Over the next ten days, while the rest of the Red-Sand Wastes and the northern border of the Great Yan Kingdom lay buried under six feet of deadly black ice, twenty feet beneath the streets of Dry-Well Town was busier and livelier than a summer festival!
RUMBLE-HUMMMMM-CHOMP!
Guided by One-Eyed Jack’s plumb-lines and Pei Xuan’s RTS Underground Mini-Map, the hundred-foot Frost-Crystal Sandworm (Debtor Unit #001) happily chewed its way thirty feet below the permafrost.
Every two hours, apprentice cooks from Old Guo’s kitchen tossed a hundred-pound basket of warm, spicy cabbage outer leaves, radish tops, and Meat-Potato peelings down the tunnel chute.
Energized by the fused vegetable scraps, the giant crystal worm worked like a perpetual-motion machine! Its spinning diamond teeth ground the deep sandstone and frozen clay into fine powder, while the fused [Iron Tunnel-Shaping Ring] around its tail compressed and baked the powder into a smooth, arched, twenty-foot-wide Glazed Stone Subway Tunnel that didn’t leak a single drop of water!
Behind the Sandworm came the five Rank 3 Peak Shadow-Bat assassins and three hundred former-bandit masons.
Within a single week, Pei Xuan spent 8,000 LP to fuse spare iron ore, wooden planks, and branch loops of Ao Ming’s red-copper heating pipes right into the floor of the underground tunnels—creating Dry-Well Town’s three-line [Heated Underground Scorpion-Subway Network]!
* Line 1 (The Town Loop): Connected the North Barbarian Suburb, the Central Well & Town Hall, the West Duck & Livestock Barns, the Grand Medicinal Bathhouse, the East 50-Acre Greenhouses, and Hot-Pot Street! * Line 2 (The South Express): Ran thirty miles straight underground to the Green-Willow Southern Suburb, letting three thousand weavers and blacksmiths commute to the main town in forty minutes without ever seeing a snowflake! * Line 3 (The North Salt-Mine Line): Ran fifteen miles north straight into the heart of Red-Rock Salt Valley, keeping the Snow-Crystal Salt Refinery running at full speed twenty-four hours a day!
Inside the brightly lit, seventy-five-degree underground tunnels—where fused [Glow-Stone Ceiling Strips] shone like daylight and red-copper wall pipes smelled faintly of warm dragon fire—the twelve Armored Scorpion Buses ran back and forth on smooth wooden guide-rails at forty miles an hour!
At the Central Hot-Pot Street Underground Station, a brass bell rang cheerfully:
DING-DING!
“Attention passengers! Line 1 Scorpion-Subway Bus #4 arriving from the West Barn and North Suburb! Watch your step at the yellow line! Remember: no spitting on the platform, and present your Red-Flower Work Cards for free hot-pot soup base coupons!”
As the twelve-legged Giant Armored Scorpion Bus glided smoothly to a halt beside the stone platform and lowered its wooden boarding steps, forty Frost-Mane Barbarian hunters in clean white fleece robes hopped off, laughing and chatting with former Salt-Pool Town weavers.
And stepping off the very back VIP seat of the Scorpion Bus—sitting three feet away from everyone else with his arms crossed over his ancient sword—was Ye Guhan.
The proud Rank 5 Foundation Sword Genius stepped onto the warm underground platform without a single flake of snow on his spotless white robes, nodded stiffly to the station guard (Captain Hu in a neat blue conductor’s cap), and walked straight up the heated stone stairs into Hot-Pot Hall #1.
Inside Hot-Pot Hall #1, Pei Xuan was sitting at the corner inspection table with Abacus Su, General Tie Zhan, and Chief Hulun, looking over the monthly bamboo ledgers while eating freshly picked [Honey-Crisp Winter Watermelon] from Greenhouse #5.
Watching Ye Guhan walk in and immediately hold up two fingers to the waitress for the Friday Roast Duck & Lamb Tripe Combo, Pei Xuan shook his head and chuckled.
“My Lord,” Abacus Su whispered, adjusting his spectacles and pointing at Ye Guhan with his brass pen, “Immortal Ye’s thirty-day highway brick sentence actually finished yesterday afternoon! When I went to the duck barn this morning to stamp his Debtor Release Paper, do you know what he did?”
“What did he do?” Pei Xuan asked curiously.
“Before I could take out the red stamp,” Abacus Su grinned, “Immortal Ye suddenly sneezed, ‘accidentally’ dropped his sword scabbard onto the stone curb outside the barn, and cracked two more municipal drainage bricks! Then he looked me dead in the eye with a freezing face and said: ‘Since my hand slipped, I will stay another twenty days to slice the spring irrigation channels so my Pure Heart Sword Dao remains unblemished!’”
General Tie Zhan laughed so hard he nearly choked on a meatball. “That kid is more addicted to Old Guo’s cooking than I am! Just wait—if an enemy ever tries to knock over Old Guo’s stove, Immortal Ye will probably slice them into eight pieces before I even draw my halberd!”
“Let him take his time,” Pei Xuan smiled warmly. He knew that a Rank 5 Foundation Sword Genius worth 100,000 LP/day was his ultimate trump card for the battles ahead—and when Ye Guhan finally crossed that last 0.1 point of Loyalty in a real crisis, it would be worth the wait.
Meanwhile, down at the bottom of the Sweet-Spring Well, Ao Ming was having the happiest winter of his four-thousand-year life.
Every morning, noon, and midnight, a six-hundred-pound cauldron of spicy Snow-Sheep hot-pot, braised Meat-Potatoes, or crispy roast duck came down the winch chain like clockwork.
Every Sunday afternoon, One-Eyed Jack and four fearless former-assassin workers climbed down in the heated basket with long-handled brushes and fifty pounds of hot [Dragon-Scale Soothing Salve], scrubbing the old Flood Dragon’s silver scales from head to tail until he gleamed like a new silver coin and purred loud enough to shake the underground lake!
In return, Ao Ming kept the water pressure of the Sweet-Spring Well at peak capacity and blew nine big, cheerful blasts of Pure Yang Dragon-Fire into the brass heating funnel every day, keeping all three town districts and forty-five miles of underground subway tunnels cozy and warm.
In fact, by the twentieth day of the blizzard, Ao Ming had gotten so used to his daily schedule as Dry-Well Town’s Chief Underground Water & Heating Totem that he began taking pride in his work!
Whenever a Scorpion-Subway Bus rumbled past the underground glass observation window that Pei Xuan had installed between Line 1 and the upper rim of the well cavern, hundreds of school-age village and barbarian children riding the bus would press their noses against the thick spirit-glass and wave their little hands down at the glowing silver coils of the “Guardian Dragon Grandpa.”
At first, Ao Ming tried to act aloof and pretend he was sleeping.
Within three days, however, whenever he heard the ding-ding bell of the 8:00 AM School Bus Scorpion passing by the cavern window, the four-thousand-year-old Azure-Wave Flood Dragon Sovereign would secretly polish his front horns against his copper bed, Rear up fifty feet high, and blow a harmless, glittering ring of golden-and-blue Dragon-Mist Fireworks that turned into dancing silver fish in midair—making all the children on the subway bus cheer and clap!
Because Ao Ming was in such a good mood and eating three giant cauldrons of fused spirit food a day, the residual frost-poison around the Planetary Spirit-Draining Nail receded even further, allowing threads of pure, ancient Earth-Vein Qi to seep up through the soil of Dry-Well Town’s farmlands.
Finally, on the thirtieth morning since the black clouds had rolled down from the north, the howling wind outside the Elastic Iron-Mud City Wall died away.
A bright, warm golden spring sun broke through the clouds!
Under the warm sunshine—and helped along by the ambient heat radiating from Dry-Well Town’s fifty acres of glass greenhouses and heated roads—the six-foot drifts of black snow outside the walls began to melt rapidly into rich, mineral-laden spring meltwater!
Instead of letting the snowmelt go to waste or flood the desert, Pei Xuan had the Frost-Crystal Sandworm and Ye Guhan (who was “working off his two new drainage bricks”) carve three massive Underground Meltwater Reservoirs around the outer perimeter of the town, capturing millions of gallons of pure water to irrigate twenty thousand new acres of spring [Golden-Blood Spirit Wheat] and [Meat-Belly Giant Potatoes]!
As the snow melted across the Red-Sand Wastes and word spread that Dry-Well Town had survived the Hundred-Year Black Frost without losing a single citizen or a single sheep—and had actually eaten hot-pot and fresh green cabbages inside heated glass houses all winter—another wave of 1,500 surviving desert nomads and ruined border villagers flocked to the gates to join Pei Xuan’s territory!
Even better, after a whole month of soaking in the [Grand Dragon-Marrow Medicinal Bath Palace], eating Rank 2 Spirit Wheat and Snow-Sheep meat, and training three hours a day inside the heated underground martial yards under General Tie Zhan and Chief Hulun:
* 200 Frost-Mane Barbarian Hunters & Town Guards broke through from Rank 2 Early to Rank 2 Mid Martial (Mercury-Blood Stage)! * 300 Rank 1 Farmers & Former Debtors broke through to Rank 2 Early Martial (Iron-Bone Stage)! * 1,200 New Citizens stepped into Rank 1 Early Martial!
Standing on top of the North Gatehouse under the bright spring sun, Pei Xuan looked out over his bustling, green-ringed oasis city—where willow trees were sprouting fresh green leaves along the six-lane paved highways, Scorpion Buses were emerging from the subway ramps loaded with sparkling white salt, and twenty-four thousand healthy, bronze-skinned citizens were singing work songs in the fields.
Pei Xuan opened his RTS Territory Screen to check his end-of-winter totals:
Over one hundred and sixty-seven thousand Loyalty Points a day, and nearly half a million points in the bank! Pei Xuan smiled as the warm spring breeze ruffled the collar of his crimson cloak.
Two months ago, he had arrived at this dead mud pit with three servants, one lazy bald camel, and thirty points a day. Now, he was a Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster with an ancient Flood Dragon heating his floors, a Rank 5 Sword Genius slicing his canals for noodles, and an army of over a thousand Rank 2 iron-boned warriors!
Just as Pei Xuan was about to head down to Hot-Pot Street for lunch, however, two very different events were unfolding on the edges of his 15-Mile RTS Fog-of-War Map.
First, three hundred miles east in the lavish, silk-draped inner courtyard of the Iron-Wolf Marquisate, Pei Xuan’s vicious stepmother, Lady Wang, slammed a porcelain teacup onto the floor in a fit of rage!
A terrified spy who had just ridden back from the border after the spring thaw was kneeling on the carpet, trembling as he reported:
“My Lady... Lord Zhao of Green-Willow Oasis lost all his townspeople to the Ninth Young Master! And the Ninth Young Master didn’t freeze to death in the Hundred-Year Black Frost—merchants say he built glass palaces in the desert and has twenty thousand people working for him!”
“Twenty thousand people?!” Lady Wang’s painted fingernails dug into her silk armrest as her face twisted with venomous hatred. “If that little bastard comes back alive with an army, my own son’s position as heir to the Marquisate will be threatened! Take fifty thousand silver taels from my private vault and ten crates of heavy military crossbows—send them secretly to the Black-Wind Bandit King at Black-Wind Fortress! Tell that Rank 3 Peak butcher to take all three thousand of his heavy armored horsemen and burn Dry-Well Town to ashes!”
Meanwhile, much closer to Dry-Well Town—twelve miles south along the paved desert highway at the edge of Pei Xuan’s RTS radar—a funny yellow icon popped up beside an evening campfire.
Leading a skinny gray donkey up the road toward Dry-Well Town was a soot-faced old man in patched robes covered in black burn-holes, carrying a heavy brass alchemy cauldron strapped to his back.
Every half hour, a small puff of black smoke and a muffled BOOM echoed from the roadside ditch where the stubborn old alchemist was testing his pill recipes on the march, sending desert rabbits scurrying across the sand dunes.
Right above the distant, soot-blackened old man’s head, a long-range golden RTS Tooltip flickered in Pei Xuan’s vision:
[ Incoming Wanderer (Arriving Tomorrow Morning): Sun Baolu (“Boom-Pot Sun”) — Rank 2 Peak Alchemist & Unconscious Explosives Genius ]
Pei Xuan stared at the little mushroom clouds puffing twelve miles south on his radar screen, then burst out laughing on the gatehouse balcony.
“An alchemist whose pill furnace hits harder than a siege catapult?” Pei Xuan grinned, closing his map screen as the spring breeze rustled the willow trees. “When that old man reaches our South Gate tomorrow morning, Dry-Well Town is going to get both a Chief Pill Chef and an Artillery Corps at the exact same time!”