Five days after the bloodless annexation of Black-Wind Fortress and the Three Oasis Towns, the northern Red-Sand Wastes had changed so completely that even migrating desert eagles got lost looking for their old landmarks.
Fifty feet beneath the desert floor, the tamed hundred-foot Frost-Crystal Sandworm (bribed with two tubs of Sun Baolu’s sweet honey-pill scraps a day) had finished boring a wide, smooth underground cargo-and-subway tunnel linking Dry-Well Town directly to the three oasis suburbs and the mountain iron mines of Black-Wind Fortress.
Above ground, along a freshly rolled six-lane black-stone highway, thirty Armored Scorpion Dump Trucks and five hundred four-horse iron wagons rumbled back and forth like a conveyor belt, hauling five hundred tons of high-grade black iron ore and eight hundred tons of smokeless spirit-coal into Dry-Well Town’s smelting district every single day!
And inside Iron Mine Number One at the foot of Black-Wind Mountain, a sight that would have made every merchant guild in the northwest faint from shock was taking place at the morning shift change.
WHAM! WHAM! KA-BOOOOOOOM!
Swinging a pair of six-hundred-pound black-iron quarry sledgehammers with both hands, seven-foot-tall Hei Feng—formerly the terrifying Black-Wind Bandit King—unleashed waves of crimson Rank 3 Peak Internal Qi that shattered a thirty-ton wall of raw iron-ore granite into neat, basket-sized chunks in ten seconds flat!
Wiping the sweat from his scarred forehead with a snow-white towel hanging around his neck, Hei Feng didn’t glare at the miners around him or demand tribute. Instead, he trotted eagerly over to the weighing scale where Abacus Su and Hong Ling were standing with a clipboard and a basket of steaming rewards!
“Bookkeeper Su! Head Maid Hong Ling! Check the scale for Team One!” the Rank 3 Peak warlord called out, his huge scarred face beaming like a schoolboy waiting for his exam score. “Yesterday my squad mined eighty-two tons of black iron ore! Today I used my Blood-Wolf Mountain-Splitting Hammer Art on the deep vein and we hit one hundred and twenty tons before lunch! Did we beat Elder Hei Ying’s road-paving crew for the Weekly Red Banner?!”
Abacus Su pushed his spectacles up his nose, checked the brass scale needle, and nodded approvingly.
“One hundred and twenty-one tons, four hundred catties! Team One takes First Place on the Municipal Production Board for the fifth day in a row!” Abacus Su announced loudly. “According to Town Law Number Twelve, Senior Quarry Foreman Hei Feng’s ninety-day debtor sentence is officially reduced by fifteen days for model productivity, and he is awarded his Fifth Little Red Paper Flower—which automatically converts into one Big Crimson Silk Rosette!”
“Bend your knees a little, big guy, I can’t reach your collar!” fifteen-year-old Hong Ling giggled, standing on tiptoe.
The seven-foot Rank 3 Peak Grandmaster who used to slaughter whole caravans without blinking immediately bent both knees into a polite half-squat so the fifteen-year-old maid could pin the shiny Big Crimson Silk Rosette right over the left breast of his clean blue work-tunic!
Then Old Guo’s kitchen assistant handed Hei Feng his First-Place Prize Basket: a whole twenty-pound roasted snow-lamb brushed with cumin chili oil, two jars of Golden-Blood Wheat wine, ten of Sun Baolu’s Chewable Meat-Flavored Stamina Pills, and a gold-stamped “Star Employee of the Month” badge that gave him VIP front-of-the-line privileges at the Dragon-Steam Public Bathhouse!
Hei Feng gently touched the Big Crimson Silk Rosette on his chest with his thick, calloused finger, sniffed the sizzling roasted lamb in his arms, and felt his nose sting with deep emotion.
And right behind Hei Feng, inside the quarry pit where three huge boulders needed to be cleared from a water drainage channel, Fatty Qian, Rat-Face Sun, and Scarred Li—the three former Oasis Town Lords—were sweating buckets in their yellow Debtor Vests as they hauled baskets of gravel under the watchful eyes of their own former oasis citizens.
“Move your fat backside, Debtor #11,001!” former Sand-Ridge Guard Captain Zhang barked, tapping his own chest where two Red Flowers shone. “If you spill one pebble on the subway tracks, you only get plain cabbage soup tonight instead of lamb stew!”
“Coming, Captain Zhang! I’m running! Look how light my feet are!” Fatty Qian wheezed—having already lost fifteen pounds of unhealthy fat in five days while his chronic gout had been completely cured by drinking Sweet-Spring water and eating Golden-Blood Millet!
***
That afternoon, back in the heart of Dry-Well Town, Pei Xuan stood on the high stone viewing platform overlooking the Eastern Military Plaza.
Gathered in neat, silent squares across the vast stone field below him stood the pride of Dry-Well Town’s expanding territory: - Three thousand Heavy Cavalrymen (combining the best Frost-Mane barbarian riders and the two thousand six hundred loyal former Black-Wind riders), mounted on three thousand gleaming, well-fed desert warhorses! - Two thousand Municipal Heavy Infantry & Wall Guards, clad in newly forged black-iron scale armor from the Black-Wind furnaces! - And standing at the front of the formation were Pei Xuan’s core leaders: General Tie Zhan, Chief Hulun, Hei Feng, Old Wei, Hong Ling, Old Guo, Sun Baolu, Abacus Su, and the five Rank 3 former Shadow-Bat Elders!
Even Ye Guhan was sitting cross-legged on the corner of the plaza’s bell-tower roof with a bowl of Old Guo’s braised beef noodles on his lap, pretending he was just sunbathing while keeping both ears perked up to watch what Pei Xuan was about to do.
Pei Xuan opened his RTS Territory Screen and looked at the staggering numbers accumulated from five straight days of thirty-five thousand loyal citizens working in harmony:
Nearly one million Loyalty Points sitting in his reserve!
“Five days ago, we took over the three largest iron mines and two richest coal veins in the northern desert,” Pei Xuan’s voice, carried smoothly by his Grandmaster Internal Qi, rang out clearly across the ears of all five thousand soldiers in the plaza. “Today, we have the finest horses, the hardest black iron, and the best alchemical stamina pills in the northwest. The only thing holding our soldiers back is that a single wooden training yard isn’t fast enough to temper five thousand warriors at once!”
Pei Xuan stepped to the front of the stone platform, stretched his right hand out toward the twenty-acre military training ground on the east side of the plaza—where five hundred tons of newly smelted Black-Wind Refined Iron Ingots sat stacked beside the main junction of Ao Ming’s Underground Dragon-Steam Pipes—and opened his 3-Slot Fusion & Building Upgrade Cube!
“Construct!” Pei Xuan commanded silently.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—HUMMMMMMMMMM!
The entire eastern district of Dry-Well Town trembled with a deep, majestic vibration as one hundred thousand Loyalty Points turned into a towering dome of golden light twenty acres wide!
Before the wide, awe-struck eyes of five thousand soldiers and thirty thousand watching townspeople, the five hundred tons of black-iron ingots melted into liquid black gold that flowed across the training ground like a rising tide!
Within ten breaths, when the golden light lifted into the clouds, the old wooden training yard was gone.
In its place stood an awe-inspiring martial fortress complex that looked like an Immortal war palace descended to earth: the [Lv.4 Dragon-Blood Martial Academy]!
Surrounding the central courtyard stood fifty vaulted Black-Iron Gravity & Dragon-Steam Arenas, their floors lined with red-copper dragon pipes that released wisps of warm, golden medicinal mist into the air.
In the center of the main plaza rose twelve towering, thirty-foot-tall Black-Iron Martial Steles arranged in a circle around a ninety-foot central Dragon-Stele Pavilion. Carved deep into the mirror-smooth faces of the twelve giant iron steles were the complete, flaw-free meridian diagrams and breathing postures of the [Rank 3 Dragon-Blood Anvil Manual]—glowing with living golden runes that automatically guided anyone who looked at them into the correct Qi circulation!
And flanking the entrance of the Academy stood ten giant Purple-Bronze High-Pressure Broth Fountains, linked directly to Sun Baolu’s Nine-Dragon Alchemy Pots and Old Guo’s soup boilers!
“Heavens above...” General Tie Zhan stared up at the twelve thirty-foot black-iron steles glowing with golden dragon runes, feeling the warm, dense Dragon-Steam inside the courtyard making his own Rank 3 blood-Qi boil with excitement. “Even the Imperial Martial Academy in the Royal Capital only has three worn-out stone tablets that only noble heirs are allowed to look at once a month! Our Dry-Well Academy lets five thousand soldiers train in a three-hundred-percent dragon-steam field every single day!”
“Don’t just look at it—everyone inside!” Pei Xuan laughed, leaping lightly from the viewing platform and soaring eighty feet through the air to land cross-legged atop the central Dragon-Stele Pavilion in the middle of the twelve giant steles. “Master Sun, Old Guo—open the ten High-Pressure Broth Fountains! All five thousand soldiers and captains: drink a full bowl of compressed stamina broth and begin the First Academy Joint Training!”
“Open the dragon valves!” Sun Baolu and Old Guo cheered in unison, pulling the levers on the ten giant pressure pots.
WHOOOOOOOOSH!
Streams of glowing, amber-gold medicinal broth—brewed under twenty atmospheres of pressure from Meat-Potatoes, Golden-Blood Wheat, Snow-Crystal Salt, Scorpion King Marrow, and Hundred-Year Desert Ginseng—poured into the five thousand stone drinking bowls lined up along the arena walls!
Every single soldier, captain, and specialist picked up a bowl and drained the warm, savory golden broth in one breath.
Then all five thousand warriors stepped into the fifty Dragon-Steam Gravity Arenas and faced the twelve towering thirty-foot Black-Iron Steles!
“Breathe in the Dragon Steam! Temper the Iron Bone! PUNCH!”
General Tie Zhan, Chief Hulun, and Hei Feng led the chant at the front of the plaza.
HA!! HA!! HAAAAAAA!!
Five thousand fists punched forward in unison! Five thousand pairs of boots stomped the heated black-iron floor!
As five thousand warriors circulated the [Dragon-Blood Anvil Manual] together inside the +300% Dragon-Steam field, the golden runes on the twelve thirty-foot steles blazed like twelve miniature suns!
The rich, twenty-atmosphere compressed medicinal broth inside the soldiers’ stomachs turned into raging rivers of pure blood-energy that scoured through their muscles, hardened their bones into dark iron-gold, and hammered against their martial bottlenecks!
Ten minutes passed. Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes!
Then, starting from the front ranks of the infantry and cavalry squares, a chain reaction of martial breakthroughs erupted across the Academy like a string of ten thousand thunderclaps!
CRACK-BOOM! CRACK-BOOM! CRACK-BOOOOOOOOM!
- In the main squares, over one thousand two hundred Rank 1 Peak soldiers and former Black-Wind riders felt their shinbones and arm bones chime like tempered steel as they surged straight into Rank 2 Early Martial (Iron-Bone Stage)! - Right ahead of them, nine hundred veteran Rank 2 Early guards and Frost-Mane barbarian warriors roared as their blood turned heavy and hot as liquid mercury, advancing in a single wave to Rank 2 Mid and Rank 2 Peak Martial (Mercury-Blood Completion)! - And in the inner circle directly beneath the twelve giant steles—where fifteen of Dry-Well Town’s elite peak-Rank-2 leaders stood—fifteen pillars of dazzling golden-crimson Internal Qi suddenly exploded through the crowns of their heads and shot twenty feet into the sky!
Look at who stood inside those fifteen pillars of Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster light:
First was Old Wei, the loyal old guard who had followed Pei Xuan into the desert with one arm and a chipped broadsword; as his Internal Qi erupted, he swung his heavy black-iron saber and sliced a thirty-foot golden blade-wave into the sky!
Second was fifteen-year-old Hong Ling, spinning her two fused meteorite-iron kitchen cleavers like twin silver windmills as a fierce Rank 3 Early Grandmaster aura blossomed around her small shoulders!
Third was fat Old Guo, laughing like a Buddha as he lifted a one-thousand-pound iron soup cauldron over his head with one hand, his chef’s apron billowing with golden Internal Qi!
And right beside them, Vanguard Captain Ma, Scout Captain Lin, Guard Captain Zhang, and nine other elite cavalry and infantry commanders all shattered the mortal barrier together, stepping simultaneously into the realm of Rank 3 Early Martial Grandmasters!
FIFTEEN NEW RANK 3 MARTIAL GRANDMASTERS BORN IN A SINGLE HOUR!
Up on the bell-tower roof outside the plaza, Ye Guhan nearly dropped his porcelain bowl of roast-duck noodles off his knees!
The proud Rank 5 Sword Genius stared wide-eyed at fifteen-year-old Hong Ling and fat Old Guo down in the courtyard.
“The maid who collects noodle money and the fat cook who boils duck soup just broke through to Rank 3 Martial Grandmasters?!” Ye Guhan whispered, his mouth twitching in disbelief. “In the Great Yan Kingdom, a single Rank 3 Grandmaster can be named a Marquis or a Border General! Here in Dry-Well Town, even the kitchen staff are Grandmasters?!”
Crack. Ye Guhan secretly broke a corner of the roof tile under his elbow and went right back to slurping his soup with a straight face.
Meanwhile, sitting cross-legged atop the ninety-foot Dragon-Stele Pavilion at the very center of the Academy, Pei Xuan closed his eyes as the massive, concentrated resonance of twelve Dragon Steles, twenty-four newly promoted or existing Rank 3 Grandmasters, two thousand one hundred Rank 2 elites, and thirty-five thousand adoring citizens poured straight into his body through the Territory Lord link!
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!
Inside Pei Xuan’s dantian and 108 meridians, the golden Dragon-Blood Internal Qi didn’t just flow—it ignited into a roaring golden furnace!
Every single bone in Pei Xuan’s body turned from dark iron-gold into a translucent, crystalline jade-gold infused with ancient Flood Dragon essence. His internal organs hummed like celestial drums, and the golden Internal Qi sea inside his dantian expanded to three times its previous size, condensing from thin golden mist into heavy, mercury-like Rank 3 Mid Grandmaster True Qi!
Pei Xuan snapped his eyes open!
Two beams of golden light flashed three feet out from his pupils. Rising to his feet atop the ninety-foot pavilion roof, Pei Xuan didn’t draw a sword—he simply raised his right hand like a knife and chopped once toward the eastern sky!
SHWIIIIIIIIIIIIING—BOOOOOOOM!
An eighty-foot-long crescent of dazzling golden Dragon-Blade Qi screamed off his fingertips, tore across three hundred yards of open sky with a thunderous roar, and sliced a low-hanging white desert cloud cleanly into two halves!
Down in the plaza, all five thousand soldiers dropped to one knee as one man, their armored fists striking their chests in a salute that shook the earth:
“CONGRATULATIONS TO THE LORD ON ADVANCING TO MID GRANDMASTER! LONG LIVE DRY-WELL TOWN!”
Pei Xuan smiled, letting the warm desert breeze stir his black-and-gold robes as his updated RTS Territory Screen flashed in golden letters before his eyes:
Twenty-four Rank 3 Martial Grandmasters, over two thousand Rank 2 Iron-Bone warriors, thirty-five thousand loyal citizens, and two hundred and fifty thousand Loyalty Points pouring in every single midnight!
Down at the foot of the pavilion, fifteen-year-old Hong Ling jumped up the stone steps three at a time, her cheeks glowing red with excitement as she waved her two gleaming kitchen cleavers.
“My Lord! Old Wei! Look at me!” Hong Ling cheered happily. “I’m a Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster now! Back when we lived in that cold back courtyard of the Iron-Wolf Marquisate, Eldest Young Master Pei Heng’s personal guards used to bully us and brag about being Rank 2 Peak! If Pei Heng dared to grab my sleeve today, I wouldn’t even need my cleavers—I could slap him across the street with the back of my hand!”
Old Wei laughed aloud, stroking his beard as his own Rank 3 Grandmaster aura hummed warmly around his scarred right arm and pinned left sleeve. “Not just Pei Heng—even the Marquis himself only has one or two Rank 3 elders in the entire Marquisate! Wait until the day Marquis Pei Zhan finds out what Your Lordship has built out here in the Red-Sand Wastes!”
Right as Old Wei spoke those words—
DING-DING-DING!
From the eastern watchtower, Scout Commander Batu came jogging up to the pavilion holding a wax-sealed intelligence cylinder brought back by his long-range desert hawk.
Pei Xuan glanced at the scout report—which triggered a golden storyline notification across his RTS screen—and a slow, wickedly amused smile spread across his face.
Pei Xuan leaped lightly down from the ninety-foot pavilion roof, landing feather-soft in front of General Tie Zhan, Chief Hulun, Hei Feng, Old Wei, Hong Ling, and Abacus Su.
“Everyone,” Pei Xuan chuckled, his eyes dancing with mirth, “it looks like you won’t have to wait long at all. Three hundred miles east in Iron-Wolf City, the granaries are running dry. Tomorrow morning, my dear father Marquis Pei Zhan and my arrogant eldest brother Pei Heng are going to muster their hungry army to march west across the desert—expecting to find thirty-five burned mud huts, collect my bones, and rob Black-Wind Fortress!”
General Tie Zhan’s eyes flashed like cold lightning as he reached for his heavy halberd. “They threw Your Lordship into a dead desert to starve, and your stepmother hired three thousand bandits to murder you! Give the order, My Lord—when they march west, our Grandmasters and heavy cavalry will ride out and flatten them!”
“Ride out and beat them in the empty sand? That would let them off way too easily,” Pei Xuan laughed, shaking his head as he looked at his booming oasis town.
“While my father’s army marches across the three hundred miles of sand dunes over the coming days,” Pei Xuan said, sweeping his arm across the horizon, “we are going to pave a ten-lane stone highway straight out to the eastern dunes and set up a municipal Highway Toll Booth at the city gate!”
Then Pei Xuan turned to the seven-foot-tall former Black-Wind Bandit King, Hei Feng, who was still proudly wearing his Big Crimson Silk Rosette and his “Star Employee of the Month” badge.
“And Foreman Hei Feng!”
Hei Feng snapped to attention, saluting with a booming roar: “Present, My Lord!”
“When my father the Marquis and my eldest brother finally arrive outside our gates expecting to see a ruined mud village,” Pei Xuan said with a grin that made everyone in the plaza burst out laughing, “you will be sitting inside that Toll Booth in our crispest blue uniform, ready to hand them a parking ticket and charge them five copper coins per horse for manure bags!”