Spring warmth finally rolled across the Red-Sand Wastes, melting the last patches of white frost along the wide stone highways of Dry-Well Town. Down beneath the paved streets, the tamed hundred-foot Frost-Crystal Sandworm finished boring the final link of the underground passenger tunnel connecting all three town districts, while above ground, heavy wooden carts loaded with fresh green cabbages, red chili peppers, and fat striped watermelons rumbled out of the fifty acres of glass greenhouses.
Pei Xuan stood on the third-floor balcony of the town hall, stretching his shoulders as golden morning sunlight glinted off the black-iron roof tiles. Inside his body, his blood hummed with a low, steady roar like an underground river in flood—the unmistakable sign of a Rank 3 Early Martial Grandmaster.
With a quiet thought, he pulled up the glowing blue RTS Territory Screen floating in his vision.
Pei Xuan squinted at the bottom line of the specialist list and rubbed his temples with a helpless laugh.
Down by the newly cut stone canal on the west side of the plaza, a cold-faced young man in patched white robes was sitting cross-legged on a smooth granite boulder. An ancient spirit sword rested across his knees, while in his left hand he held a blue-and-white porcelain bowl as big as a washbasin, slurping down Old Guo’s braised roast-duck and scorpion-beef noodles with total concentration.
Above Ye Guhan’s head, a bright golden tooltip bobbed in the spring breeze:
“Fifty-nine out of a hundred for three weeks straight,” Pei Xuan muttered, shaking his head in amusement. “Every Friday afternoon, right when his labor sentence is about to expire, that proud Sword Immortal carefully taps the tip of his scabbard against a roadside brick while looking straight at Abacus Su’s window—just so he has an excuse to stay another week and eat free roast-duck noodles without hurting his pride.”
Just then, a deep, rumbling burp echoed up from the central town courtyard where the [Sweet-Spring Spirit Well] sat ringed by red-copper heating pipes.
A puff of warm, cumin-scented golden mist floated out of the well mouth, followed by a booming voice that vibrated through the brass speaking-tube mounted beside the well winch:
“Kid! Tell the fat cook upstairs that today’s morning lamb soup was five percent short on crushed red chilies! This old dragon breathed warm fire into your greenhouse pipes all night long without taking a single nap! If my noon cauldron doesn’t have extra garlic and twenty more Meat-Potatoes, I’m turning the bathhouse water down to lukewarm!”
“Throw ten honey-wheat rolls and a jar of pickled garlic down the winch for Senior Ao!” Pei Xuan called down to the kitchen apprentices in the courtyard.
“Right away, My Lord!” two young apprentices cheered, loading a wooden bucket onto the iron chain.
Before the winch finished rattling down the well, brisk footsteps sounded on the wooden stairs of the town hall. Hong Ling trotted onto the balcony carrying a lacquered tray with a steaming pot of Sweet-Spring green tea and a plate of warm, golden-crusted meat pies.
Ever since eating Dragon-Marrow buns and practicing the [Dragon-Blood Anvil Manual] all winter, the fifteen-year-old head maid had reached Rank 2 Mid Martial. Her cheeks were rosy with healthy blood-Qi, and even though she wore a pretty green silk apron, she still kept her two heavy black-iron kitchen cleavers strapped securely to her waist.
“My Lord, eat your breakfast while it’s hot!” Hong Ling said brightly, setting the tray on the stone table. Then her small eyebrows knitted together in an angry frown. “Abacus Su and General Tie are right behind me. Those greedy neighbors to the north are asking for a beating!”
Right on cue, Abacus Su hurried out onto the balcony, pushing his thick round spectacles up the bridge of his nose with one finger while his brass abacus clicked like rapid-fire hailstones in his other hand. Behind him stomped General Tie Zhan and the seven-foot northern barbarian king, Chief Hulun, both of them chewing on fist-sized lamb buns.
“My Lord, look at this official notice nailed to our northern boundary post at dawn!” Abacus Su slapped a sheet of coarse yellow parchment stamped with three blood-red wax seals onto the table. “The rulers of the Three Oasis Towns—Fatty Qian of Sand-Ridge Oasis, Rat-Face Sun of Bitter-Well Oasis, and Scarred Li of Iron-Palm Oasis—have formed a ‘Northern Desert Trade & Defense Alliance’ and declared a total blockade against Dry-Well Town!”
Pei Xuan picked up a warm meat pie, took a bite of the flaky golden crust, and glanced over the parchment. “A total blockade? Didn’t merchants from Sand-Ridge Oasis come here just ten days ago begging to buy twenty wagonloads of our Snow-Crystal Salt?”
“They did! And that’s half the reason their three town lords panicked!” Abacus Su said, his glasses flashing coldly. “Our Snow-Crystal Salt is snow-white, boosts martial blood flow, and sells for one-tenth the price of their bitter yellow rock salt. Even worse, over the last two weeks after the snow melted, more than six hundred of their best carpenters, weavers, and farmers snuck out of the Three Oasis Towns at night to register as citizens here in Dry-Well Town!”
“And what’s the other half of the reason?” Pei Xuan asked, pouring a cup of tea.
General Tie Zhan swallowed his mouthful of lamb bun and slammed his iron-hard fist against the stone railing. “The Iron-Wolf Marquisate! Our scorpion scouts spotted a secret carriage bearing the crest of your stepmother’s maiden clan—the Liu Family—entering Sand-Ridge Oasis four days ago! They delivered heavy chests of silver to the Black-Wind Bandit King, Hei Feng, up in Black-Wind Fortress, and ordered the Three Oasis Town Lords to cut off all shipments of raw iron ore, bronze ingots, and coal to Dry-Well Town!”
“Not only did they ban iron and bronze trade,” Chief Hulun rumbled in his deep voice, his braided beard bristling, “those three oasis lords locked their town gates with iron chains and raised the price of water in their towns to five copper coins a bucket! When thirty hungry families tried to climb over the wall of Bitter-Well Oasis yesterday to come buy our one-copper Meat-Potatoes, Rat-Face Sun’s guards whipped them in the street!”
Pei Xuan set his teacup down gently on the table.
“They locked six thousand oasis townspeople inside, raised the water tax, and cut off our iron and bronze supplies?” Pei Xuan’s eyes narrowed slightly. “How many soldiers do the Three Oasis Towns have?”
“The three oasis lords themselves are only Rank 2 Peak martial artists with about five hundred town guards between them,” General Tie Zhan replied immediately. “The real threat standing behind them is Black-Wind Fortress five miles further up the mountain pass. The Black-Wind Bandit King, Hei Feng, is a ferocious Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster who commands three thousand Black-Wind Heavy Cavalry—and his mountain fortress sits right on top of the three largest open-pit iron and coal mines in the Red-Sand Wastes!”
General Tie leaned forward eagerly, his Rank 3 battle-intent rising. “My Lord, give Chief Hulun and me one thousand of our Rank 2 guards and twenty Scorpion Buses! We’ll ride north today, smash the gates of those three oasis towns, and fight Hei Feng’s cavalry head-on!”
“Fight three thousand heavy cavalry head-on in the open desert?” Abacus Su shrieked as if General Tie had offered to burn down the town treasury. “General Tie, have you lost your mind?! If we get into a bloody melee with three thousand bandits and five hundred oasis guards, how many arrows will we waste? How many suits of armor will get dented? Worse, if we attack the Three Oasis Towns with blades and siege rams, the six thousand townspeople inside will be terrified and their starting Loyalty will drop below thirty! Do you know how many free meat buns it takes to raise six thousand scared people from thirty Loyalty to sixty?!”
Pei Xuan burst out laughing and clapped Abacus Su on the thin shoulder.
“Abacus Su knows my heart best,” Pei Xuan said, standing up and looking north toward the shimmering desert horizon. “Whether it’s the six thousand citizens in the Three Oasis Towns, the eight thousand captive miners and families in Black-Wind Fortress, or the three thousand warhorses under Hei Feng’s riders—in my eyes, every single one of them is already Dry-Well Town’s property. We are going to swallow all three oasis towns and Black-Wind Fortress without losing a single soldier—and make them open their own gates to beg us to come in!”
Just as General Tie Zhan opened his mouth to ask how they could manufacture siege tools or extra weapons when the Three Oasis Towns had blocked all bronze and iron shipments, a sudden uproar broke out down near the south market gate of the town!
“Out of the way! Clear the middle of the street!” a hoarse, coughing old voice yelled frantically from the main stone boulevard. “Don’t touch the tripod legs! It’s just a tiny bit warm! Nobody panic! Move your cabbage cart, young lady, or your cabbages will become pickled sauerkraut in three seconds!”
Pei Xuan walked to the front of the balcony and looked down toward the central plaza.
Down on the spotless flagstone avenue, a skinny old man in his sixties with wild, standing gray hair and a beard burnt two inches shorter on the left side than the right was stumbling toward the town square. He wore a patched gray robe covered from collar to hem in black soot smudges, yellow sulfur stains, and scorched holes. On his chest hung half of a tarnished silver badge from the Royal Capital Alchemy Guild—the bottom half had clearly been snapped off by force.
Strapped to the skinny old man’s back with thick hemp ropes was a massive, three-legged bronze cauldron as big around as a wine barrel!
The bronze cauldron was covered in spiderweb cracks smeared over with red desert clay, and thin jets of bright green, pungent herbal steam were hissing out from under its rattling lid like a nest of angry vipers!
Trotting ten paces behind the old man—carefully keeping a safe distance from its own master—was a scrawny gray donkey carrying two scorched burlap sacks of dried roots and a dented iron ladle.
Pei Xuan focused his eyes on the old man, and a bright gold-bordered RTS Inspection Tooltip popped open in his mind:
Pei Xuan’s eyes lit up brighter than the morning sun.
A Rank 3 Peak Alchemist with a Gold-Tier compression talent! And why did his pots always blow up? Because nobody in this world had ever invented a high-pressure cooker with a meteorite-iron body and a safety relief valve!
“Come on!” Pei Xuan said, vaulting lightly over the third-floor balcony railing and drifting down thirty feet to the stone plaza without making a sound. “Let’s go welcome our new Director of Alchemy and Artillery!”
Down in the central square, Old Wei was already standing in front of Old Guo’s crowded outdoor hot-pot pavilion with his hand resting on the hilt of his heavy Rank 2 black-iron saber. Since having the old frost-poison in his scarred shoulder cured by Pei Xuan’s fused Scorpion-Yang rig and reaching Rank 2 Peak over the winter, Old Wei watched every stranger entering Dry-Well Town like a hawk.
“Halt right there, old man!” Old Wei barked, stepping between the smoking newcomer and a group of townswomen carrying baskets of greenhouse tomatoes. “What is hissing inside that cracked bronze pot on your back? Dry-Well Town Municipal Law Number Seven strictly forbids uninspected fire-powder or unstable furnaces in the market square!”
“It’s not fire-powder, General! I swear on the Ancestral Pill King’s furnace!” Sun Baolu wheezed, untying the hemp ropes and setting the heavy three-legged bronze cauldron down on the stone pavement with a loud CLANG! He wiped his sweaty forehead with his sleeve, which only smeared a fresh stripe of black charcoal soot across his nose. “I am Grandmaster Sun Baolu, formerly Senior Pill Refiner of the Royal Capital’s Hundred-Herb Pavilion! Three days ago, the ungrateful dogs in Iron-Palm Oasis refused to let me buy water because of their blockade, so I walked fifty miles south across the dunes to your noble town!”
Around the square, over two hundred off-duty salt miners, Frost-Mane barbarian herders in thick wool vests, and town masons gathered in a circle, whispering curiously.
“An alchemist from the Royal Capital?” a burly Rank 1 miner asked, craning his neck. “I heard that in the big cities outside the desert, a single Rank 2 Blood-Boosting Pill sells for fifty silver taels! Only rich young masters from noble clans can afford to swallow pills when they train!”
Hearing the crowd’s awe, Sun Baolu immediately straightened his crooked back and stroked his half-singed beard with the air of a lofty master—until his empty stomach let out a wet, hollow GRUUUUUUUUUMBLE loud enough to make the spoons rattle on Old Guo’s hot-pot tables.
Sun Baolu’s soot-covered face flushed beet-red.
“Ahem! A true master of the Pill Dao cares nothing for worldly gold or silver!” Sun Baolu declared hurriedly, keeping one eye glued to the bubbling red chili broth and floating lamb slices in Old Guo’s giant iron pot ten yards away. “Inside my ancestral bronze cauldron right now is a nearly completed batch of Rank 2 Yellow-Ox Stamina & Blood-Boosting Pills that I began simmering over red-willow charcoal before dawn! Because I see that the people of Dry-Well Town are hardworking heroes, I am willing to trade the first five pills from this pot for... for just one big bowl of that spicy mutton hot-pot, six buttered wheat buns, and three carrots for my donkey!”
Behind the wooden counter of the hot-pot stall, fat Old Guo laughed heartily and banged his heavy iron ladle against the rim of his wok.
“Old brother, in Dry-Well Town nobody goes hungry!” Old Guo boomed. “If your stamina pills can really help our miners and guards train faster, our Lord will buy your whole cauldron at full price—and I’ll throw in a whole pot of lamb stew and twenty buns on the house! Wait a second, old brother... why are the three legs of your bronze pot tap-dancing on the flagstones?!”
Every eye in the plaza dropped to the three-legged bronze cauldron sitting in the center of the square.
Clack-clack-clack-rattle-rattle!
The three hundred-pound bronze pot was vibrating so hard it was shuffling in little circles on the stone floor! The red clay patches Sun Baolu had smeared over the hairline cracks in the bronze belly were baking dry, turning glowing orange, and flaking off like fish scales!
Worse still, the heavy bronze lid was bouncing up and down while a high-pitched, ear-splitting whine—like ten teakettles boiled dry over a blacksmith’s forge—rose from inside the sealed pot!
“Uh-oh,” Sun Baolu squeaked, his lofty master demeanor vanishing in half a heartbeat as his singed eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “Wait a minute... when I crossed that sand dune an hour ago in the dark, did I toss in three stalks of Wild Fire-Nettle to boost the heat, or did I drop the whole bundle of thirty stalks in?!”
“Old man, is that thing going to blow?!” Old Wei shouted, drawing his heavy black-iron saber and shouting at the crowd: “Everyone step back behind the stone pillars!”
“No! Don’t run! I CANNOT let my seventeenth batch in a row explode, or my donkey won’t even get a carrot peel!” Sun Baolu yelled in desperate stubbornness. Instead of backing away or knocking the lid off to vent the pressure, the scrawny old man roared, channeled every drop of his Rank 3 Peak Internal Qi into his skinny arms, leaped on top of the trembling cauldron, and slammed both palms down onto the rattling bronze lid!
“Secret Art: Hundred-Hammer Spirit-Sealing Palm! Stay in the pot, you little bastards!”
By forcing his Rank 3 Peak Internal Qi down onto the lid to keep the steam from escaping, Sun Baolu accidentally compressed the boiling herbal gas inside the cracked bronze pot by another three hundred percent!
Pei Xuan, who had just stepped into the edge of the square with General Tie Zhan, Chief Hulun, and Abacus Su right behind him, saw a flashing blood-red warning box fill his RTS screen:
“General Tie, Chief Hulun—shield the stalls!” Pei Xuan shouted, his body blurring into a golden afterimage as his Rank 3 Early Dragon-Blood Grandmaster speed burst forth at full power!
In less than a blink of an eye, Pei Xuan crossed thirty yards of flagstones. With a sweep of his left sleeve, he unleashed a curved, shimmering golden wall of Dragon-Blood Internal Qi that wrapped around three sides of the bronze cauldron like an unbreakable iron bell, completely shielding Old Guo’s hot-pot hall and the two hundred watching townspeople!
At the exact same instant, Pei Xuan’s right hand shot into the hissing green steam, grabbed the back collar of Sun Baolu’s scorched gray robe, and yanked the stubborn old alchemist fifteen feet backward through the air like a ragdoll!
KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
A deafening thunderclap shook every roof tile in Dry-Well Town!
Inside Pei Xuan’s three-sided golden Qi barrier, the three-legged bronze cauldron split cleanly in half with a blinding flash of crimson fire and a towering mushroom cloud of purple herbal smoke!
Because Pei Xuan had sealed the north, east, and west sides of the blast with his Grandmaster Qi, one hundred percent of the explosive pressure funneled straight toward the only open direction—an unoccupied stone alleyway leading to the town’s public latrine partition walls forty yards to the south!
WHIIIIIIISTLE—CRACK! BAM! BOOM!
Out of the center of the purple fireball shot a single, walnut-sized pitch-black sphere glowing like a miniature meteor!
Screaming through the air at supersonic speed, that single black pill punched a neat, round, smoking hole straight through the first mortared limestone screen wall, blasted through the second stone partition wall, pierced the third outer courtyard wall without slowing down, and buried itself two feet deep into the solid granite cliff-face at the edge of town!
Dead silence fell over the central plaza.
Purple smoke smelling strongly of roasted ginseng, burnt licorice, and red chili peppers drifted slowly into the blue spring sky.
Ten yards away, Sun Baolu’s scrawny gray donkey hadn’t even flinched—the moment it heard Sun Baolu shout “Secret Art,” the experienced donkey had calmly dropped flat onto its belly behind a stone water trough, folded both long ears tightly over its eyes, and waited for the flying bronze shrapnel to stop clinking on the ground.
“My... my Yellow-Ox Stamina Pill!” Sun Baolu wailed pitilessly, dangling by his collar from Pei Xuan’s hand with his boots six inches off the ground and his beard smoking like a lit incense stick. He pointed a trembling, soot-blackened finger toward the three smoking holes in the distant stone walls. “It was only three breaths away from golden perfection! Look at the penetration power on that pill core! If a martial artist swallowed that pill, he could plow fifty acres of dirt without breathing hard!”
“Swallow it?! If a man swallowed that thing, it would blow a hole through his backside and kill the ox standing behind him!”
A shrill, furious voice pierced the purple smoke as Abacus Su sprinted out from behind General Tie Zhan, holding a wooden measuring ruler in one hand and his clicking brass abacus in the other!
Abacus Su ran straight over to the three perforated limestone walls by the public latrine, peered through the aligned round holes like a telescope, measured the scorched flagstones in the center of the square, and spun around with his round spectacles reflecting blinding white light.
“Do you know what you just did, you reckless old firecracker?!” Abacus Su barked, his fingers flying across his abacus beads with a sound like machine-gun fire. “Clack-clack-clack! Three Grade-2 Reinforced Limestone Privacy Walls pierced through—nine hundred silver taels! Six central plaza flagstones cracked by cauldron impact—three hundred silver taels! Soot-staining on four municipal street banners, plus mental distress to two hundred tax-paying citizens eating breakfast! That comes to two thousand four hundred and fifty silver taels—or exactly two hundred and forty-five days of hard labor crushing salt rocks in Quarry Number Three!”
When Pei Xuan set Sun Baolu down on the pavement, the old alchemist’s knees buckled like wet straw. He slumped down between the two smoking, jagged halves of his broken bronze cauldron and buried his soot-streaked face in his calloused hands.
“Bring out the iron chains and the quarry hammer, then,” Sun Baolu whispered, his shoulders shaking as forty years of bitter frustration poured out of him. “In the Royal Capital, the Hundred-Herb Pavilion kicked me out in the snow because my compressed pills blew the roof off the Vice-Guildmaster’s study. In Sand-Ridge Oasis and Iron-Palm Oasis this week, those greedy town lords took my last five silver coins and had their guards beat me with clubs when my cauldron cracked their horse trough. I spent my whole life trying to refine a pill with zero wasted Qi... and now my last ancestral bronze pot is broken in two. I’m just a useless old bomber...”
Two burly Rank 2 town security guards stepped forward holding a bright yellow “Municipal Property Debtor” vest, waiting for Pei Xuan’s nod.
“Hold on,” Pei Xuan said softly, raising his hand to stop the guards.
Without a word, Pei Xuan walked past the two broken halves of the bronze cauldron, strolled forty yards down the stone alley through the three smoking wall-holes, and stopped in front of the solid granite cliff at the back of the square.
Two feet deep inside the cracked granite rock-face, a round black sphere was still humming with a low, warm vibration.
Pei Xuan reached two fingers into the stone crater and plucked the walnut-sized black pill out of the rock.
Even after smashing through three mortared limestone walls and two feet of solid mountain granite at the speed of a cannonball, the surface of the black pill didn’t have a single scratch, dent, or crack! Instead, as soon as Pei Xuan held it in his palm, a rich, pure medicinal warmth radiated through his skin, making even his Rank 3 Grandmaster blood-Qi hum with pleasure!
Pei Xuan tossed the heavy, warm black sphere up into the air, caught it with a crisp snap of his fingers, and walked back into the center of the square with a wide, genuine smile on his face.
“Abacus Su, wipe the two thousand four hundred silver fine off the ledger and charge the wall repairs to my personal Lord’s Account,” Pei Xuan ordered clearly. “And Old Guo—bring out your biggest copper hot-pot loaded with two pounds of sliced snow-lamb, a platter of Meat-Potatoes, ten hot buttered Golden-Blood Wheat buns, and a whole bucket of washed greenhouse carrots for this smart donkey!”
Kneeling on the blackened stones, Sun Baolu slowly lifted his head. His watery, red-rimmed eyes blinked through a mask of black charcoal soot.
“Young... Young Lord?” Sun Baolu stammered, his voice trembling. “I just blew a hole through three of your town walls and ruined my pill batch... You aren’t going to beat me with sticks or throw me into the salt mine?”
“Ruined your pill batch? Who said your pill batch was ruined?”
Pei Xuan reached down with both hands, grasped the old alchemist’s scorched sleeves without caring a whit about the black soot rubbing onto his own clean cuffs, and lifted Sun Baolu to his feet in front of the entire crowd.
Then Pei Xuan held up the gleaming, unblemished black pill between his thumb and forefinger so every miner, soldier, and merchant in the plaza could see it shining in the morning sun.
“Look closely, Master Sun!” Pei Xuan’s voice rang out warm and clear across the square. “This pill just punched through three limestone walls and two feet of solid granite cliff—and there isn’t a single scratch on its shell! Do you know why those pompous elders in the Royal Capital Alchemy Guild never blow up their pots? Because they are mediocre cowards who let eighty percent of the herbs’ medicinal Qi boil away into thin air so they can roll soft little mud balls!”
Sun Baolu’s jaw dropped open, his chest heaving as he stared at the intact black sphere in Pei Xuan’s hand.
“You, Master Sun, compress ten times more pure medicinal Qi into a single cauldron than any alchemist in the Royal Capital!” Pei Xuan clapped the stunned old man on the shoulder and laughed aloud. “Your pills have never failed! The only reason your cauldrons explode is because ordinary mortal bronze pots are too cheap, too brittle, and too weak to hold a true genius’s fire!”
BOOM!
That single sentence hit Sun Baolu’s heart harder than any exploding cauldron ever had!
For forty long years, from the day he was a young apprentice in the capital to the day he was beaten with sticks outside Iron-Palm Oasis, every alchemist, guildmaster, and town lord had laughed at him, called him “Boom-Pot Sun the Madman,” and treated his life’s work like a joke.
Yet this seventeen-year-old Lord of Dry-Well Town had taken one look at the blast crater, understood the true principle of his Extreme Compression Dao, and called him a genius in front of hundreds of people!
Two rivers of hot tears washed clean white tracks down Sun Baolu’s soot-blackened cheeks. Dropping to both knees on the flagstones, the old Rank 3 Peak master bowed his forehead all the way to Pei Xuan’s boots.
“Lord Pei!” Sun Baolu choked out, his voice echoing across the quiet square. “An old horse knows a good master, and a scholar dies for one who understands his heart! From today on, this old man Sun Baolu is a citizen of Dry-Well Town! Whatever pills you need brewed—whatever walls you need blown up—just give the word!”
Then Sun Baolu looked down at the two jagged, ruined halves of his bronze cauldron lying beside his knees, and his face fell in embarrassment.
“Only... My Lord, my ancestral bronze cauldron just split in two, and those three wicked Oasis Town Lords to the north have blocked all bronze and iron shipments into Dry-Well Town. Without a cauldron strong enough to withstand twenty-fold internal steam pressure, how can I refine pills for your army?”
Pei Xuan looked down at the two cracked halves of medicinal bronze, glanced toward the town smithy where a three-hundred-pound chunk of deep-earth meteorite iron was sitting in storage, and then looked at the `185,400 LP` glowing on his RTS screen.
“Who said we need those three oasis lords’ cheap bronze?” Pei Xuan grinned, pulling Sun Baolu up toward Old Guo’s steaming hot-pot table. “Go sit down and eat twenty lamb buns with your donkey first, Master Sun. By the time you finish wiping the chili oil off your beard, I’m going to fuse you an indestructible pressure-cooker that can brew five hundred pills in fifteen minutes—AND shoot cannonballs two miles down the road!”