Up on the freezing surface of Dry-Well Town, the howling black wind was blowing snowdrifts against the stone walls of the central square.
Old Wei, General Tie Zhan, Hong Ling, and Abacus Su were all huddled around the stone rim of the Sweet-Spring Well, staring anxiously at the greased iron cable hanging down into the dark.
Suddenly—TUG! TUG!
The iron cable jerked twice! Right after that, Pei Xuan’s clear, calm voice echoed up from twelve hundred feet underground like someone shouting through a long brass horn:
“Old Guo! General Tie! Hook the biggest five-hundred-pound iron cauldron in the kitchen onto the main chain! Fill it to the rim with roasted whole lamb, braised meat-potatoes, and double red chili oil—we have a VIP guest downstairs waiting for dinner!”
Everyone around the well blinked in total silence for three seconds.
“A... a VIP guest at the bottom of a twelve-hundred-foot freezing well?” Hong Ling stared down the hole with wide eyes. “Who lives at the bottom of a well and eats five hundred pounds of spicy lamb in one sitting?!”
“Who cares if it’s a river god or a giant turtle!” General Tie Zhan slapped his broad thigh and laughed so loud the icicles shook on the roof. “If the Young Master says feed it, we feed it! Old Guo! Where is your biggest pot?!”
“Right here, General!”
Fifty yards away at the main town kitchen shed, Old Guo kicked open the double wooden doors while waving his [Lv.1 Red-Hot Chef Wok] spoon in one hand. Behind him, six burly apprentice cooks—all former Sand-Viper salt smugglers who had discovered a hidden talent for chopping onions while wearing yellow debtor vests—were already rolling out the town’s largest cast-iron feast cauldron on an iron cart.
Normally, that cauldron was used to cook dinner for five hundred bricklayers at once!
Inside the four-foot-wide iron pot, three whole skinned desert sheep—already rubbed inside and out with Snow-Crystal Salt, crushed cumin, star anise, and wild garlic—were simmering in a rich, bubbling sea of golden mutton broth, quartered five-pound [Meat-Belly Giant Potatoes], and two gallons of bright crimson chili oil!
“Make way! Hot pot coming through!” Old Guo shouted, his Rank 1 Martial chef arms bulging as he helped push the heavy cart across the icy cobblestones to the well rim.
Over by the west duck barn, the door cracked open an inch.
Ye Guhan poked his head out into the snowstorm, his nose twitching rapidly as the wind blew a cloud of cumin-and-chili steam past the barn.
“Wait a minute!” Ye Guhan glided across the snow in a flash of white robes, landing lightly beside the well rim while pretending to look up at the clouds. “Old Guo... isn’t the mutton soup a little too oily to pour down a water well? To prevent you from polluting the town’s drinking source, I suppose I could sacrifice myself and take one of those roasted lamb legs back to the duck barn to inspect it for poison.”
“Hands off the pot, Immortal Ye!” Hong Ling smacked the back of Ye Guhan’s sleeve with her leather account book before his fingers could touch the cauldron rim. “This pot is for the Young Master’s official town business! Your midnight bowl of braised duck feet is still simmering on the small stove—and don’t think I forgot you still owe twenty-one days of stone-cutting labor for those three highway bricks!”
Ye Guhan pulled his hand back as if burned, coughed dryly into his fist, and turned away with his chin held high. “I was merely testing your vigilance, little girl. A Sword Immortal has no attachment to mere roasted lamb legs.”
While Ye Guhan sulked back toward the duck barn, Pei Xuan’s voice echoed up the shaft a second time:
“Old Guo, before you lower the cauldron, toss three jars of our strongest Golden-Blood Wheat Wine and twenty bundles of dried red chilies into the broth! Make it as hot and fragrant as possible!”
“You heard the Young Master!” Old Guo grinned from ear to ear. He cracked the clay seals off three ten-gallon jars of newly brewed [Rank 2 Golden-Blood Wheat Wine], poured the amber spirit liquor straight into the boiling lamb cauldron, and dumped twenty strings of fiery red desert chilies on top.
WHOOOOSH!
As the spirit wine hit the boiling chili oil, a three-foot pillar of fragrant blue-and-gold flame leaped up from the mouth of the cauldron, cooking the wine aroma deep into the tender mutton and meat-potatoes before settling into a thick, bubbling red glaze!
“Hook it on! Lower away!” General Tie Zhan and Old Wei hooked four heavy iron chains onto the cauldron’s lifting rings and slowly turned the big iron winch.
Down in the twelve-hundred-foot underground cavern, Pei Xuan had already climbed out of the searchlight basket so the winch could haul the empty basket up and send the cauldron down.
While waiting on the blue ice ledge, Pei Xuan noticed that Ao Ming wasn’t even pretending to meditate anymore.
The two-hundred-foot silver Flood Dragon had uncoiled half his body from the black pillar, stretched his long neck straight up toward the narrow quartz hole in the cavern ceiling, and was staring upward with both golden eyes wide as saucers.
Every ten seconds, Ao Ming’s forked tongue flicked out to taste the air.
“It’s coming down... It’s coming past the six-hundred-foot mark!” Ao Ming whispered excitedly, his massive silver tail wagging back and forth across the ice with loud SWISH-SWISH-SWISH sounds that swept up piles of snow. “Wait—what did your cook just pour into the pot?! Why do I smell fermented Rank 2 Spirit Grain Wine mixed with roasted sheep fat and fire-chilies?! Little friend Pei, is your kitchen run by a Celestial Chef from the Immortal Courts?!”
“Just Old Guo, a former kitchen servant from my mother’s courtyard,” Pei Xuan smiled, standing beside the dragon’s front claw. “Though if you ask our citizens, nobody in Dry-Well Town would trade Old Guo for ten Immortal Emperors.”
“Look! There it is!”
Ao Ming pointed one giant silver claw toward the ceiling.
Down through the narrow quartz opening descended the four-foot-wide cast-iron cauldron, glowing warmly in the dark and trailing a thick, heavenly ribbon of white steam that filled the entire freezing cavern with the mouthwatering scent of braised mutton, melted potato butter, garlic, cumin, and fiery chili wine!
Even Pei Xuan’s stomach gave a small rumble just smelling it.
For Ao Ming, who had tasted nothing but rust and ice for three thousand years, that steaming four-foot iron pot descending from the roof looked brighter and more sacred than the sun itself!
As soon as the iron cauldron touched down on the flat ice ledge and Pei Xuan unhooked the four winch chains, he didn’t even wait to finish the sentence—a crisp golden chime rang inside his head!
“Go ahead, Senior Ao,” Pei Xuan stepped back ten paces and gestured toward the steaming cauldron. “The iron pot is a bit hot, so you might want to—”
Before Pei Xuan could say use your tongue, Ao Ming abandoned three thousand years of Azure-Wave Dragon Sovereign dignity in three seconds flat.
CRUNCH—SLUUUUUURP!
Ao Ming didn’t wait for bowls or chopsticks. He lowered his giant horned head, gripped the two iron handles of the four-foot cauldron delicately between his front claws like a giant silver squirrel holding a teacup, tilted the pot back, and poured all five hundred pounds of boiling chili-oil mutton stew, three whole sheep, and two hundred pounds of Meat-Belly Potatoes straight down his gullet!
“MMMMMM—HAAAAAH!”
Ao Ming’s golden eyes rolled back in pure ecstasy as he chewed.
The tender lamb meat fell right off the bones, soaked through with Golden-Blood Wheat Wine and spicy cumin. The giant Meat-Potatoes burst like warm pillows of butter, soaking up the fiery red chili oil and coating every inch of his frozen throat and shriveled stomach!
Because the ingredients had all been grown with Sweet-Spring water and upgraded by Pei Xuan’s Fusion Cube, the meal wasn’t just delicious—it was packed with pure, easily absorbed Earth-and-Fire vitality!
Within thirty seconds, all five hundred pounds of meat and soup had vanished into Ao Ming’s belly.
Left holding the empty four-foot iron cauldron between his giant claws, Ao Ming looked left, looked right, and saw that Pei Xuan was politely pretending to inspect a stalactite on the wall.
Quick as lightning, the ancient Flood Dragon stuck his twenty-foot forked tongue deep inside the iron cauldron—
LICK! LICK! SCRAPE-LICK!
—and licked the inside of the cast-iron pot so thoroughly that every last drop of chili oil, every stuck grain of cumin, and even fifty years of black kitchen soot on the bottom was polished away until the iron shone like a silver mirror!
When Ao Ming finally pulled his tongue out and set the spotless iron cauldron down on the ice, his silver scales were no longer dull and frost-covered.
From his horned head all the way down to the tip of his two-hundred-foot tail, every scale was glowing with a healthy, rosy-silver warmth! The purple lightning chains around his collarbones—already cushioned by the soothing salve—steamed harmlessly as his restored dragon blood began pumping like a giant underground furnace.
BUUUUUUUUURP!
Ao Ming let out a tremendous, earth-shaking belch that smelled strongly of cumin and roasted lamb.
Along with that belch, a thirty-foot cloud of warm, golden-red Pure Yang Dragon-Fire Mist puffed out of his nostrils!
Instantly, the temperature inside the vast underground cavern jumped from minus forty degrees up to a cozy, spring-like seventy degrees! The three-foot layer of blue ice covering the underground lake cracked and melted into clear, warm bubbling water, and the spears of ice choking the Sweet-Spring Well shaft above melted away into a gentle upward mist!
“Hahahaha! Good! What a glorious meal!”
Ao Ming laughed, his voice no longer a dry wheeze, but a rich, booming baritone that made the whole cavern hum like a bronze bell. He patted his round, warm silver belly with one claw and looked down at Pei Xuan with eyes full of genuine affection.
“Little friend Pei! This Old Dragon has lived for four thousand years and eaten thousand-year sea-turtles and coral pearls in the Eastern Sea, yet none of them ever warmed my bones like Old Guo’s spicy lamb cauldron! Just as you promised—three pots of this every day, and this Seat will never let a single drop of your town’s well water freeze again!”
“Actually, Senior Ao,” Pei Xuan smiled, pulling a rolled-up piece of red parchment and a brass ink-brush out of his coat pocket, “since you’re already warm and full, why don’t we make our partnership official and upgrade your bedroom at the same time?”
Ao Ming tilted his huge head. “Upgrade my bedroom? What is that red paper?”
“This is Dry-Well Town’s official [Municipal Utility & Guardian Spirit Employment Contract],” Pei Xuan explained cheerfully, unrolling the parchment on a flat stone block. “Right now, when you burp or breathe out your Yang-fire, ninety percent of the heat just floats around this damp cave and gets wasted against the rock walls. Even worse, you are still lying on cold wet stone.”
Pei Xuan pointed around the huge cavern and up toward the well shaft.
“If you put your claw-print on this contract and officially register as Dry-Well Town’s Chief Underground Water Pump & Winter Heating Totem, I can use my Territory power to build a custom Red-Copper Dragon-Fire Heating Grid right here in your cavern! Not only will I lay a heated red-copper bed underneath your coils so your belly stays toasty all winter, but the copper pipes will channel your spare breath straight up into the floors of every house, bathhouse, and greenhouse in my town!”
Ao Ming’s golden eyes widened. “A heated red-copper bed for my belly? And all I have to do is breathe into a big brass funnel a few times after eating my spicy lamb?”
“Three breaths after breakfast, three after lunch, and three after midnight supper,” Pei Xuan nodded seriously. “Plus, as a registered municipal employee of Dry-Well Town, you get public holidays bonuses—like whole roast Iron-Belly Ducks on festival days and five-gallon barrels of Golden-Blood Wine every weekend!”
“Done! A true Dragon Sovereign never hesitates over a fair contract!”
Before Pei Xuan could even dip the brush in red ink, Ao Ming eagerly poked the tip of his smallest claw onto the red ink-pad Pei Xuan held out, then pressed a neat, dinner-plate-sized silver claw-print right onto the bottom of the parchment!
DING!
A brilliant golden beam of Territory Law light shot down through the twelve-hundred-foot well shaft, wrapping around the red contract and linking Ao Ming’s life-aura directly to the [ Dry-Well Town RTS Territory Grid ]!
Up on the surface of Dry-Well Town, a miracle happened right before fifteen thousand pairs of eyes.
GURGLE—SPLASH—WHOOOOSH!
From the mouth of the Sweet-Spring Well, crystal-clear water surged back up to the top of the white-stone rim, bubbling warmly at a soothing hundred degrees Fahrenheit! A cloud of sweet, warm white mist rolled out across the central square, instantly melting the black ice off the cobblestones and warming the faces of Old Wei, General Tie, Hong Ling, and Abacus Su.
“The water came back! And it’s hot spring water!” Hong Ling cheered, dipping her fingers into the stone trough and laughing as warmth spread all the way up her arms.
Down in the cavern, Pei Xuan hooked the spotless, mirror-bright iron cauldron back onto the winch cable—along with a short note asking Old Wei to lower fifty cartloads of red copper ingots, iron pipes, and quarry stone down into the well shaft.
“Rest your voice for ten minutes, Senior Ao,” Pei Xuan rubbed his hands together as he opened his 3-Slot Fusion Cube with 142,000 LP ready to spend. “By the time the sun comes up tomorrow, Dry-Well Town is going to be the only place in a thousand miles where people wear short sleeves in the middle of a blizzard!”