Out in the howling darkness five miles north of Dry-Well Town, the Hundred-Year Black Frost was tearing the Frost-Mane Barbarian Tribe to pieces.
For three hundred years, the Frost-Mane Tribe had lived on the northern edge of the Red-Sand Wastes, herding thick-fleeced White-Horn Snow-Sheep and hunting sand-wolves. Their men grew nearly seven feet tall, wore wolf-skin coats over bare chests, and were so tough they could crack beef bones with their teeth.
But tonight, even the toughest seven-foot barbarian warriors were crying frozen tears behind their ice-crusted beards.
“Chief! Two more ox-carts just snapped their axles in the frozen sand!”
A Frost-Mane warrior named Torba—a Rank 2 Bone-Tempering hunter whose left ear was already purple with frostbite—stumbled up to the head of the column, carrying two shivering children wrapped in a torn felt tent-cloth. “Our dry dung-fuel ran out four hours ago! Every time we try to pitch a wolf-skin tent, the seventy-mile-an-hour black iron-sand rips the hide to shreds! Even the snow-sheep are freezing stiff on their feet!”
At the very front of the five-thousand-person column stood Chief Hulun.
He was a giant of a man, standing seven feet two inches tall with braided gray-white hair that looked like a frost-wolf’s mane and carrying a three-hundred-pound Rank 2 Frost-Iron Totem Mace across his shoulders.
Even though Chief Hulun was a Rank 3 Early Martial Grandmaster, his bare arms were covered in bleeding frost-cracks because he had has been using eighty percent of his own hot Internal Qi for the past twelve hours just to project a wind-shield around the tribe’s wagons of old women and babies!
“Keep moving south!” Chief Hulun’s voice rasped like grinding stones, blood trickling from his cracked lips. “If we stop in this open desert, all five thousand of us will be buried under black ice before dawn! Look ahead—do you see that light in the sky?!”
Torba wiped the frozen rime from his eyelashes and squinted through the raging black blizzard.
Two miles ahead, cutting straight through the pitch-black curtain of iron-sand and snow, shone a massive, warm golden halo!
It looked as if someone had dropped a piece of the summer sun right onto the frozen desert floor.
And riding on the back of the howling north wind came a smell so rich, so hot, and so impossibly delicious that five thousand half-frozen barbarians and ten thousand starving snow-sheep stopped shivering at the exact same second:
Braised mutton tallow! Boiling sheep-bone marrow! Toasted cumin, crushed garlic, and fiery red chili oil!
GRUUUUUUUMBLE!
Five thousand barbarian stomachs roared in unison across the snowfield.
“Chief!” Torba’s eyes went bloodshot with desperate hunger. “That smell... it’s boiling lamb soup! There must be a rich Great Yan border fortress ahead! Should the warriors draw their bone-axes and charge the gate?! Even if half of us die under their crossbows, we have to win a warm roof and hot soup for the children!”
Chief Hulun gripped the handle of his three-hundred-pound Frost-Iron Mace tightly, his heart tearing in two.
The Frost-Mane Tribe were proud herders, not murderous bandits. In normal years, they traded sheep wool and pelts peacefully at the border posts.
But he knew how the greedy nobles of the Great Yan Kingdom treated northern barbarians during winter disasters. Three years ago, when a smaller snowstorm hit Green-Willow Oasis, Lord Zhao had locked the gates, shot arrows at any barbarian who came within a bowshot, and waited until the tribe froze to death so he could loot their frozen sheep for free!
“If the Yan city lord locks the gates and shoots arrows at our children,” Chief Hulun growled, a dark crimson ring of Rank 3 Grandmaster blood-Qi flaring around his massive shoulders, “I will use my own body to smash open their city gate! Tell the eight hundred tribal warriors to put the women, children, and sheep herd three hundred yards behind us. Ready your axes—follow me!”
With a low, mournful war-horn blast, Chief Hulun led eight hundred frost-covered barbarian warriors charging through the three-foot snowdrifts toward the golden light!
As they broke through the last veil of blowing black snow and came within two hundred yards of Dry-Well Town’s North Gate, however, Chief Hulun suddenly slammed his giant boots into the snow and skidded to a dead halt.
Behind him, all eight hundred barbarian warriors bumped into each other like dominoes, their mouths falling wide open so far that snow blew right onto their tongues.
“W-what kind of monster city is this?!” Torba stammered, pointing a trembling finger.
In front of them stood a twenty-foot-high wall of dark iron-mud.
Instead of cruel archers lining the battlements with fire-arrows, strings of cheerful, warm Golden Glow-Stone Lanterns hung along the top of the wall like a New Year festival!
To the east of the gate rose fifty acres of sparkling Crystal Glass Domes. Through the three-inch-thick transparent glass walls, the freezing barbarians could clearly see rows of lush emerald-green cabbages, red chili bushes, and green watermelon vines basking under warm mist sprayers while farmers in thin cotton shirts picked vegetables into bamboo baskets!
And right outside the open North Gate—where the underground dragon-fire copper pipes had melted a hundred-yard semi-circle of snow into warm, dry stone pavement—there wasn’t a single spear formation blocking the road.
Instead, there was a long, red-copper Heated Welcome Awning!
Underneath the warm awning sat ten bubbling brass cauldrons of ginger-lamb broth, stacks of fluffy cotton winter coats, and a skinny man in thick spectacles sitting behind a wooden registration desk clicking a gold-plated abacus!
On the left side of the desk stood Pei Xuan in his handsome dark-crimson Flame-Shell Cloak. On the right side stood General Tie Zhan, casually holding a bamboo basket of fist-sized steamed pork buns in one hand while leaning on a heavy Rank 3 black-iron halberd with the other.
And hanging right across the front of the heated awning was a twenty-foot wooden signboard painted in both Great Yan characters AND Northern Steppe picture-symbols:
Chief Hulun stared at the picture-symbols on the signboard—a picture of a shivering barbarian handing over one sheep or holding a snow-shovel, followed by an arrow pointing to a warm bathhouse and a bubbling hot-pot cauldron.
“Chief...” Torba rubbed his frozen eyes ten times. “Am I having the snow-madness hallucination before dying? Why does that sign say we can get a warm house and unlimited hot-pot just for shoveling snow for ten days?!”
“It must be a trap!” Chief Hulun barked, though his eyes couldn’t stop glancing at the steaming cauldrons of ginger-lamb soup under the awning. “How could any Great Yan noble give away warm houses and meat soup in the middle of the Hundred-Year Black Frost?! Watch out—that bull-necked general eating pork buns beside the young lord has the aura of a Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster!”
Right then, General Tie Zhan swallowed the last bite of his pork bun, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and grinned at Chief Hulun from fifty yards away.
“Hey! Big guy with the white hair!” General Tie boomed, his voice rich and full of Rank 3 Grandmaster vigor. “Are you going to stand out there in the minus-forty wind until your nose falls off, or are you coming under the awning? If you want to fight me first to test if it’s a trap, hurry up—my shift at Hot-Pot Hall #2 starts in fifteen minutes!”
As he spoke, General Tie casually tapped the butt of his black-iron halberd against the stone road.
THUUUUUUM!
A golden wave of Rank 3 Grandmaster Internal Qi—powered by a full belly of fused spirit-grain buns and Dragon-Spring bathwater—rippled thirty feet out across the snow, melting a twenty-foot trench through the three-foot snowdrift without even trying!
Chief Hulun’s pupils shrank to the size of pinheads.
He is also a Rank 3 Early Grandmaster—no, his blood and Qi are twice as thick and well-fed as mine! Chief Hulun realized with a cold shiver. In my current half-frozen state, I wouldn’t last twenty moves against him! And look at those five hundred guards standing on the warm wall behind him—every single one of them is a Rank 2 Bone-Tempering fighter!
If a city with this kind of terrifying military power wanted to slaughter his five thousand half-dead tribespeople and steal their ten thousand snow-sheep, they wouldn’t need to set a trap at all—they could just march out and crush them in ten minutes!
Above Chief Hulun’s frost-covered head, Pei Xuan’s RTS Inspection Tooltip popped open:
CLANG!
Chief Hulun threw his three-hundred-pound Frost-Iron Totem Mace down into the snow, strode forward ten steps, and dropped straight to both knees on the warm, snow-melted pavement in front of Pei Xuan’s desk!
“Young Lord!” Chief Hulun’s giant frame trembled as he pressed his frost-crusted forehead against the warm stone. “I am Hulun, Chief of the Frost-Mane Tribe! Behind me are five thousand men, women, and children of my tribe, along with ten thousand White-Horn Snow-Sheep! I don’t ask for anything for myself—you can put me in chains or work me like an ox! Just let our women and children come inside out of the black wind and drink one bowl of hot soup! All ten thousand snow-sheep are yours!”
Behind him, all eight hundred seven-foot-tall barbarian warriors threw down their bone axes and kneeled in the snow with a dull thud.
Pei Xuan didn’t sit high and mighty behind the desk. He stepped out from under the awning, walked right up to the kneeling giant, and used both hands to lift Chief Hulun up by his thick, frostbitten elbows.
As Pei Xuan’s hands touched Hulun’s arms, the warm micro-climate of Pei Xuan’s [Flame-Shell Winter Cloak] wrapped around the barbarian chief, instantly stopping his shivering.
“Chief Hulun, in Dry-Well Town, nobody gets put in chains unless they break my road bricks without paying,” Pei Xuan said with a warm, clear smile that carried across the entire snowfield. “And I don’t want your ten thousand sheep for free! Abacus Su—tell Chief Hulun our official trade policy!”
Abacus Su stood up, pushed his glasses up his nose, and read from his ledger in a brisk, businesslike voice:
“According to Dry-Well Town Municipal Law Section 4: Every Frost-Mane family that joins the town keeps half their sheep for their own wool and milk! The other five thousand sheep will be purchased by the Town Ranch at full fair-market credit—which automatically pays for your five thousand permanent stone houses, winter cotton clothes, and thirty days of unlimited meals on Hot-Pot Street! Now stop kneeling in the doorway and blocking the road—bring the children and the sheep inside before the soup gets cold!”
Chief Hulun stared at Pei Xuan, his tough, weather-beaten face twitching as hot tears finally broke through the ice on his eyelashes.
“K-keep half our sheep... and get stone houses and thirty days of hot-pot?!” Hulun choked out, turning around and waving both giant arms at the wagons behind him. “Did you all hear the Young Lord?! Leave the broken carts! Carry the elders and the children—herd the sheep through the gate right now!”
“Hooray! Long live the Young Lord!”
Five thousand freezing barbarians let out a roar of joy that drowned out the howling blizzard.
General Tie Zhan and five hundred Rank 2 town guards didn’t just stand and watch—they ran out into the snowdrifts, picking up freezing barbarian toddlers two in each arm, wrapping warm cotton quilts around the old grandmothers, and guiding the ten thousand bleating White-Horn Snow-Sheep straight into the newly built [Heated South-Side Livestock Barns]!
As the ten thousand White-Horn Snow-Sheep were herded down the snow-melted main avenue toward the south barns, a comical standoff occurred outside the barn doors.
Standing in the wide stone doorway of Barn #1—wearing a custom-knitted giant red wool scarf that Hong Ling had made for him—was Pei Xuan’s Rank 2 mutated pet camel, Old Yellow!
Seeing ten thousand huge, curly-horned northern sheep rushing toward his warm barn, the Lead Snow-Ram—a thousand-pound Rank 1 Beast with horns thicker than iron anvils—lowered its head and let out a dominant BAAAA-ROAR, preparing to headbutt this ugly yellow camel out of the way so it could claim the warmest corner of the barn!
Old Yellow didn’t even uncross his front knees.
He lazily chewed a mouthful of roasted Meat-Potato peelings, narrowed his big camel eyes, and—
HOCK—PTUI!
A basketball-sized glob of shimmering, golden-brass Rank 2 Sticky Beast Phlegm shot thirty feet through the air and splattered right across the charging Snow-Ram’s front hooves and nose!
SPLAT-GLUE!
The thousand-pound Snow-Ram stopped dead in its tracks, its four hooves glued so tightly to the warm stone floor that its back end flipped up into the air before bouncing back down! Try as it might, the giant ram couldn’t lift a single hoof by half an inch, and could only let out muffled mmph-mmph bleats through the golden glue on its snout!
Old Yellow slowly walked over, looked down his long nose at the trapped Snow-Ram, and tapped the ram’s curly horn three times with his front hoof as if saying: In this barn, I am the Barn Boss. Line up single file!
Instantly, all ten thousand White-Horn Snow-Sheep lowered their ears in total submission, parted neatly into two orderly columns, and trotted into the warm, dragon-heated barns behind Old Yellow without daring to jostle a single hay trough!
Watching this from the road, the barbarian hunter Torba rubbed his eyes in shock. “Chief! Even the Young Lord’s bald pack-camel can subdue our Snow-Ram King with one spit! Good thing we didn’t swing our axes at the gate!”
Chief Hulun broke into a wide, relieved grin as he carried two warm, soup-fed barbarian children on his broad shoulders. “Remember that camel’s face, Torba! In Dry-Well Town, even the livestock are stronger than border captains—make sure our young hunters behave themselves!”
As the first barbarian children were carried under the North Gate awning and handed steaming wooden bowls of Old Guo’s ginger-lamb broth, hundreds of floating Loyalty bars above the Frost-Mane Tribe began shooting upward like celebratory fireworks:
[Loyalty: 40 -> 65/100!]
[Loyalty: 45 -> 72/100!]
[Chief Hulun Loyalty: 42 -> 68/100!]
“Old Wei! Hong Ling!” Pei Xuan called out as he watched the five thousand frostbitten newcomers pouring through the gate. “Food alone won’t thaw deep frost-poison out of five thousand people’s bones in time. Open all four halls of the Dragon-Steam Public Bathhouse to maximum heat—we are giving the entire Frost-Mane Tribe a hot mineral soak right now!”