At six o’clock the next morning, the Hundred-Year Black Frost was still howling across the Red-Sand Wastes like a pack of hungry ghosts.
Outside the Elastic Iron-Mud City Wall of Dry-Well Town, the black snow was piled three feet high against the base of the Needle-Spitting Guard Cactuses (which were kept warm by a loop of underground copper pipe running right beneath their roots).
Inside the town, however, fifteen thousand citizens woke up to the strangest, most wonderful winter morning of their lives.
Nobody had frozen toes. Nobody had to chip ice out of their washbasin to brush their teeth.
Across all three thousand two hundred stone houses, families stepped out of bed onto warm stone tiles, washed their faces with steaming hundred-degree water piped straight from the Sweet-Spring Well, and walked out onto streets where the sub-pavement copper pipes had melted every flake of black snow into dry, clean stone!
Even better, right on schedule at six-thirty, Old Guo and his kitchen crew wheeled three massive four-foot iron cauldrons of boiling [Morning Ginger-Mutton & Meat-Potato Stew] to the central well winch and lowered them twelve hundred feet down into the earth.
Five minutes later—GURGLE-WHOOOOOOSH!
Down at the bottom of the well, Ao Ming happily licked the third breakfast cauldron clean, stretched out on his cozy red-copper dragon bed, and blew three long, roaring streams of golden Pure Yang Dragon-Fire straight up the brass heating funnel!
The brass radiator dials in every house and workshop gave a cheerful hum, sending a fresh wave of spring-like warmth pulsing through the town.
“All mason crews, blacksmiths, and off-duty guards—gather at the East Gate Plaza!”
One-Eyed Jack stood on the back of a Giant Scorpion Dump Truck wearing a thick red foreman’s vest, waving a brass horn while Abacus Su stood beside him with ten clipboards of red-flower work charts.
“Today, the Young Master is opening fifty acres of new winter farmland right inside the East Outer Wall!” Abacus Su announced through a fused conch-shell megaphone. “Anyone who helps clear the snow and haul quartz sand before noon gets two red flowers on the board AND a free ticket to Old Guo’s grand opening on Hot-Pot Street tonight!”
“Hot-Pot Street?!”
General Tie Zhan, who was leading five hundred Rank 2 town guards in morning horse-stance squats around the square, immediately perked up his ears. “Old Guo! What is Hot-Pot Street?!”
“Hehehe, General Tie, wait until you smell the soup base!” Old Guo leaned out the kitchen window waving a giant slotted iron spoon. “The Young Master taught me how to make two-flavor brass pots with a chimney in the middle! One side is creamy white sheep-bone broth, and the other side is bubbling red chili-tallow oil! You sit around the table with your friends and dip paper-thin slices of fresh lamb, crispy scorpion tails, duck blood curd, and sweet green cabbage straight into the boiling pot!”
GULP!
Half the town guards lost their horse-stance balance at the exact same time.
Even up on the roof of the west duck barn, a white-robed figure sitting in the lotus position suddenly twitched.
Ye Guhan opened one cold eye, staring toward the central kitchen from three hundred yards away.
As if answering Ye Guhan’s silent worry, Pei Xuan walked out to the fifty-acre flat sandy lot inside the newly expanded East Outer Wall.
Behind him rumbled all twelve Armored Scorpion Dump Trucks, dumping mountains of sparkling white quartz sand dug from the riverbed, along with fifty thousand pounds of crude pig-iron bars and red-copper pipe extensions.
“Everyone stand back twenty paces!” Pei Xuan called out as the last Scorpion Truck backed away.
He opened his 3-Slot Fusion Cube interface, selected the fifty-acre plot on his RTS Territory Building Map, and locked in three massive piles of materials:
1. [100,000 Lbs of River Quartz Sand]
2. [50,000 Lbs of Pig-Iron Frames & Copper Heating Pipes]
3. [1,000 Gallons of Dragon-Infused Sweet-Spring Water]
Spend 10,000 LP. Fuse!
BOOOOOOM—SHIIIIIIING!
A blinding curtain of golden-white light swept across the entire fifty-acre snowfield!
Under the amazed eyes of three thousand watching workers, the mountains of rough quartz sand melted in midair, purging every speck of dirt and transforming into crystal-clear, three-inch-thick arched sheets of Tempered Spirit-Glass!
At the same time, the pig-iron bars wove themselves into sturdy black-iron vaulted ribs that locked the glass panels together into fifty enormous, interconnected Crystal Domes, while thousands of feet of red-copper heating pipes snaked through the black soil underneath and hooked directly into Ao Ming’s central dragon-breath main line!
Pei Xuan walked up to the heavy iron-framed glass door of Dome #1 and pulled it open.
While a minus-forty black blizzard raged just three inches on the other side of the crystal-clear glass roof, stepping inside the greenhouse felt like stepping straight into a sunny summer morning in the south!
Rich, dark spirit-soil steamed gently around warm red-copper floor pipes, while brass mist-nozzles along the top of the glass arch sprayed a fine, rainbow-colored mist of warm Sweet-Spring water across the rows.
“Planting crews, bring in the seeds!” Pei Xuan waved his hand.
Having already spent another 2,000 LP to fuse ordinary vegetable seeds with drops of Sweet-Spring silt and scorpion ash, Pei Xuan handed out sacks of [Fast-Sprout Emerald Cabbage], [Dragon-Tongue Fire Chilies], [Snow-Sweet Radishes], and [Honey-Crisp Winter Watermelons].
As soon as the farmers pressed the fused seeds into the warm, eighty-degree soil and turned on the warm dragon-spring mist sprayers, a miracle happened right before their eyes!
Sprout... rustle... pop!
Green shoots pushed up through the dark soil within ten minutes! Within two hours, under the combined nourishment of the warm dragon-breath pipes below and the mineral-rich spirit water above, thick emerald leaves uncurled, white chili blossoms popped open and turned into four-inch-long glossy red peppers, and fat green cabbages the size of washbasins swelled up along the rows!
“Look at the size of this cabbage!” Farmer Old Man Liu hugged a twenty-pound emerald cabbage that was still warm and dripping with sweet dew, his beard trembling with joy. “Outside the glass, the wind can freeze an ox solid—and inside here, we are picking fresh green cabbage, red chilies, and watermelons in the same afternoon!”
In the next dome over—Greenhouse Dome #2—even former Salt-Pool Town water baron Boss Qian (who had recently been promoted from Deputy Toilet-Scrubber #4 to Junior Compost-Hauler after his Loyalty hit 66/100) was standing in the middle of a watermelon patch in a yellow debtor vest, staring in total disbelief at a thirty-pound striped green watermelon that had just ripened on the vine in three hours.
“In my forty years of doing business in the desert,” Boss Qian muttered, wiping sweat off his chubby forehead as he carefully placed the warm watermelon into a padded straw basket, “a single winter watermelon shipped from the southern river provinces cost fifty silver taels at the Marquis’s banquet—and it was half-rotten by the time the horses got there! Look at this dome! There are ten thousand watermelons growing right here while black ice falls on the roof! If I had partnered with Lord Pei instead of hiring Captain Hu’s mercenaries last month, how rich would I be right now?!”
“Stop daydreaming and haul that basket to the slicing counter, Old Qian!” One-Eyed Jack walked past carrying two crates of glossy red Dragon-Tongue Chilies, grinning under his eyepatch. “Abacus Su said if our greenhouse crew picks fifty thousand pounds of vegetables before four o’clock, every debtor worker gets a double portion of spicy lamb tripe and a bowl of chilled watermelon slices tonight!”
“Coming, Foreman Jack! Put me down for two bowls of tripe!” Boss Qian hiked up his yellow vest and trotted down the warm stone path faster than a twenty-year-old farmhand.
Even the town’s two hundred [Rank 2 Jet-Powered Iron-Belly Ducks] got in on the greenhouse work.
Pei Xuan had Old Wei open a small connecting hatch between the west duck barn and the greenhouse compost trench. Thirty fat Iron-Belly Ducks waddled happily down the heated corridor to peck up any stray sand-beetles or root-grubs hiding in the newly turned soil, leaving behind rich spirit-fertilizer that made the second batch of snow-sweet radishes swell up as thick as a man’s thigh!
By four o’clock in the afternoon, the first fifty cartloads of crisp emerald cabbages, spicy green onions, giant white radishes, and fiery red chilies were wheeled straight from the glass greenhouses to the central market avenue—now officially renamed Dry-Well Hot-Pot Street!
Along both sides of the wide, heated stone street, One-Eyed Jack’s masons had built ten huge, open-front [Public Mutton Hot-Pot Halls] with warm glass wind-screens and five hundred round wooden tables.
In the center of every single table sat a gleaming, two-sided brass cauldron bubbling over a small vent connected straight to the underground dragon-fire pipe!
And around five o’clock, as the first fifty brass pots started boiling with Old Guo’s secret chili-tallow and sheep-bone soup bases, the exhaust chimneys on top of the ten Hot-Pot Halls blew a colossal cloud of spicy, buttery mutton aroma out over the city walls.
Out in the freezing desert within ten miles of Dry-Well Town, twelve scattered bands of starving winter refugees and snow-trapped caravan guards—nearly 1,500 people in total who had been hiding in rock caves waiting to freeze to death—smelled the hot-pot wind and stumbled toward the glowing glass domes of Dry-Well Town like moths to a bonfire!
When they reached the North Gate, Abacus Su didn’t turn a single person away. Every refugee was scrubbed clean in the heated bath-tents, given a cotton coat, registered as a town worker, and handed a wooden bowl of hot mutton soup with two thick slices of Meat-Potato.
Inside the town, all fifteen thousand citizens (plus the 1,500 wide-eyed newcomers) packed into the ten glowing Hot-Pot Halls in shifts!
At Table #1 inside the Main Hall, General Tie Zhan, Old Wei, One-Eyed Jack, Captain Hu, and the five former Shadow-Bat assassins were crowded shoulder to shoulder, their faces flushed bright red with sweat as they dumped platter after platter of sliced lamb rolls and emerald greenhouse cabbage into the roaring red chili side of the brass pot.
“Ha! Eat! Don’t let General Tie steal all the tripe!” Old Wei laughed, using his nimble mechanical left hand to clamp three pieces of spicy lamb right out from under General Tie’s chopsticks.
“Wait a second! Who took my duck blood curd?!” Shadow-One yelled, before stuffing a whole chili-soaked cabbage leaf into his mouth and fanning his tongue. “Hooo—it’s so spicy! My Rank 3 meridians feel like they’re on fire! Waitress, bring two more plates of sliced lamb and a pitcher of chilled plum juice!”
Over in a quiet corner by the glass window, sitting all by himself behind a wooden folding screen so nobody would see him “mingling with mortals,” sat Ye Guhan.
In front of the aloof Rank 5 Sword Immortal were twelve empty wooden meat platters stacked two feet high.
With his white sleeves tied securely behind his shoulders with a piece of hemp string so no red oil would splash on his robe, Ye Guhan’s chopsticks moved with the speed and precision of [Supreme Foundation Sword Shadows]—swishing into the red chili pot for exactly three seconds, lifting out three paper-thin lamb slices, dipping them in sesame-garlic sauce, and vanishing into his mouth without a sound!
Down at the bottom of the Sweet-Spring Well, Ao Ming wasn’t left out either.
At seven o’clock, Pei Xuan personally had the winch crew lower an extra-large, six-hundred-pound Special Dragon Hot-Pot Cauldron—loaded with fifty pounds of freshly picked greenhouse Dragon-Tongue Chilies, two hundred pounds of emerald cabbage, and four whole sliced sheep—down into the cavern!
When Ao Ming tasted the fresh, crunchy winter cabbage and fiery new greenhouse chilies soaked in mutton tallow, the ancient dragon was so touched he actually hugged the iron cauldron and cried two basketball-sized silver tears before blowing an extra-warm blast of Yang-fire up the pipes!
Just as Pei Xuan stepped out of Hot-Pot Hall #1 wiping his mouth with a handkerchief, however, a red alert icon suddenly blinked at the far northern edge of his 10-Mile RTS Fog-of-War Map!
Out in the pitch-black minus-forty blizzard, ten miles north of Dry-Well Town, a massive cluster of 5,000 freezing red-and-yellow dots—surrounded by 10,000 white animal dots—was stumbling blindly through the snowdrifts straight toward the golden light of Pei Xuan’s fifty acres of glass greenhouses!
Leading the front of that freezing column was a towering Crimson Boss Dot labeled:
[ Chief Hulun — Frost-Mane Barbarian Tribe (Rank 3 Early Grandmaster | Desperate & Half-Frozen) ]
Pei Xuan looked at the five thousand tough northern barbarians and ten thousand snow-sheep marching toward his front gate through the blizzard, and his eyes lit up brighter than the brass hot-pot cauldrons.
“Abacus Su!” Pei Xuan called out cheerfully into the warm restaurant hall. “Put down your chopsticks and grab your abacus! Ten thousand free sheep and five thousand tall northern snow-shovelers just showed up on our doorstep!”