ring of white vapor in the sky, and dove back into the locust cloud for a second pass!
Behind their commander, the other one hundred and ninety-nine Jet-Powered Ducks split into twenty ten-duck squadrons!
ZOOM! ZOOM! QUACK-BOOM! ZOOM!
Crisscrossing the five-mile sky like two hundred bronze sewing needles, the Duck Air Force wove a tight grid of white jet-trails above the ten thousand acres of Golden-Blood Spirit Wheat!
Every time a squadron of ducks zoomed past, a hundred-foot-wide swath of the black locust cloud simply vanished into their gaping steel beaks!
Hovering eighty feet above the wheat fields on his flying sword Frost-Star, Ye Guhan stood completely still as the wind from a passing duck squadron blew his black hair sideways across his face.
Just one second ago, a forty-pound bronze duck with white chili-smoke blasting out of its tail feathers had overtaken him on the left—flying twenty miles an hour faster than his casual Foundation sword-flight!—and casually slurped up five hundred green-spitting locusts right in front of his nose before doing a barrel roll and zooming away!
Ye Guhan slowly looked down at the ancient Rank 5 Spirit Sword beneath his boots, and then looked up at the two hundred jet-propelled farm ducks tearing the ten-million-strong insect disaster to shreds.
For the third time since walking into Dry-Well Town, the proud Sword Genius felt his nineteen years of common sense cracking like dry glass.
Down on the ground, General Tie Zhan lowered his heavy saber, wiped his forehead, and stared up at the sky in awe.
“My Lord,” Tie Zhan said, swallowing hard as he watched a bronze duck swallow a dense ball of a thousand locusts in one gulp. “Remind me never to steal duck eggs from Old Guo’s kitchen. If those two hundred ducks charged my infantry in formation, they could punch holes straight through heavy iron shields!”
“They only eat bugs and grain scraps, General,” Pei Xuan laughed, leaning against the stone railing of the canal bridge. “Look at the locust cloud—half of it is already gone!”
Sure enough, what had been a terrifying natural disaster that could wipe out a whole county’s food supply had turned into an all-you-can-eat sky buffet!
At the fifteen-minute mark, five million Iron-Jaw Locusts had been ground into protein paste inside the ducks’ iron gizzards.
Recognizing that these terrifying bronze monsters were eating their entire clan alive, the remaining five million locusts tried to turn around and flee back over Black-Stone Mountain Ridge!
“QUACK!! (WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?!)”
The Duck General blew a sharp whistle through its steel nostrils and led all two hundred ducks in a high-altitude pincer maneuver, cutting off the locusts’ retreat path over the mountain ridge and herding the remaining bugs into a tight black ball in the center of the sky!
For the next thirteen minutes, the sounds of QUACK-BOOM and CRUNCH-CRUNCH-GULP echoed across the valley like festive New Year firecrackers.
By the twenty-eighth minute, the Duck General chased down the very last straggling Iron-Jaw Locust above the west gate, snapped its steel beak shut with a loud CLANG, and swallowed it whole!
Bright, warm afternoon sunlight poured back down over the valley.
All ten thousand acres of Golden-Blood Spirit Wheat stood completely unharmed, shimmering like an unbroken sea of yellow gold in the breeze!
“THE LOCUSTS ARE ALL GONE!!”
“NOT A SINGLE STALK OF WHEAT WAS LOST!!”
“LONG LIVE LORD PEI! LONG LIVE THE IRON DUCK ARMY!!”
Three thousand farmers and six thousand townspeople watching from the walls erupted into a deafening cheer that shook the clouds!
Up in the clear blue sky, however, a funny problem appeared.
Because each of the two hundred ducks had just eaten fifty thousand iron-shelled locusts, even their Bottomless Furnace Gizzards were packed to maximum capacity!
Every single duck had swelled up from a sleek forty-pound fighter into a perfectly round, eighty-pound bronze beach ball!
Their short wings stuck out two inches on either side of their giant round bellies, unable to flap at all.
Putt-putt-putt-pffft!
One by one, the chili-Qi thrusters under their tails ran out of fuel and sputtered out with little puffs of spicy white smoke.
“QUACK?! (UH-OH!)”
Looking like two hundred fat bronze cannonballs, the overfed ducks dropped straight out of the sky toward the town wall and the canal grassy banks!
“Watch out! Catch the heroes!” Old Guo yelled, running forward with a wide canvas tarp.
He didn’t need to worry at all.
BOING! BOING! BOING! BOING!
Half of the round bronze ducks hit the top of the [Lv.2 Elastic Iron-Mud City Wall] and bounced thirty feet back into the air like giant rubber balls, while the other half landed on the soft grass along the canal bank and rolled ten yards before coming to a stop on their backs, their webbed iron feet wiggling helplessly in the air!
BUUUUURP!
All two hundred round ducks let out synchronized, satisfied burps that smelled like roasted grasshoppers and spicy chili powder, patting their round bronze bellies with their short wings.
When Pei Xuan walked over and patted the Duck General’s round stomach—which rang like a tightly stretched iron drum—a joyful notification popped up on his screen:
Right on cue—
PLOP! PLOP! PLOP!
Lying on the soft grass, each of the two hundred round ducks wiggled its tail and popped out three fist-sized, warm golden-shelled eggs that shone like polished brass!
Old Guo picked up one of the warm golden eggs, cracked a tiny hole in the top, and sniffed the glowing red-gold yolk inside.
“Heavens above!” Old Guo’s eyes lit up like lanterns. “The protein Qi in one of these duck eggs is stronger than a ten-year ginseng root! My Lord, look at how fat those ten older drakes at the back of the flock are—they ate so many locusts they can’t even stand up! If I roast five of them in my clay oven with honey-vinegar glaze tonight, and boil six hundred golden duck eggs in our beef noodle soup...”
Old Guo didn’t even finish his sentence before two loud GULP sounds echoed right behind him.
General Tie Zhan and Sword Immortal Ye Guhan—who had just landed quietly beside the canal bridge—were both staring at the fat bronze ducks with blazing eyes!
“Cough,” Ye Guhan coughed into his fist, quickly looking away toward the clouds so nobody would see him drooling. “Since those five older ducks are too fat to fly in future battles, culling them for culinary refinement is... is a reasonable military decision.”
Just as Old Guo and his kitchen crew began rolling the five fattest drakes toward the roasting ovens and collecting six hundred golden eggs in bamboo baskets, a dusty cloud rose along the northern desert trail.
Seven hundred gaunt, ragged men, women, and children stumbled down the sand dunes toward Dry-Well Town, carrying empty grain sacks and broken hoes.
Their leader—a weathered Rank 1 village headman named Old Man Sun from Sand-Ridge Outpost twenty miles northwest—ran up to the canal bridge and froze in his tracks, his jaw dropping open in total disbelief.
“How... how is your wheat still standing?!” Old Man Sun stammered, pointing a trembling finger at the ten thousand acres of untouched, gleaming golden wheat. “An hour ago, that five-mile Iron-Jaw Locust cloud passed over our Sand-Ridge Outpost! In ten minutes, the bugs ate every blade of grass, every turnip, and even the straw roofs off our huts! We followed the swarm south thinking Dry-Well Town would be eaten barren too—where did the ten million locusts go?!”
One-Eyed Jack puffed out his chest, pointed his thumb at the two hundred round bronze ducks burping happily on the grass, and grinned:
“Ten million locusts? Look inside our ducks’ bellies! In Dry-Well Town, locust swarms aren’t a disaster—they are free duck feed!”
Right at that moment, Old Guo opened the iron door of his clay roasting oven at the canteen.
WHOOOOOOSH!
The heavenly aroma of Crispy Honey-Glazed Roast Iron-Duck, mixed with sweet Golden-Blood Wheat Noodles and Braised Scorpion-Beef, rolled across the west gate and hit the seven hundred starving refugees from Sand-Ridge Outpost right in the nose!
Old Man Sun didn’t hesitate for half a second. He dropped to his knees in front of Pei Xuan, followed immediately by all seven hundred people behind him!
“Lord Pei! Our outpost is eaten bare and winter is coming! Please let all seven hundred of us join Dry-Well Town! We know how to harvest wheat, thrash grain, and herd sheep!”
“Welcome home!” Pei Xuan smiled warmly and gestured to Abacus Su. “Master Su, register seven hundred new citizens, issue each person a bowl of Golden-Blood Noodles with half a golden duck egg, and assign them to the Great Harvest Crew tomorrow morning!”
That night, Dry-Well Town held a grand Pre-Harvest Roast Duck Banquet along the brightly lit Main Street.
Sitting at Table Four, Ye Guhan picked up a slice of crispy, honey-glazed roast duck skin with his chopsticks, dipped it in sweet plum sauce, and placed it in his mouth.
CRUNCH!
The skin shattered like thin caramel glass, while the juicy, spirit-rich duck meat melted on his tongue, sending warm streams of Rank 2 protein essence straight into his muscles!
Before Ye Guhan could finish planning which brick to vandalize after midnight, a cold, sharp warning chime rang inside Pei Xuan’s head!
On Pei Xuan’s 15-Mile RTS Fog-of-War Mini-Map, five blood-red dots had just crossed the southern desert border at blinding speed, moving silently through the night shadows straight toward Dry-Well Town!
Pei Xuan looked at the five Rank 3 Peak red dots on his map—and then looked down at the freshly poured, wet gray cement road that One-Eyed Jack’s crew had just laid outside the public bathhouse near the south gate.
Instead of sounding the alarm, a wicked, thrifty town-mayor smile spread across Pei Xuan’s face.
“Five Rank 3 Peak Grandmasters walking right toward our wet cement?” Pei Xuan whispered to General Tie Zhan and Abacus Su. “Remember: if they step on our wet road, that’s 100,000 silver taels per footprint—and five free Rank 3 heavy road-rollers for our highway crew!”