Two hundred miles east of the Red-Sand Wastes, across the rocky Gobi borderlands, lay the seat of the Iron-Wolf Marquisate.
Unlike Dry-Well Town, where underground dragon-pipes kept the soil warm and a ten-mile sword-cut canal poured clear mountain snowmelt across ten thousand acres of golden wheat, the lands of the Iron-Wolf Marquisate were suffering horribly after the Hundred-Year Black Frost.
Because no rain had fallen since the winter ice thawed, a scorching spring drought had baked the Marquisate’s farmlands into cracked gray clay. Half of the shallow village wells had dried into mud pits, young wheat sprouts withered yellow in the fields, and thousands of hungry border peasants were stripping elm bark off roadside trees just to boil a pot of bitter gruel.
Yet inside the high crimson walls of the Iron-Wolf Marquis Manor, not a single whiff of hunger could be smelled.
In the Fragrant Orchid Courtyard, silk lanterns swayed gently around a heated marble pavilion. Lady Wang, the first wife of Marquis Pei Zhan, reclined lazily on a white tiger-skin couch while two maids waved peacock-feather fans behind her. On the low rosewood table in front of her sat steaming plates of steamed river crab in ginger vinegar, crystal-clear bird’s-nest soup, and chilled sweet wine in jade goblets.
Sitting across from her was her pride and joy—eighteen-year-old Pei Heng, the eldest son of the Marquisate. Dressed in a snow-white brocade robe embroidered with silver wolves, Pei Heng was casually cracking iron-walnuts between his thumb and forefinger to show off his newly consolidated Rank 2 Peak Martial (Bone-Completion Stage) strength.
Suddenly, rapid footsteps echoed along the covered corridor outside.
Steward Wang—Lady Wang’s most trusted personal servant—hurried into the pavilion, dropped to both knees on the thick wool carpet, and wiped cold sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
“Why are you panting like an old dog, Steward Wang?” Lady Wang frowned, setting down her silver crab-pick. “Did my cousin Lord Zhao send the spring tax silver from Green-Willow Oasis? I told him last autumn to keep a sharp eye on Dry-Well Village and make sure that lowborn ninth brat Pei Xuan froze or starved to death before winter ended!”
Steward Wang shivered and bowed his head lower. “M-Madam... Lord Zhao didn’t send any silver. In fact, three days ago, Lord Zhao rode back to the border town on a lame donkey without a single guard or copper coin to his name! He’s currently lying in a town clinic with a high fever, and whenever he wakes up, he screams about meat buns, giant red scorpions, and a four-eyed demon shaking a brass abacus!”
SNAP!
Lady Wang snapped her silver crab-pick in half between her manicured fingers, her painted face twisting with venom.
“What are you babbling about?!” she hissed, leaning forward. “Lord Zhao had four thousand townspeople and two hundred guards in Green-Willow Oasis! Who could chase him out on a lame donkey?!”
“It was the Ninth Young Master—Pei Xuan!” Steward Wang choked out, trembling as Lady Wang’s eyes bulged. “According to silk merchants who traveled down the southern desert edge last week, Pei Xuan didn’t freeze to death in Dry-Well Village at all! Somehow, that boy dug open an endless sweet-water spring, planted some kind of giant potato that smells like roasted lamb, and built a walled town in the middle of the waste!”
“A walled town?!” Pei Heng scoffed, tossing a crushed walnut shell onto the carpet with a sneer. “Steward Wang, have you gone senile? Dry-Well Village had thirty-five broken mud huts and a hundred half-dead beggars when Father kicked that bastard out! Even if he found a puddle of clean water, how could he take over Cousin Zhao’s Green-Willow Oasis?”
“He didn’t even use soldiers, Eldest Young Master!” Steward Wang cried out. “The merchants said Pei Xuan parked a row of glowing carts outside Green-Willow Oasis at night and sold giant meat buns and snow-white salt for one copper coin each! In a single night, all three thousand seven hundred townspeople—and even Lord Zhao’s own gate guards—lifted the city gates off their hinges and moved Lock, Stock, and Barrel into Dry-Well Town! Now Green-Willow Oasis is just Pei Xuan’s southern suburb, and refugees from all over the desert are flocking to him by the thousands!”
CRASH!
Lady Wang swept her arm across the rosewood table, sending the jade wine goblets and porcelain crab platters smashing across the marble floor!
“That maid-born cockroach!” Lady Wang shrieked, her chest heaving with fury. “Ten years ago I poisoned his cheap mother so she couldn’t compete with me, and last year I spent three thousand silver taels bribing the manor physician and the herb-house guards to frame Pei Xuan for stealing the Marquisate’s spirit herbs! I had him thrown into the deadliest wasteland in the northwest so his bones would rot in the sand—not so he could become a fat desert lord!”
Pei Heng frowned, brushing a splash of crab vinegar off the hem of his white brocade robe. “Mother, why let a desert rat ruin your mood? Father is down at the southern garrison inspecting the drought relief granaries right now, and he’ll be back in seven days. As soon as Father returns, I’ll ask him for five hundred of our Iron-Wolf Heavy Cavalry and ride into the desert myself! I’m a Rank 2 Peak martial genius—I can crush Pei Xuan and his crippled one-armed servant Old Wei with one hand!”
“You foolish boy, use your brain!” Lady Wang snapped, poking Pei Heng’s forehead with her finger. “Don’t you know how bad this spring drought is in the Marquisate? Five counties have dry wells, the army’s grain reserves are down to two months, and your father has gray hairs sprouting from worry! If your father finds out that Pei Xuan somehow has endless sweet water, mountains of snow-white salt, and ten thousand acres of food in Dry-Well Village, do you think your father will let you kill him?!”
Pei Heng froze, his arrogant smile faltering. “Father... Father only cares about military supplies and feeding his army...”
“Exactly!” Lady Wang’s voice dropped to a chilling whisper. “If Marquis Pei Zhan hears that his exiled ninth son turned a barren desert into a granary during a famine year, he won’t punish Pei Xuan—he’ll bring that brat right back to the Marquisate, restore his title, and put him in charge of the family treasury! And once Pei Xuan steps back inside this manor, what happens if he investigates who really stole those spirit herbs last year?!”
Cold sweat broke out on the back of Pei Heng’s neck. “Then... Mother, we can’t let Father hear a single word about Dry-Well Town until Pei Xuan is already a corpse!”
“Why do you think I sent Steward Wang to the northern desert edge six days ago before the rumors even reached the main street?” Lady Wang smiled coldly, wiping her fingers on a silk handkerchief. She looked down at the kneeling steward. “Tell your brother what you arranged at Sand-Ridge Oasis, Steward Wang.”
Steward Wang straightened up, a cruel grin returning to his narrow face.
“Eldest Young Master, six days ago I took fifty thousand silver taels from Madam’s private dowry vault, along with ten wagonloads of armor-piercing military crossbows and three hundred sets of heavy black scale armor smuggled out of the reserve armory,” Steward Wang reported proudly. “I met with the Three Oasis Town Lords—Lord Qian of Sand-Ridge Oasis, Lord Sun of Bitter-Well Oasis, and Lord Li of Iron-Palm Oasis—and through them, I delivered the silver and weapons directly to the most terrifying butcher in the northern desert: Hei Feng, the Black-Wind Bandit King!”
Pei Heng’s eyes lit up. “Hei Feng of Black-Wind Fortress?! The ruthless Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster who slaughtered three caravan guilds and commands three thousand Black-Wind Heavy Riders?!”
“The very same!” Steward Wang rubbed his hands together. “First, the Three Oasis Town Lords formed a strict border blockade against Dry-Well Town, locking their gates so Pei Xuan can’t buy a single pound of iron or bronze. Second, Great King Hei Feng agreed that in exchange for our fifty thousand silver taels, the ten crates of army crossbows, and our promise to let him keep every ounce of salt, grain, and silver he loots from Dry-Well Town, he will lead all three thousand Black-Wind Heavy Riders south!”
Steward Wang glanced at the water-clock in the corner of the pavilion and smiled.
“By my calculation, my courier pigeon from Sand-Ridge Oasis should arrive any hour now. Tomorrow at noon, three thousand heavy cavalry led by a Rank 3 Peak Grandmaster will trample Dry-Well Town into flat sand! Not a single chicken or dog will be left alive—and when the Marquis returns next week, we can weep into our handkerchiefs and tell him that poor Ninth Brother was murdered by the Black-Wind Bandits! Even better, the Marquis will then have a righteous excuse to march his army into the desert and collect all the leftover grain and water for ourselves!”
“Hahaha! Brilliant! Truly brilliant, Mother!” Pei Heng clapped his hands and laughed aloud, pouring himself a fresh cup of sweet wine. “A seventeen-year-old boy with a broken dantian against a Rank 3 Peak Bandit King and three thousand iron horsemen! Let’s toast to little Ninth Brother’s short life!”
***
At that exact same hour, two hundred and fifty miles away at the northern edge of the Red-Sand Wastes, a raucous war banquet was shaking the timber rafters of the Lord’s Hall in Sand-Ridge Oasis.
Sand-Ridge Oasis, Bitter-Well Oasis, and Iron-Palm Oasis sat just three miles apart in a triangle at the mouth of Black-Wind Valley, guarding the only mountain road up to Black-Wind Fortress.
Inside the smoke-filled banquet hall of Sand-Ridge Oasis, ten whole sheep were roasting over open charcoal pits while fifty scarred bandit officers drank strong grain spirits out of two-quart clay bowls.
Sitting on a massive tiger-skin throne at the head of the hall was a seven-foot-tall giant with muscles like knotted oak roots, a thick black iron ring pierced through his nostrils, and a jagged saber scar slicing from his left eyebrow down to his chin.
He was Hei Feng, the Black-Wind Bandit King (Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster).
Resting against his knee was his infamous four-hundred-pound Rank 3 Spiked Wolf-Fang Mace, its three-inch iron spikes stained dark brown from a hundred desert raids. Every time Hei Feng laughed, the fierce crimson Internal Qi radiating from his dantian made the torch flames ten paces away bend backward!
Kneeling humbly at the foot of his steps were the rulers of the Three Oasis Towns: - Lord Qian (“Fatty Qian”) of Sand-Ridge Oasis, a three-hundred-pound merchant-lord wearing gold rings on all ten fingers (Rank 2 Peak). - Lord Sun (“Rat-Face Sun”) of Bitter-Well Oasis, a skinny, pointy-chinned man with shifting eyes (Rank 2 Peak). - Lord Li (“Scarred Li”) of Iron-Palm Oasis, a bald brute with iron-calloused hands (Rank 2 Peak).
“Great King Hei, please drink this cup of aged blood-ginseng wine!” Fatty Qian wheezed, bowing until his fat belly touched the carpet as he held up a golden pitcher. “Ever since you gave the order six days ago, our Three Oasis Towns have sealed our southern gates tighter than an iron barrel! Not a single donkey cart of iron ore, coal, or bronze has gone south toward Dry-Well Town!”
“Hmph!” Hei Feng snatched the golden pitcher, poured the entire half-gallon of fiery wine down his throat in three swallows, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hairy arm. “Fatty Qian, Rat-Face Sun, Scarred Li—don’t think I didn’t see what was happening at your gates when my three thousand riders rode down from Black-Wind Fortress this afternoon! Why did you have two hundred guards whipping your own townspeople in the street?”
Rat-Face Sun of Bitter-Well Oasis shuddered and slapped his own cheek in grievance.
“Great King, you don’t know how insidious that little bastard Pei Xuan in Dry-Well Town is!” Rat-Face Sun cried out bitterly. “For twenty years, our three oasis towns lived comfortably by selling muddy well water to the commoners for three copper coins a bucket and bitter yellow rock salt for twenty coppers a pound. Then two months ago, that boy Pei Xuan started selling snow-white crystal salt and fist-sized Meat-Potatoes for one copper coin, while giving away sweet well water for free!”
“Free water and one-copper meat?!” Bandit Vanguard Captain Ma, sitting at the first side table, blinked in surprise. “Is that noble brat bad at math?”
“He’s not bad at math—he’s trying to steal all our taxpayers!” Scarred Li of Iron-Palm Oasis roared, slamming his fist on the floor. “Last month, he used that exact dirty trick—parking glowing food stalls outside Green-Willow Oasis—to make four thousand people abandon Lord Zhao in a single night! Before we locked our gates this week, six hundred of our best blacksmiths and weavers already ran away to Dry-Well Town! Even tonight, three thousand of our stupid townsfolk are sitting by our locked south gates holding their bundles, crying that in Dry-Well Town everyone lives in heated stone houses, bathes in warm dragon water, and eats lamb hot-pot every day!”
Wait—around the banquet hall, several dozen young Black-Wind cavalrymen standing guard by the doors exchanged strange, hungry glances and swallowed their saliva.
Up at cold, windy Black-Wind Fortress in the mountains, only Bandit King Hei Feng and the twelve captains got to eat fresh mutton every day; ordinary cavalrymen ate hard salted flatbread and sour millet soup, and their families working in the fortress iron mines lived in damp stone caves!
“Heated stone houses and daily lamb hot-pot?” one young rider whispered to his partner by the door. “My old mother’s knees ache so badly in the mountain caves every winter...”
“Shut your trap before the Great King hears you!” his partner hissed back.
Up on the tiger-skin throne, Bandit King Hei Feng slammed his four-hundred-pound Spiked Wolf-Fang Mace against the stone floor!
BOOOOOOM!
The flagstones cracked three feet wide, silencing every whisper in the hall.
“So that little seventeen-year-old brat has a magical sweet-water spring, fifty acres of glass vegetable houses, and mountains of white salt and grain—yet no Grandmaster to guard it?” Hei Feng bared his yellow teeth in a savage grin. “Lady Wang of the Marquisate really is a generous fool! She gave me fifty thousand silver taels and ten crates of army crossbows just to squash a rich fat sheep, and told me I can keep the sheep’s wool and meat for myself!”
Hei Feng stood up to his full seven-foot height, pointing his spiked mace at the Three Oasis Town Lords.
“Listen up! At dawn tomorrow, I will personally lead all three thousand Black-Wind Heavy Riders down the valley road to Dry-Well Town! You three Oasis Lords will follow behind with five hundred militia and fifty empty four-horse wagons! We won’t waste time talking—my three thousand iron horsemen will charge straight through his gate in one breath, smash Pei Xuan into meat paste, and load all his salt machines, glass houses, and fat cooks onto our wagons to haul back to Black-Wind Fortress!”
“Long live Great King Hei! Invincible in the Red-Sand Wastes!” the Three Oasis Lords and the twelve bandit captains roared, raising their wine bowls high.
***
Meanwhile, fifty miles south inside the brightly lit War Room of Dry-Well Town Hall, nobody was drinking wine—Instead, everyone was crowding around the central sand-table while Pei Xuan projected the live intelligence from his 15-Mile RTS Map and the forward scorpion scouts.
Sitting around the table were General Tie Zhan, Chief Hulun, Old Wei, Hong Ling, Abacus Su, Old Guo, and Sun Baolu (“Boom-Pot Sun”), who was proudly polishing a gleaming bronze cauldron badge that Hong Ling had sewn onto his new clean blue robe.
“Here is the enemy’s exact order of battle for tomorrow noon,” Pei Xuan said calmly, using a bamboo pointer to tap three clusters of markers on the sand-table.
When Pei Xuan finished reading out the numbers, General Tie Zhan sucked in a deep breath.
“My Lord,” General Tie said gravely, placing both armoured hands on the edge of the table, “Hei Feng bringing all three thousand heavy cavalry out at once is both a crisis and a golden opportunity. In a flat desert valley, three thousand armored warhorses charging together carry terrifying momentum—even a Rank 3 Grandmaster standing in front of six thousand iron hooves would get trampled if he isn’t careful. However, if we set up deep spike-pits in front of the north wall, rain down Master Sun’s Lethal Crimson Hill-Breaker Shells into the middle of their cavalry charge, and have two thousand of our guards shoot crossbows from the battlements—”
“STOP! Stop right there, General Tie!”
Before Pei Xuan could even speak, Abacus Su leaped two feet off his chair, clutching his chest with one hand and pointing a trembling finger at General Tie with the other as if the general had just threatened to murder his mother!
“Spike-pits?! Lethal exploding shells?! Shooting crossbows at three thousand horses?!” Abacus Su’s voice cracked in sheer financial horror as his brass abacus went CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK at blinding speed! “General Tie, do you know the current border market price of a trained, healthy Rank 1 Desert Warhorse?! Eighty silver taels a head! Three thousand warhorses equals two hundred and forty thousand silver taels walking on four legs! Add three thousand suits of brand-new Marquisate iron scale armor worth thirty silver each, plus five hundred military crossbows—that’s another one hundred thousand silver taels!”
Abacus Su slammed his notebook down on the table, his round spectacles flashing like lightning bolts.
“And what about the three thousand riders sitting on those horses?! At least two thousand of them are young herders and miners’ sons forced into Hei Feng’s army because their families are locked up in Black-Wind Fortress! In Dry-Well Town, a strong Rank 1 Peak or Rank 2 Early road-builder and iron-miner generates ten to one hundred Loyalty Points a day and lays four hundred bricks a shift! If you blow them up with lethal shells or break their horses’ legs in spike-pits, you are burning half a million silver taels of our Lord’s property!”
General Tie Zhan blinked his big tiger eyes, completely intimidated by the skinny bookkeeper’s math. “Uh... Bookkeeper Su, they are charging at us at thirty-five miles per hour with sabers and crossbows! How on earth do you stop three thousand heavy cavalry in an open valley without tripping the horses, without denting their armor, and without killing the riders?!”
Every head in the war room turned toward Pei Xuan.
Pei Xuan leaned back in his chair, picked up a warm Chewable Meat-Flavored Stamina Pill from the dish on the table, and smiled calmly.
“General Tie, you are still thinking like an old border general who fights wars by trading blood for blood,” Pei Xuan said gently. “In Dry-Well Town, we don’t trade a single drop of our soldiers’ blood when a little science, alchemy, and civic infrastructure can do the job ten times cleaner.”
Pei Xuan stood up and held up three fingers.
“Here is our Three-Step Zero-Casualty Plan for tomorrow:”
“First,” Pei Xuan tapped the two-mile valley road outside the north gate on the sand-table, “tonight at midnight, I will take twenty Scorpion Dump Trucks of black tar-mud from the salt marsh and Old Yellow’s mutated camel saliva, and fuse a two-mile [Non-Newtonian Super-Glue Quicksand Belt] across the north valley. It won’t trip the horses or break a single ankle bone—it will cushion their hooves six inches deep and lock all twelve thousand horseshoes to the earth like solid iron statues!”
General Tie Zhan’s eyes widened. “Glue all three thousand warhorses to the road in mid-charge?!”
“Second,” Pei Xuan turned to Sun Baolu, who was already grinning from ear to ear, “once the three thousand riders are stuck in their saddles and can’t move forward or backward, we won’t fire lethal explosive shells that ruin good armor. Instead, Master Sun will use his Nine-Dragon Pot to fire two hundred midair-burst [Ghost-Chili Tear-Gas & Ten-Second Thunder-Belly Laxative Shells] right over their heads!”
Chief Hulun nearly choked on his tea, while Old Wei instinctively crossed his legs under the table.
“Blinding chili mist so they can’t aim their crossbows... and ten-second explosive diarrhea while they are glued inside heavy iron pants?!” Chief Hulun whispered in horror. “My Lord... that is a thousand times crueler than cutting their heads off!”
“And right outside our north side-gate,” Pei Xuan pointed to the clearing beside the wall, “Abacus Su will set up two hundred clean, dragon-heated stone outhouses and Old Guo will boil ten cauldrons of stomach-soothing antidote porridge! Any bandit who wants his boots unglued and a roll of soft bamboo toilet paper just has to press his thumbprint onto a 60-Day Debtor Labor Contract and forfeit his horse and weapon!”
“Three thousand desperate men trading three thousand warhorses for a roll of toilet paper!” Abacus Su wept tears of pure accountant joy, kissing his brass abacus. “Zero arrows spent! Zero horses hurt! Three thousand new road-pavers AND two hundred and forty thousand lbs of organic greenhouse fertilizer collected in one afternoon!”
“Wait, My Lord—what about the Black-Wind Bandit King, Hei Feng, himself?” General Tie Zhan asked eagerly. “A Rank 3 Peak Grandmaster can burst out of his saddle and leap across the glue using Internal Qi!”
Pei Xuan flexed his right forearm, where golden Dragon-Blood power hummed beneath his skin, and looked at General Tie and Chief Hulun with a grin.
“If one Rank 3 Peak Bandit King jumps out of the glue toward our wall, there will be three Rank 3 Grandmasters—you, Chief Hulun, and me—standing side by side waiting to punch him straight into the latrine ditch!”
“Hahaha! Three Grandmasters beating one bandit!” Chief Hulun and General Tie slapped their thighs and roared with laughter.
“And Step Three is the best part,” Pei Xuan said, his bamboo pointer sliding fifty miles north on the map to Sand-Ridge Oasis, Bitter-Well Oasis, Iron-Palm Oasis, and Black-Wind Fortress. “Once the Three Oasis Town Lords see all three thousand Black-Wind riders captured and their Bandit King punched through a toilet before lunch, they will run back to their oasis towns in terror. We won’t chase them with spears—we’ll load five hundred of their own well-fed, freshly washed cavalrymen onto our Mobile Night-Market & Bathhouse Buses, park right at the crossroads of the Three Oasis Towns and Black-Wind Fortress at dinner time, and blow the smell of Master Sun’s high-pressure lamb stew over their walls!”
Pei Xuan smiled as he looked around the room at his excited specialists.
“Before the moon rises tomorrow night, all three Oasis Towns and Black-Wind Fortress will open their own gates from the inside—and our population will cross thirty-five thousand without a single soldier scratched!”