Three hundred yards of open air vanished in the blink of an eye under a Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster’s full-speed sky-leap!
Up in the blazing midday sun, Hei Feng, the Black-Wind Bandit King, looked like a falling crimson meteor—if one ignored the fact that the bottom soles of his iron boots were still glued back in his stirrups, leaving his ten hairy toes poking out of two torn gray wool socks!
Even in torn socks, however, the murderous power of a Rank 3 Peak warlord who had ruled the northern desert mountains for ten years was no joke.
The thirty-foot phantom of howling crimson Blood-Wolf Blade-Qi condensed around his four-hundred-pound Spiked Wolf-Fang Mace whistling through the air with such crushing air pressure that fifty yards before he even reached the north wall, the silk banners along the battlements snapped taut and hummed like bowstrings!
Down in the valley, through streaming tears of Ghost-Chili misery, two thousand glued Black-Wind riders craned their necks upward in one last flicker of hope.
“It’s the Great King’s Blood-Wolf Mountain-Splitting Strike!” a one-eyed bandit captain wheezed while clutching his cramping stomach with both hands. “Last year, Great King Hei Feng used that exact strike to smash the iron gate of the Silver-Sand Merchant Guild into scrap metal with one swing! That seventeen-year-old boy under the umbrella doesn’t even have a shield in his hands—he’s dead for sure!”
Yet on top of Dry-Well Town’s gate tower, not a single person screamed, ducked, or ran for cover.
Instead, fifteen-year-old Hong Ling calmly picked up the silver platter of chilled watermelon slices and stepped three paces back behind the stone table, wrinkling her nose in disgust.
“Ew! Look at that big bandit’s torn gray socks flapping in the wind!” Hong Ling complained, patting her two meteorite-iron kitchen cleavers. “My Lord, General Tie, Chief Hulun—please don’t let him land on our clean stone tiles! I just mopped this platform with Sweet-Spring lavender water this morning, and his sweaty toes look like they haven’t touched soap since the last dynasty!”
Two steps to the right, Abacus Su didn’t even look up from his leather-bound ledger as the terrifying thirty-foot crimson blade-wave screamed down from the sky. His brass abacus clicked briskly:
“Clack-clack-clack! Let the record show that Prisoner #3,001, Hei Feng, willfully stomped through one pair of iron stirrups and cracked a Grade-2 Ferghana War-Saddle during his illegal flight attempt! That is a fifteen-silver deduction from his good-behavior credit! My Lord, when you hit him back, please DO NOT aim him toward the fifty acres of glass greenhouses on the right, and DO NOT hit him into the new two hundred whitewashed toilets on the left! Only those three old, un-upgraded mud-stone storage latrines by the outer quarantine ditch are scheduled for demolition today!”
Fifty yards down the wall on the western corner turret, Ye Guhan rested his chin on his hand while chewing his third stolen golden Meat-Pill. For half a second, the proud Rank 5 Foundation Establishment Sword Genius rested his thumb on the hilt of his ancient spirit sword, ready to flick out a strand of invisible Sword Qi if Pei Xuan was in even a hair’s breadth of danger.
Then Ye Guhan sensed the boiling golden furnace of blood-and-marrow power rising beneath Pei Xuan’s black-and-gold robes—and the young Sword Immortal slowly took his thumb off his sword hilt, shaking his head.
“A mere mortal Rank 3 Peak bandit dared to jump into the face of a monster who bathes in Ancient Flood Dragon marrow?” Ye Guhan muttered to himself, reaching into his sleeve to see if he had any pill crumbs left. “I should save my Sword Qi for cutting tomorrow’s irrigation ditch.”
Even down in the central town square, through the brass speaking-tube connected to the bottom of the [Sweet-Spring Spirit Well], Ao Ming’s lazy dragon voice echoed up to the wall:
“Hey, kid! I smell a smelly little Rank 3 wolf jumping toward your roof! Do you want this old dragon to spit one mouthful of well water up the pipe and slap him into the sand? I only charge two extra roasted lamb legs!”
“Save your breath for the greenhouse pipes, Senior Ao!” Pei Xuan laughed aloud, rising smoothly from his cushioned rattan chair under the silk parasol. “Why spend two lamb legs when my generals and I haven’t stretched our shoulders all morning?”
As Pei Xuan took one calm step forward out from under the silk umbrella and planted his boots on the front stone parapet of the gate tower, General Tie Zhan stepped up on his left, and seven-foot Chief Hulun stepped up on his right!
BOOOOOOOM—ROOOOOOOOAR!
Three towering pillars of Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster Internal Qi erupted simultaneously from the top of the gate tower!
On the left, General Tie Zhan’s Rank 3 Early Tiger-Roar Blood Qi blazed ten feet high like a furnace of molten iron!
On the right, Chief Hulun’s Rank 3 Early Frost-Wolf Gale Qi howled around his giant warhammer like a northern blizzard!
And right in the center, seventeen-year-old Pei Xuan didn’t even use a weapon—as he circulated the fused [Rank 3 Dragon-Blood Anvil Manual] through his 108 meridians and the drop of refined Ancient Dragon-Marrow Essence in his heart roared to life, a blinding twenty-foot phantom of a Golden-Scaled Flood Dragon coiled around his body, turning the skin of his bare right forearm into gleaming, indestructible dragon-gold!
Thirty feet in the air above the parapet, already committed to his full-power downward smash, Hei Feng, the Black-Wind Bandit King, felt the three massive waves of Grandmaster Internal Qi slam into his face like an iron wall!
His scarred jaw dropped so low he nearly bit through his own tongue, and his bloodshot eyes bulged out of their sockets like a pair of copper bells!
“THREE... THREE RANK 3 MARTIAL GRANDMASTERS?!”
Hei Feng’s voice cracked into a high-pitched squeak of sheer terror in midair!
“Lady Wang of the Iron-Wolf Marquisate—I’ll tear your eighteen generations of ancestors out of their graves!!” Hei Feng howled inwardly as cold sweat instantly soaked his back. “That venomous woman swore to me on her family crest that Pei Xuan was a crippled Rank 1 waste guarded by a one-armed old servant and a fifteen-year-old maid! Why are there two battle-crazed Grandmaster generals standing behind him, and why does this seventeen-year-old boy’s bare arm give off the terrifying pressure of an ancient flood dragon?!”
In midair, with no foothold to kick off of, Hei Feng couldn’t pull back his downward strike even if he wanted to!
Gritting his yellow teeth until his gums bled, the Bandit King poured every last drop of his ten years of desert cultivation into the four-hundred-pound Rank 3 Spiked Wolf-Fang Mace and brought it crashing straight down toward Pei Xuan’s head!
“Even if you have three Grandmasters, nobody can block four hundred pounds of meteoric black iron with bare flesh! BREAK FOR ME!”
Pei Xuan didn’t step back half an inch.
Standing rock-steady on the parapet with his black-and-gold robe fluttering in the gale, Pei Xuan simply raised his bare right forearm—shimmering with golden Dragon-Anvil light—horizontally above his brow to meet the falling spiked mace head-on!
DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!!
A deafening metallic thunderclap—like a ten-ton bronze bell being struck by a giant’s hammer—exploded above the north gate of Dry-Well Town!
A ring of golden and crimson sparks shot thirty feet wide across the battlements!
Down in the valley, all three thousand glued bandits winced at the sonic boom, expecting to see the young lord of Dry-Well Town smashed into the stone floor.
Instead, when the flash of sparks cleared half a second later—
Pei Xuan was still standing in the exact same spot on the stone parapet, his boots not having sunk a millimeter, and his left hand still resting casually behind his back!
Wait—where his black silk sleeve had been torn away by the wind pressure, Pei Xuan’s bare right forearm gleamed like polished yellow gold under the sun. Where the three-inch iron spikes of the four-hundred-pound Wolf-Fang Mace had slammed directly into his wrist bone, there wasn’t a drop of blood, a dent, or even a faint white mark on his skin!
Instead, look at the three-inch iron spikes on the head of Hei Feng’s treasured Rank 3 Wolf-Fang Mace:
Every single spike that touched Pei Xuan’s golden forearm had been flattened like soft mud!
And even more ridiculously—
CREEEEEEEEEAK—TWANG!
Unable to withstand the terrifying collision between Hei Feng’s downward swing and Pei Xuan’s immovable Dragon-Blood Anvil Body, the two-inch-thick solid black-iron shaft of the four-hundred-pound mace suddenly bent at a clean, sharp ninety-degree angle right in the middle, turning the fearsome Wolf-Fang Mace into a giant L-shaped iron stove-pipe!
BZUUUUUUUUM!
One hundred percent of the eighteen-thousand-pound shockwave bounced off Pei Xuan’s dragon-tempered forearm and surged straight back up the bent iron shaft into Hei Feng’s own hands!
“AAAAGH!”
Both webs between Hei Feng’s thumbs and forefingers split open in a spray of blood! His ten fingers flew open in spasm, the L-shaped four-hundred-pound iron mace tumbled out of his numb grip to clatter onto the flagstones, and the seven-foot Bandit King hung frozen in midair two feet in front of Pei Xuan with both of his arms shaking like dry leaves in an autumn wind!
“Your... your arm isn’t human flesh!!” Hei Feng gasped, staring at Pei Xuan’s golden forearm as if he were looking at a monster in human skin. “Even a Rank 4 Qi-Gathering Immortal’s spirit shield would at least ripple under my full-force mace! What kind of iron monster are you?!”
“In Dry-Well Town, even our road-builders eat Golden-Blood Wheat and Meat-Potatoes every day—how could the Town Lord have soft bones?” Pei Xuan chuckled, lowering his right arm without a scratch on it.
Then Pei Xuan glanced at General Tie Zhan on his left and Chief Hulun on his right.
“General Tie, Chief Hulun—remember what Abacus Su just said! Don’t hit him toward the greenhouses on the right or the new white outhouses on the left! Aim for the three old mud-stone latrine sheds by the quarantine ditch, three hundred and fifty yards straight ahead!”
“Leave the armor-breaking to me, My Lord!”
Before the stunned Bandit King could drop back down to the ground or kick off the parapet to flee, General Tie Zhan let out a booming tiger roar!
Stepping half a pace forward on Pei Xuan’s left, the burly Rank 3 border general sank his waist, twisted his iron spine, and drove both fists forward simultaneously into the center of Hei Feng’s chest!
“Rank 3 Military Secret Art: Twin-Tiger Siege-Breaker Punch!”
KA-BOOOOOOM!
Two roaring phantom tiger heads formed of dark red Internal Qi slammed squarely into Hei Feng’s protective crimson Qi barrier!
Because Hei Feng’s arms were still completely numb from the recoil of his bent mace and his stomach was cramping from the trace of Thunder-Belly gas he had inhaled earlier, his Rank 3 Peak Internal Qi shield held for less than half a second before shattering into a thousand red sparks like a dropped porcelain bowl!
CRACK-CRUNCH!
General Tie’s iron fists punched right through the shattered Qi shield and caved in the outer two layers of Hei Feng’s heavy black scale armor, knocking all the air out of the Bandit King’s lungs in a loud “OOOF!” and lifting his seven-foot body three feet higher off the stone parapet!
“My turn, Brother Tie! Watch the northern grassland polo swing!”
On Pei Xuan’s right, seven-foot-tall Chief Hulun grinned from ear to ear inside his braided beard. Instead of using the sharp spike of his massive frost-iron warhammer—which might kill the Bandit King and waste a perfectly good Rank 3 Peak quarry laborer—Chief Hulun turned the flat, broad side of his eighty-pound hammer head horizontally like a giant wooden paddle!
Stepping in like a batter hitting a home run, Chief Hulun swung the flat side of his frost-iron hammer in a wide horizontal arc that smacked the airborne Bandit King squarely across his armored left hip and backside!
WHAAAAAAAACK!
“YEEEEEOOOOW!”
With a resounding slap that echoed across the valley, the seven-foot-tall Black-Wind Bandit King was spun around three times horizontally in midair like a giant black spinning top, until he was floating horizontally belly-up right in front of Pei Xuan!
And right at that exact split second, Pei Xuan took a half-step forward.
Inside Pei Xuan’s dantian and 108 meridians, his Rank 3 Early Dragon-Blood Internal Qi roared like a golden tsunami. A dazzling golden dragon head condensed around his right fist, illuminating the entire gate tower in brilliant gold light!
“Three hundred and fifty yards, straight down the middle, third shed on the end,” Pei Xuan sighted along his knuckles with a grin and punched straight upward into the center of the spinning Bandit King’s dented breastplate:
“Dragon-Blood Anvil Fist—HOME RUN!”
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!
A visible white ring of compressed air—a true sonic boom—exploded around Pei Xuan’s fist!
Even though Pei Xuan deliberately spread the impact across the wide iron breastplate so he only cracked three of Hei Feng’s ribs without rupturing his internal organs, the raw kinetic propulsion of that single Dragon-Anvil punch was beyond belief!
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH—MY STOMAAAAAACH—!”
Leaving a long trail of torn gray sock-threads and waving his arms and legs like a giant flying turtle, Hei Feng, the Black-Wind Bandit King (Rank 3 Peak Grandmaster), shot backward off the north gate tower at sixty miles per hour!
He flew in a high, graceful parabola three hundred and fifty yards back up the valley road—sailing fifty feet above the heads of his First Cavalry Wedge, his Second Cavalry Wedge, and his Third Cavalry Wedge!
Down in the glue below, Vanguard Captain Ma and three thousand weeping, stomach-clutching bandits tilted their heads back and watched in utter, soul-crushing silence as their invincible Rank 3 Peak Great King sailed overhead through the pink sky, screaming the whole way!
And at the end of his three-hundred-and-fifty-yard flight, right beside the outer quarantine ditch where three old, empty mud-brick latrine sheds stood waiting for demolition—
CRASH!! BAM!! KA-BOOOOOOOM!!
Hei Feng plunged headfirst through the thatched roof of Old Shed Number One, smashed straight through the mud-brick partition wall of Old Shed Number Two, and crashed into the stone rubble floor of Old Shed Number Three!
A geyser of broken roof tiles, rotten wooden boards, and dry mud dust erupted twenty feet into the air as all three old sheds collapsed into a neat pile of rubble!
When the dust cloud settled three seconds later, the entire northern valley was so quiet you could hear a scorpion blink.
Sticking straight up out of the top of the collapsed latrine rubble pile were two big, hairy legs wearing torn gray wool socks.
The two sock-clad feet twitched once... twitched twice... and then flopped outward in a neat “V” shape as the terrifying Black-Wind Bandit King passed out cold!
Up on the battlements of Dry-Well Town, Abacus Su lowered his brass telescope, nodded in deep satisfaction, and checked off a box in his ledger.
“Bullseye! All three scheduled demolition sheds flattened in one shot! Zero damage to the new facilities, and you just saved the municipal construction crew two hours of sledgehammer work, My Lord!”
Three miles away, up on the northern sand ridge, the three silk palanquins of the Three Oasis Town Lords shook as if hit by an earthquake.
Fatty Qian of Sand-Ridge Oasis, Rat-Face Sun of Bitter-Well Oasis, and Scarred Li of Iron-Palm Oasis stared down through their brass spyglasses at the two wool-socked feet sticking out of the collapsed toilet rubble.
Then they looked up at the gate tower of Dry-Well Town, where seventeen-year-old Pei Xuan was calmly sitting back down in his rattan chair under the silk umbrella while Hong Ling poured him a fresh cup of iced plum soup.
THUD!
Fatty Qian’s three-hundred-pound body slid right off his palanquin seat onto the floor, his trousers turning dark and wet at the crotch before he had even smelled any laxative smoke!
“G-G-Grandmasters! Three Rank 3 Martial Grandmasters!!” Fatty Qian shrieked in a voice like a stuck pig, scrambling out of his palanquin on hands and knees. “Hei Feng—the Rank 3 Peak monster who terrified the entire northern desert for ten years—got his four-hundred-pound iron mace bent into an elbow on Pei Xuan’s bare arm, and got punched three hundred and fifty yards into a toilet!!”
“Run!! Don’t look back! Leave the fifty empty wagons!” Rat-Face Sun and Scarred Li didn’t even climb back into their palanquins—they shoved their own grooms off two fast horses, jumped into the saddles, and whipped the horses until they bled, fleeing northward toward the Three Oasis Towns at breakneck speed while their five hundred terrified oasis militiamen threw away their spears and scattered after them like frightened rabbits!
On top of the north wall, General Tie Zhan dusted off his knuckles and pointed toward the fleeing dust cloud on the northern ridge.
“My Lord, those three Oasis Town Lords just wet their pants and ran! Should Chief Hulun and I take the Scorpion Buses and catch them before they lock their oasis gates?”
“Let them run all the way back to Sand-Ridge Oasis and lock their gates as tight as they want,” Pei Xuan smiled, picking up a fresh slice of red watermelon. “By the time they tell their guards how we beat the Black-Wind Bandit King in four seconds, not a single soldier in the Three Oasis Towns or Black-Wind Fortress will dare to hold a spear when we arrive at sunset!”
Pei Xuan stood up, walked to the front of the parapet, and looked down at the three thousand glued, weeping, stomach-clutching Black-Wind riders in the valley below—whose sixty-second intestinal timer had just hit five seconds remaining!
“Abacus Su,” Pei Xuan called out with a grin, “our three thousand new cavalrymen and road-builders are about to burst. Open the side gate and start selling toilet tickets!”