High noon blazed over the Red-Sand Wastes, turning the golden sand ridges on either side of the northern valley into shimmering walls of heat.
Yet the heat of the midday sun was nothing compared to the ferocious wave of blood-Qi and iron dust rolling down from the north.
THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD!
Three thousand Black-Wind Heavy Riders halted in twelve massive, wedge-shaped cavalry formations right at the northern mouth of the two-mile approach valley.
Every single warhorse stood over six feet tall at the shoulder, its chest armored in hammered iron plates and its nostrils snorting white mist. Every rider wore the gleaming black scale armor smuggled out of the Iron-Wolf Marquisate’s reserve armory by Lady Wang, with a cocked military crossbow hanging from the left saddle-hook and a heavy, curved wolf-tooth saber resting in the right hand.
At the very tip of the first cavalry wedge sat Hei Feng, the Black-Wind Bandit King, straddling a monstrous nine-foot-tall Rank 2 Ferghana Blood-Stallion whose dark red coat looked like flowing blood.
And half a mile behind the cavalry formations, perched atop a high sand ridge where they could watch the slaughter from a safe distance, sat the Three Oasis Town Lords—Fatty Qian of Sand-Ridge Oasis, Rat-Face Sun of Bitter-Well Oasis, and Scarred Li of Iron-Palm Oasis—lounging inside three silk-curtained palanquins surrounded by five hundred oasis militiamen and fifty empty four-horse loot wagons.
“Look down there at the end of the valley, Great King!” Fatty Qian waddled out of his palanquin and trotted down to the Bandit King’s stirrup, pointing his chubby, ring-covered finger southward. “That’s Dry-Well Town!”
Hei Feng narrowed his scarred eyes and looked two miles down the wide, flat valley road.
Even a ruthless desert butcher who had robbed a hundred towns couldn’t stop his breath from catching in his throat at what he saw.
Where thirty-five broken mud huts had stood only months ago, a gleaming thirty-foot-high fortress wall of dark purple-black iron-mud stretched across the southern end of the valley! Paved stone highways as flat and smooth as polished mirrors ran around the perimeter, lined with green weeping willows and running water channels.
Rising behind the thirty-foot walls were the sparkling crystal domes of fifty acres of Dragon-Heated Glass Greenhouses, bursting with lush emerald cabbages, red tomatoes, and climbing melon vines—while drifting up the valley on the warm spring breeze came the rich, mouth-watering aroma of Old Guo’s roasted snow-lamb, cumin chili oil, and freshly baked Golden-Blood Wheat rolls!
GULP.
Behind Hei Feng, three thousand Black-Wind riders—who had spent the morning chewing dry, rock-hard salted flatbread in the saddle—simultaneously swallowed huge mouthfuls of saliva!
“By the ancestors...” Vanguard Captain Ma stared at the sparkling glass domes and sniffed the air, his stomach growling under his iron breastplate. “Great King, is that really a desert refugee village?! It smells better than the Imperial Culinary Street in the Royal Capital! And look at those giant white buildings behind the wall—their roofs are covered in snow-white salt bricks!”
“Hahaha! Heaven is feeding this old king!” Bandit King Hei Feng threw back his head and laughed so loudly that the iron ring in his nose clanged against his steel faceplate. He licked his cracked lips as greed blazed in his eyes. “No wonder Fatty Qian and Rat-Face Sun said their townspeople were climbing over the walls at night to run here! That little brat Pei Xuan is sitting on a mountain of gold, sweet water, and fat sheep!”
Then Hei Feng squinted harder at the top of Dry-Well Town’s north gate tower—and his laughter turned into a look of utter disbelief.
“Wait a second,” Hei Feng frowned, shading his eyes with his gauntlet. “Where is his army? Why aren’t there thousands of archers lining the battlements or pouring boiling oil down the walls?”
Two miles away, on top of the thirty-foot Elastic Iron-Mud Wall of Dry-Well Town, the battlements were completely clear of spears and bows.
Instead, right in the middle of the gate tower sat a single colorful silk sun-umbrella!
Sitting comfortably in a cushioned rattan chair underneath the umbrella was seventeen-year-old Pei Xuan, wearing clean black-and-gold robes. He had one leg crossed casually over the other, holding a crystal goblet of chilled plum soup in his left hand while Hong Ling stood beside him holding a silver platter of bright red, seedless greenhouse watermelon slices!
Behind Pei Xuan’s chair stood only a dozen people: a one-armed old veteran (whose scarred right hand rested on his saber hilt while his empty left sleeve was pinned neatly to his shoulder), a burly general chewing a pork bun, a seven-foot northern barbarian holding a hammer, a skinny four-eyed bookkeeper holding a brass abacus, and a soot-faced old man wearing quartz goggles who was standing beside twenty strange, stubby iron pipes bolted to the parapet!
Even more insultingly, down below the wall to the left of the closed main gate, the small side gate stood wide open—and outside it sat four long rows of newly whitewashed little stone huts with a bright red ticket booth in front of them!
“He’s eating watermelon under a parasol?!” Scarred Li of Iron-Palm Oasis rode up behind the Bandit King, his bald head turning purple with anger. “Great King! That arrogant little noble brat sees three thousand heavy cavalry at his doorstep, and he doesn’t even bother to call his guards to the wall! He’s treating our Black-Wind Army like a street circus!”
“Wait, Great King!” Vanguard Captain Ma—the most cautious of Hei Feng’s twelve cavalry captains—raised his hand, his brows furrowing as he stared down at the two-mile stretch of flat yellow sand between their horses and the town gate. “Something feels too quiet! Last month, when Salt-Pool Town sent two hundred mercenaries here, rumor says Pei Xuan used some kind of weird trap at the gate. Look at that two-mile valley floor—it’s so flat and smooth! Could there be hidden spike-pits covered with reed mats, or buried trip-ropes underneath the sand?”
Hei Feng sneered, though he lowered his four-hundred-pound Spiked Wolf-Fang Mace by an inch. “Good point, Little Ma. My three thousand warhorses are my lifeblood—I don’t want to lame twenty horses in a cheap wooden pit before I smash that boy’s head. Send three light foot-scouts out onto the road! Have them run three hundred yards down the valley and stab the sand with iron spears every five steps!”
“Yes, Great King!”
Captain Ma turned and barked an order. Instantly, three nimble, skinny bandit scouts—each weighing no more than a hundred and thirty-five pounds in light leather vests—slid off their horses and sprinted out onto the wide valley floor holding six-foot iron spears.
Up on Dry-Well Town’s north wall, General Tie Zhan and Chief Hulun leaned slightly forward over the parapet, watching the three skinny scouts run straight onto the northern edge of the [Two-Mile Super-Glue Quicksand Belt].
Tap-tap-tap-tap!
The three light scouts ran three hundred yards down the center of the road, jumping up and down on their heels, kicking at the yellow sand crystals, and driving the sharp iron points of their spears four inches down into the ground every few paces!
Below the thin camouflage layer of dry yellow sand, Pei Xuan’s fused [Super-Glue Quicksand Belt] sensed the impact weight:
Because the three skinny scouts weighed less than half of the three-hundred-pound trigger threshold, the fused non-Newtonian compound beneath the surface remained as hard and unyielding as sun-baked desert clay! Even when the scouts stabbed their spear tips four inches down, the iron points simply struck firm, dry-feeling gravel and bounced off with a crisp clink!
After testing four hundred yards of the road from left to right without finding a single hollow board, tripwire, or soft spot, the three scouts turned around and waved their green signal flags high above their heads:
“Report to the Great King! The valley road is one hundred percent solid hard-packed sand! Zero spike-pits, zero tripwires, and zero soft mud!”
Hearing that report, the last trace of caution vanished from Bandit King Hei Feng’s mind.
“Hahaha! I told you that seventeen-year-old boy is just a pampered young master who only knows how to bake bread and dig water ditches!” Hei Feng roared, yanking the reins of his nine-foot Ferghana Blood-Stallion as he raised his four-hundred-pound Rank 3 Spiked Wolf-Fang Mace toward the blazing midday sun!
WHOOOOOOOSH!
A terrifying wave of crimson Rank 3 Peak Internal Qi erupted from Hei Feng’s body, swirling ten feet into the air in the shape of a howling blood-wolf!
“Black-Wind Brothers!” Hei Feng’s thunderous voice echoed off both valley ridges. “Inside that wall are fifty thousand silver taels of white salt, ten thousand acres of wheat, warm houses, and pots of boiling lamb stew! The boy on the wall doesn’t even have soldiers on the battlements! All twelve cavalry wedges—FULL GALLOP CHARGE! Don’t slow down until our horses’ hooves trample straight into his town hall!”
“KILL! KILL! KILL!”
Three thousand Black-Wind Heavy Riders let out a bloodcurdling roar, lowered their visors, and slammed their iron spurs into their warhorses’ flanks!
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
Twelve thousand iron-shod hooves struck the desert earth in unison!
Like a black iron avalanche rolling down a mountainside, all three thousand armored horsemen—from Hei Feng and Vanguard Captain Ma in the First Wedge to the pack-horsemen in the Twelfth Wedge—surged forward into the two-mile valley!
Within twenty seconds, the cavalry column built up to a full, thundering gallop of thirty-five miles per hour!
The ground shook so violently that three miles back on the hill ridge, the wine cups inside Fatty Qian’s palanquin danced off the table.
“Look at that charge!” Rat-Face Sun cheered from his palanquin window, waving his silk fan excitedly. “Three thousand heavy horsemen charging at full speed down a straight corridor! Even if an Immortal stood in front of that gate, he’d be stomped into meat jelly! Tell our five hundred militia and fifty empty wagons to start rolling down the hill so we can load the silver first!”
Down in the valley, the twelve thundering cavalry wedges swept past the one-mile marker... the eight-hundred-yard marker... the five-hundred-yard marker!
By now, the entire one-and-a-half-mile-long dragon of three thousand galloping warhorses had entered the heart of the [Two-Mile Super-Glue Quicksand Belt]!
Up on the gate tower under his silk parasol, Pei Xuan took a last sweet bite of his chilled greenhouse watermelon, set the rind neatly on Hong Ling’s silver tray, and wiped his fingers with a damp towel.
“All three thousand horses are inside the belt,” Pei Xuan said softly, looking down at the glowing blue button flashing on his RTS screen. “Not a single straggler left outside.”
Pei Xuan tapped his finger once on the armrest of his rattan chair.
“Lock the road.”
HUMMMMMMMMMM—SCHLUUUUUUUUUUCK!
Across all two miles of the northern valley at the exact same millisecond, the fused layer of [Black-Pit Tar-Mud + Golden Dragon-Camel Saliva] switched from [Scout-Proof Solid Mode] to [Cavalry Capture Mode]!
As twelve thousand galloping iron horseshoes slammed down onto the valley floor with eleven thousand tons of force, the ground beneath them suddenly softened for exactly three-tenths of a second into a warm, elastic, shock-absorbing cushion!
SHWUMP!
Every single warhorse’s hooves sank six inches deep into the silver-gray compound—absorbing one hundred percent of the forward braking shock so that not a single horse’s shinbone, knee joint, or ankle tendon suffered the slightest strain!
And then, three-tenths of a second later—
CLACK!
The fifty gallons of mutated Golden Dragon-Camel saliva linked every molecule of black tar-mud into an unbreakable elastic matrix that clamped around all twelve thousand iron horseshoes with five thousand pounds of solid holding force per leg!
What happened in the next second defied every law of warfare that the northwest border had ever seen.
Three thousand warhorses galloping at thirty-five miles per hour didn’t trip, didn’t tumble over each other, and didn’t crash into a bloody pile.
Instead, all three thousand horses simply stopped dead in a single stride, standing upright on all four legs six inches deep in the valley floor like three thousand life-sized bronze horse statues bolted into solid iron bedrock!
However, while the three thousand warhorses stopped instantaneously because their hooves were welded to the earth, the three thousand armored bandits sitting on top of them were still traveling forward at thirty-five miles per hour!
“WHOA—WHAT THE—AAAAAGH!”
SWOOSH! THUD! CLANG! SPLAT!
In the front four cavalry wedges, over nine hundred bandits who had been leaning forward in their stirrups waving their sabers didn’t have time to grab their saddle-horns!
Like nine hundred black-armored frogs launched from catapults, they flew straight over their horses’ heads, sailed fifteen feet through the air, and slammed down onto the valley floor right in front of their horses’ noses!
And the instant their three-hundred-pound armored bodies hit the sand—
SCHLUCK! CLACK!
The pressure-sensitive glue cushioned their landing and immediately welded them fast to the road in whatever ridiculous position they landed in!
- Three hundred bandits landed flat on their iron breastplates with their arms and legs spread-eagled like giant black starfish, unable to lift their chests or chins an inch off the sand! - Four hundred bandits landed butt-first between the rear hooves of the horses ahead of them, sitting folded in half like shrimp with their iron pants glued permanently to the floor! - Two hundred unlucky bandits landed headfirst with their curved steel helmets plunged six inches into the glue, sticking straight up in the air like two hundred black iron radishes with their legs kicking helplessly at the sky!
“What happened?! Why did my horse turn into a stone statue?!” Vanguard Captain Ma—who had only stayed in his saddle because both of his iron boots were jammed deep into his heavy stirrups—yelled in total bewilderment!
He slashed his horsewhip across his warhorse’s rump. “Run! Lift your hooves, you stupid nag! We’re only four hundred yards from the gate!”
His warhorse neighed piteously, its muscles trembling and sweat pouring down its neck as it pulled upward with all four legs—and couldn’t lift a single horseshoe even a hair’s breadth out of the gray glue!
“Captain Ma! Don’t whip the horse! Help me up first!” a squad leader glued flat on his belly right underneath Captain Ma’s horse cried out, straining until his face turned purple. “The sand is bewitched! My breastplate and both my elbows are stuck to the ground! Throw me a rope!”
“Why are you lying down on the job, Big Liu?! Grab my hand!”
A burly rider in the third row leaned down from his saddle, unbuckled his feet from his stirrups, and jumped down onto the ground to pull his brother up.
THUD—SCHLUCK!
The moment the burly rider’s boots hit the sand with the weight of his heavy scale armor, both of his boots sank ankle-deep and locked solid! Losing his balance, he pitched forward on top of Big Liu and braced both iron-gauntleted hands on the sand beside Big Liu’s ears—SCHLUCK!
Now the burly rider was glued on all fours in a push-up position directly straddling Big Liu’s back, with their two helmets knocking together!
“Get off my back, you idiot!” Big Liu howled from underneath. “Now neither of us can move!”
“Wait, my right hand is still free! Let me brace against your helmet and push myself up—”
CLACK!
Because the burly rider’s gauntlet had a drop of sticky gray glue on the palm, the moment he slapped his hand onto Big Liu’s steel helmet, his gauntlet was glued permanently to the top of Big Liu’s head!
Across the entire two-mile valley, a scene of pure slapstick pandemonium unfolded under the midday sun:
Three thousand ferocious Black-Wind Heavy Cavalrymen were completely immobilized without a single arrow having been fired!
Those still sitting on their horses found their stirrups and horse hooves welded to the ground; those who had flown off were stuck like flies on sticky paper in a thousand bizarre postures; and every time a bandit touched the ground and then touched his own armor, his horse, or his buddy, another limb got glued into a giant, squirming human knot!
Up on the northern hill ridge behind the valley, fat Lord Qian, rat-faced Lord Sun, and scarred Lord Li poked their heads out of their palanquins and stared down at the motionless black army in stunned silence.
“Why... why did they stop charging?” Fatty Qian rubbed his eyes three times, thinking the desert sun was giving him hallucinations. “Three thousand heavy horsemen were galloping at full speed a second ago! Why are nine hundred of them lying on the ground sticking up like black turnips, and why isn’t a single horse moving its legs?!”
Down at the front of the first cavalry wedge, three hundred yards from the north gate tower, Hei Feng, the Black-Wind Bandit King, looked down at his nine-foot Ferghana Blood-Stallion—whose four massive hooves were buried six inches deep in the shimmering gray glue—and his scarred face twisted into a mask of volcanic rage.
“Pei Xuan!! You shameless, sneaking little rat!” Hei Feng’s roar rattled the desert air as he pointed his four-hundred-pound Spiked Wolf-Fang Mace at the silk parasol on the city wall. “What kind of cowardly glue-mud did you smear on the highway?! If you have any guts, unglue my horses and fight my three thousand Black-Wind Riders like a man! Crossbowmen—ignore your horses! Raise your crossbows from the saddle and shoot that boy into a hedgehog!”
Two thousand riders who were still upright in their saddles clumsily fumbled for the military crossbows hanging from their saddle-hooks.
Up on the gate tower of Dry-Well Town, Pei Xuan didn’t even stand up from his rattan chair.
He simply picked up his teacup, took a sip of cold plum tea, and glanced ten paces to his left, where Sun Baolu (“Boom-Pot Sun”) was standing on a wooden box behind the steaming purple-gold [Nine-Dragon High-Pressure Alchemy Pot] with his hand resting on the main brass firing lever.
“Master Sun,” Pei Xuan said mildly, “the Bandit King says we aren’t hospitable enough. Since three thousand of his men are stuck in the sun with their mouths wide open shouting at us, why don’t you serve them our special Two-Course Appetizer?”
Sun Baolu grinned behind his peppermint-soaked mask, pulled down his quartz goggles, and slammed the brass lever all the way down:
“Twenty-tube high-pressure mortar battery—GHOST-CHILI & THUNDER-BELLEY BARRAGE—FIRE!”