On top of Dry-Well Town’s north wall, Sun Baolu (“Boom-Pot Sun”) was having the greatest day of his sixty-year life.
Back in the Royal Capital Alchemy Guild, whenever pressure built up inside his cauldron, seven elders would dive under the tables screaming “Sun Baolu is blowing up the hall again!” and fine him three months’ wages.
Now, standing on a wooden step-stool behind the gleaming purple-gold [Nine-Dragon High-Pressure Alchemy Pot], Sun Baolu listened to twenty thousand townspeople cheering from the rooftops behind him while twenty masked gunners stood by the twenty rifled mortar tubes waiting for his command!
“Forty atmospheres of pure Dragon-Fire compression achieved!” Sun Baolu cackled through his peppermint-soaked cotton mask, his quartz goggles flashing in the sun as he yanked the main brass manifold lever all the way back. “Open the twenty copper steam-valves! First volley—Elevations set for Near, Mid, and Far Valley—LET THEM EAT PEPPER!”
THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!
Twenty three-inch rifled iron mortar tubes barked in a thunderous twenty-gun salute!
Before the white medicinal steam had even finished puffing from the muzzles, the forty Rank 2 loader-apprentices slammed a second wave of fist-sized, sugar-glazed red clay spheres down the barrels, followed five seconds later by a third wave!
THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!
THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!
In less than fifteen seconds, six hundred Rank 3 Ghost-Chili & Thunder-Belly Pill Shells whistled high into the cloudless blue sky in thirty neat, overlapping arcs stretching across the entire two-mile valley!
Down on the valley floor, Vanguard Captain Ma and two thousand Black-Wind riders who were still stuck in their saddles had just pulled their heavy military crossbows off their saddle-hooks.
Looking up at the six hundred glossy red balls arcing gracefully across the sky, Captain Ma sneered:
“Ha! Look at those little clay marbles! They aren’t even aiming at our bodies—all six hundred shots are flying fifty feet too high! That cross-eyed old gunner on their wall couldn’t hit a barn door from ten paces! Brothers, steady your crossbows and aim for the silk umbrella—”
Captain Ma never got to finish the word “umbrella.”
Right at the apex of their trajectory—fifty feet directly above the heads of the twelve trapped cavalry wedges—the thin caramelized sugar-clay outer crusts of all six hundred shells heated up from air friction and reached their exact bursting point at the same instant!
POP-POP-POP-POP-POP-POP!
Six hundred crisp midair bursts sounded like giant festive firecrackers going off from one end of the valley to the other!
Not a single piece of dangerous metal shrapnel fell to hurt the three thousand valuable warhorses below. Instead, the six hundred super-compressed alchemical cores atomized instantaneously into a thick, rolling, rosy-pink cloud that settled down over the entire two-mile valley like a giant pink feather quilt!
Because Sun Baolu had precisely blended light Wind-Grass Ash and heavy Scorpion-Oil Vapor into the formula, the pink cloud settled into two distinct layers: one dense band floating between five and nine feet above the ground (right around the heads of every rider sitting in a saddle), and a second thin, targeted mist that curled gently along the ground around the helmets of the nine hundred riders glued flat in the sand—while leaving a clean, fresh-air breathing gap right at the four-foot nose level of the three thousand warhorses!
“Huh? Pink smoke?”
In the third cavalry wedge, a scarred bandit sergeant sniffed the air as the rosy mist wrapped around his helmet. For the first half-second, the caramelized sugar shell made the mist smell faintly like roasted sweet-potato candy.
“Bwahahaha! What kind of toddler trick is this?!” the bandit sergeant opened his mouth wide and sucked in a deep breath to laugh louder. “Pei Xuan’s alchemist is shooting pink sugar-smoke at us! I could breathe this all day and—”
Then the Twelve-Fold Compressed Mutated Ghost-Chili & Skunk-Cabbage Essence hit the wet mucous membranes of his eyeballs, nostrils, and throat!
It didn’t feel like ordinary chili powder. Because Sun Baolu had compressed ten pounds of Dry-Well Greenhouse Ghost-Chilies into each shell using Rank 3 Peak fire-Qi, inhaling one breath felt like snorting a ladle of boiling lava mixed with a thousand angry red fire-ants!
“AAAAAGH! MY EYES! MY NOSE! MY THROAT IS ON FIRE!”
The scarred sergeant’s tough, gravelly voice instantly leaped four octaves into a shrill, ear-splitting shriek! His crossbow dropped from his fingers and clattered onto his saddle-horn as both of his hands flew up to claw at his burning eyes!
Within two seconds, across all twelve cavalry wedges from the front of the valley to the rear, three thousand battle-hardened desert marauders who usually bragged about never shedding a tear even when cut by sabers burst into a simultaneous, earth-shaking fit of weeping, coughing, and violent sneezing!
“ACHOO! ACHOO! ACHOOOOOO!”
“Mother! My eyeballs are melting! Who poured boiling chili oil into the sky?!”
“I can’t open my eyes! Everything is red! Look at Little Six—he’s blowing snot bubbles as big as lanterns out of his helmet visor!”
Indeed, the compressed Ghost-Chili mist triggered an unstoppable reflex in every bandit’s tear ducts and nasal passages. Thick rivers of stinging tears poured down three thousand bearded faces, while two-foot-long ropes of clear snot gushed out of six thousand nostrils like waterfalls!
And then, the Super-Glue Quicksand claimed its second round of comedic victims.
Over five hundred bandits who had gotten drops of sticky silver-gray tar-glue on their iron gauntlets while trying to push themselves off the sand or unbuckle their stirrups instinctively brought both hands up to wipe the burning tears and snot from their faces!
SCHLUCK—CLACK!
“Mmph! MMMMMMPH!”
Five hundred iron gauntlets were instantly glued fast to five hundred noses, chins, and helmet visors!
“Captain Ma! Help me!” a bandit corporal in the first row sobbed through his fingers, both of his iron-gloved hands welded permanently over his eyes and nose like a pair of iron spectacles while snot leaked between his knuckles. “My hands are glued to my own nose! Every time I sneeze, I punch myself in the face with my own iron gauntlets! ACHOO—CLANG! Ow! My front teeth!”
“Stop whining and keep your mouth shut so you don’t breathe the smoke!” Vanguard Captain Ma roared, squeezing his streaming eyes shut while trying to wipe his face against his own shoulder armor—only to accidentally glue his left cheek to his iron shoulder-pad so his head was tilted sideways at a forty-five-degree angle! “Just hold on for a few minutes! It’s only chili smoke! Once the wind blows it away, our strong Rank 2 martial bodies will shake off a little eye-stinging in no time!”
Up on the city wall, Sun Baolu heard Captain Ma’s shout through a listening horn and grinned wickedly behind his mask.
“Only chili smoke?” Sun Baolu chuckled, holding up his pocket watch and counting down on his fingers. “Wait for the Three-Day Fermented Castor-Bean & Thunder-Belly Essence to hit their small intestines in three... two... one...”
Down in the valley, right as Vanguard Captain Ma finished shouting “our strong Rank 2 martial bodies will shake it off,” the vaporized second payload of the alchemy shells passed through three thousand pairs of lungs, entered the bloodstream, and struck the smooth muscles of three thousand digestive tracts simultaneously!
For one terrifying heartbeat, the entire two-mile valley went strangely quiet. Even the sneezing stopped.
Every single bandit—from Captain Ma in the front row to the last baggage guard in the back—suddenly froze as if struck by lightning, their bloodshot eyes opening wide in sheer, uncomprehending horror as they looked down at their own stomachs.
Then—
GUUUUUUUUUUUURGLE—BLOOOOOOORP—KA-ROOOOOOOOOAR!
A deep, wet, volcanic rumbling erupted simultaneously from three thousand bellies!
The sound of three thousand sets of intestines twisting into violent fifty-fold spasms at the exact same second echoed off the valley cliffs like an underground earthquake!
Inside every bandit’s stomach, yesterday’s half-digested mutton, this morning’s salted flatbread, and three gallons of churned digestive juice turned into a roaring flash flood battering against a single wooden dam with ten thousand pounds of hydraulic pressure!
Vanguard Captain Ma’s face—still glued sideways against his own left shoulder-pad—turned from bright chili-red to deathly chalk-white, and then to the pale green of a rotten cucumber. Cold sweat burst out of every pore on his forehead.
“Oh... oh ancestors above...” Captain Ma’s voice dropped to a trembling, desperate whimper as he abandoned all thoughts of crossbows or glory and channeled one hundred percent of his Rank 2 Peak Bone-Tempering Qi straight downward into his buttocks, clenching his cheeks together with the desperate strength of a drowning man clinging to a plank! “What... what is happening inside my belly?! It feels like ten wild horses are galloping toward my back door! Wait—my iron scale breech-guards are laced shut with twelve leather knots! Even if I wasn’t glued to the saddle, it takes three minutes to untie heavy scale pants!”
Directly underneath Captain Ma’s glued warhorse, Squad Leader Big Liu—who was lying glued flat on his chest and elbows right between the horse’s legs—heard the terrifying BLORP-ROAR coming from Captain Ma’s belly three feet above his head, while his own stomach began to churn like a washing machine!
“CAPTAIN MA!!” Big Liu shrieked at the top of his lungs, his voice cracking with mortal terror as he stared up at the bottom of Captain Ma’s saddle. “Captain Ma, we have been sworn brothers for eight years! Clench your butt! Use your Rank 2 Peak Qi! If your back gate breaks open while you are sitting directly over my head and I can’t even turn my neck away, I will bite my own tongue off and die right here!”
“I AM CLENCHING, YOU IDIOT!” Captain Ma sobbed, tears of agony and shame pouring down his sideways-glued face as his legs trembled violently in the stirrups. “My own stomach is roaring like a flood dragon! I can’t hold this for another forty seconds! Who invented this demonic alchemy?! Give me a sword through the chest instead! If I soil my armor in front of three thousand brothers in broad daylight, how can I ever show my face in the northwest again?!”
All across the two-mile valley, the ferocious, bloodthirsty Black-Wind Heavy Cavalry—whose name used to make desert babies stop crying at night—collapsed into complete, utter psychological ruin in less than twenty seconds!
CLANG! CLATTER! THUD! CRASH!
Three thousand curved sabers and five hundred military crossbows were flung into the sand as every single bandit used both hands to clutch his rumbling belly while squeezing his legs together with all his might!
“WE SURRENDER! WE SURRENDER!!”
“Lord Pei! Merciful Immortal Pei! Stop shooting the pink shells! Please!”
“My stomach! It’s coming! It’s right at the gate! I’m a Rank 2 Early cavalryman and my internal Qi is losing to my own bowels!”
“Look over there by the side wall!” a sharp-eyed bandit in the second wedge screamed, pointing a trembling finger toward the fenced clearing outside Dry-Well Town’s north side-gate, where the two hundred freshly whitewashed stone outhouses gleaming in the sun looked like two hundred heavenly temples, and the giant red billboard shone above the turnstile! “There are two hundred clean stone toilets right over there! And the sign says if we surrender our horse and sign a labor ticket, they’ll hose the glue off our boots and give us soft bamboo toilet paper AND antidote porridge!”
“I’LL SIGN! Take my horse! Take my armor! Take my silver pouch! Just unglue my boots and let me into that white hut before I explode!”
“Me first! I’ll work for a hundred days! Two hundred days! Somebody bring the red ink pad over here RIGHT NOW!”
Three miles back on the northern sand ridge, inside the three silk palanquins of the Three Oasis Town Lords, dead silence reigned.
Fatty Qian of Sand-Ridge Oasis, Rat-Face Sun of Bitter-Well Oasis, and Scarred Li of Iron-Palm Oasis leaned out of their palanquin windows, listening to the deafening chorus of three thousand tough heavy cavalrymen weeping, sneezing, and screaming “Give me toilet paper, I’ll sign the contract!”
Rat-Face Sun slowly looked down at the five hundred poorly armed oasis militiamen standing around their fifty empty loot wagons—who were all backing away up the hill with pale faces—and his knees knocked together so hard they bruised.
“Three... three thousand Black-Wind Heavy Riders...” Rat-Face Sun whispered in a tiny, squeaking voice. “Pei Xuan didn’t even open his town gate or send out a single soldier... He glued three thousand warhorses to the road and made the entire Black-Wind Army cry for a latrine with one volley of pink smoke?!”
“Wait! Look at the front of the valley!” Scarred Li grabbed Fatty Qian’s fat shoulder, pointing down toward the red silk banner at the tip of the first cavalry wedge. “Great King Hei Feng hasn’t fallen! A Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster won’t go down to laxative smoke!”
Down at the front of the valley, three hundred yards from Dry-Well Town’s north gate tower, a furious pillar of blood-red Rank 3 Peak Internal Qi suddenly blasted twenty feet into the air, blowing a clear hole right through the pink chili cloud!
At the center of the crimson Qi pillar sat Hei Feng, the Black-Wind Bandit King!
The instant the six hundred shells had popped in midair, Hei Feng’s battle-honed Grandmaster instincts had warned him of poison, and he had immediately sealed his breath and wrapped his entire head in a thick bell of Rank 3 Peak Internal Qi!
Even so, a tiny trace of the twelve-fold compressed Ghost-Chili and Thunder-Belly vapor had seeped through his skin pores—making his scarred eyes burn blood-red and causing a dangerous, rumbling gurgle deep inside his belly!
Looking behind him and seeing all three thousand of his elite horsemen throwing down their weapons and weeping for toilet paper like three-year-old toddlers, Hei Feng felt ten years of warlord pride shatter into madness!
“USELESS DOGS! SHUT YOUR MOUTHS!” Hei Feng roared—and accidentally inhaled half a breath of pink mist as he shouted, making his stomach cramp so hard his left eye twitched!
Knowing that if he stayed in the pink cloud for another ten seconds even his Rank 3 Peak sphincter wouldn’t hold out, the seven-foot Bandit King locked his bloodshot eyes on the silk parasol atop Dry-Well Town’s gate tower, where seventeen-year-old Pei Xuan was sitting calmly in his rattan chair!
“Capture the thief first, capture the king first!” Hei Feng snarled, gripping his four-hundred-pound Rank 3 Spiked Wolf-Fang Mace with both hands. “Pei Xuan! Even if you tricked my horses with glue and poisoned my men with laxatives, you’re still just a frail noble boy sitting on a wall! Once I smash your head into a watermelon right in front of your town, your guards will unglue my army on their knees!”
With a ferocious roar that shook the valley, Hei Feng channeled all his Rank 3 Peak strength into his legs and stomped down against his glued iron stirrups!
CRACK—BOOOOOOOM!
The downward explosion of a Peak Grandmaster’s leg-Qi shattered the heavy iron stirrup-straps and ripped the leather soles right off his glued boots!
Shooting upward out of his glued iron boots in his torn gray wool socks, the seven-foot Bandit King launched himself forty feet into the air like a blood-red cannonball!
TAP! TAP! TAP!
Using the Rank 3 Grandmaster technique [Treading the Wind on Empty Steps], Hei Feng kicked off the floating clouds of pink smoke three times in midair, crossing three hundred yards of open space in three seconds flat as he hurtled straight down toward the top of Dry-Well Town’s north gate tower!
Above his head, his four-hundred-pound Spiked Wolf-Fang Mace blazed with thirty feet of condensed crimson Blood-Wolf Blade-Qi, whistling down toward Pei Xuan’s skull with enough terrifying force to cleave a stone watchtower in two!