Pei Xuan walked up to the roof of the Lord’s Keep at the center of Dry-Well Town. From here, he could see all four districts stretching out across the oasis valley: the green willow residential avenues in the center, the smoking iron blast furnaces in the north, the ten thousand acres of golden wheat in the west, and the busy salt and scorpion-bus depots in the south.
“Thirty-five thousand citizens,” Pei Xuan murmured, looking at the glowing gold button at the top of his RTS interface. “A Level 3 Town is getting too crowded for us anyway. And if my father brings ten thousand hungry men who end up staying here as debtor-workers, we are going to need a lot more housing and a much bigger wall.”
He reached out his finger and pressed `[UPGRADE TERRITORY TO LEVEL 4: RED-SAND OASIS CITY (Cost: 200,000 LP)]`.
At the same time, he opened the Fusion Cube floating beside the upgrade panel and tossed in three extra items he had been saving in his warehouse:
1. [10,000 Tons of Black-Wind Mountain Magnetite Iron Ore]
2. [5,000 Barrels of Elastic Sand-Rubber Sap]
3. [100 Drops of Ao Ming's Shed Dragon-Scale Powder]
“Fuse into the city wall upgrade!” Pei Xuan commanded, adding another 50,000 LP to the cube. “And connect the Sweet-Spring Well’s underground water veins to every single street!”
HUMMMM—BOOM!
A deep, golden rumble rolled out from beneath the Sweet-Spring Spirit Well at the heart of the city. It was not an earthquake that knocked things down—instead, every citizen standing on the streets felt a warm, soothing wave of energy rise through the soles of their shoes.
Out at the perimeter of the town, the twenty-foot-tall Elastic Iron-Mud Walls suddenly began to glow with lines of liquid gold and dark purple metal!
Before the wide eyes of thousands of cheering townspeople and former Black-Wind bandits, the walls rose higher and higher into the desert sky—thirty feet, forty feet, fifty feet tall! The rough mud-brick surface melted and re-formed into seamless, interlocking blocks of gleaming Black-Iron Dragon Stone, twenty-five feet thick at the base, with battlements wide enough for four Scorpion Buses to drive side by side along the top!
WHOOSH!
A wave of cool, flower-scented air swept across the newly expanded city.
In the residential district, a Frost-Mane barbarian woman who had been carrying a wooden bucket toward the street well stopped in shock as a brass faucet sprouted right out of her stone kitchen wall. When she twisted the little brass handle, crystal-clear, icy-sweet spirit water gushed out into her sink!
“Husband! Come look!” she screamed with joy. “The Lord put the Spirit Well right inside our kitchen! We don’t even have to carry buckets anymore!”
Out on the main avenues, the dusty dirt shoulders vanished beneath smooth, white-and-gray interlocking marble tiles. Hundred-year-old desert willow trees along the sidewalks grew ten feet taller in a matter of breaths, their drooping green branches weaving together overhead like a natural green roof that blocked the harsh desert sun.
And stretching straight out from the towering fifty-foot East Gate, a massive Ten-Lane Spirit-Paved Highway unrolled across the red sand dunes like a giant gray carpet of solid granite! Every hundred yards along the ten-lane highway, carved stone pillars rose from the ground holding glowing white quartz streetlamps and painted iron signs that read:
* [WELCOME TO RED-SAND OASIS CITY — SPEED LIMIT: 2 SCORPION-GALLOPS] * [NO LITTERING OR HORSE DUNG ON THE PAVEMENT — FINE: 50 COPPER COINS OR 3 DAYS SHOVELING]
Right above the heads of the thirty-five thousand citizens, thousands of floating Loyalty bars flickered and jumped upward at the exact same time!
* [Citizen Li Er (Blacksmith) — Loyalty: 82 -> 94/100! Thought: “Running spirit water in my bathroom! Even the King of Great Yan has to squat over a chamber pot, while I have a flush toilet!”] * [Former Black-Wind Bandit Captain Zhao — Loyalty: 66 -> 85/100! Thought: “My old bandit cave had scorpions in my boots. Here I get a two-story stone house with floor heating and tap water! Who would ever go back to being a bandit?!”]
Down at the central noodle stall, Ye Guhan—the aloof Rank 5 Foundation Establishment sword genius who wore patched white robes and carried his ancient sword on his back—was holding a pair of bamboo chopsticks over his third bowl of braised beef noodles.
As the Level 4 upgrade wave passed under his bench, the wooden stool beneath his backside turned into a carved cooling-jade bench, and a clean brass drinking fountain popped up beside his elbow.
Ye Guhan froze. He stared at the brass faucet, then looked up at the fifty-foot Black-Iron Dragon Walls shining in the distance.
“This mortal town...” Ye Guhan muttered under his breath, his ears turning slightly pink as he quickly took a big gulp of beef broth to hide his shock. “How did the masonry change in the blink of an eye? Could it be that Pei Xuan’s ancestor buried an ancient Earth-Shaping Array under this oasis? Hmph... whatever! It has nothing to do with me! I am only staying here because I accidentally cracked half a curbstone yesterday while swatting a fly...”
Above Ye Guhan’s head, Pei Xuan watched the floating bar twitch: `[Ye Guhan (Rank 5 Foundation) — Loyalty: 59.4 -> 59.8/100!]`
“Fifty-nine point eight!” Pei Xuan groaned up on the keep roof, slapping his forehead. “Brother Ye! Can’t you just admit you like the city and give me that last zero-point-two percent?! That’s a hundred thousand points a day you’re holding hostage!”
Still, even without Ye Guhan crossing 60, the massive jump in citizen comfort and the arrival of three thousand border miners and herders who had been camping outside the old walls immediately triggered a system notification!
“Two hundred and ninety thousand points a day!” Pei Xuan grinned.
Just then, a loud, wet GRUMBLE-ROAR echoed up from the twenty-foot-wide stone rim of the central Sweet-Spring Well.
A giant, horned silver head—as big as a two-story house—poked halfway out of the bubbling water. Ao Ming, the ancient Flood Dragon whose power was currently sealed at Rank 3 Peak by the black iron nail deep underground, rested his scaly chin on the marble rim of the well and sniffed the air greedily.
“Kid!” Ao Ming’s booming voice rumbled across the square like distant thunder, though none of the passing townspeople were scared anymore—in fact, three little kids ran over and threw roasted peanuts into the dragon’s open nostrils, making Ao Ming sneeze a tiny puff of warm sparkles. “I felt the earth veins shake! And Old Guo’s apprentice just yelled down the pipe that if I spit a cloud over the eastern sand dunes tomorrow, I get ten whole roasted lambs brushed with honey and double Sichuan pepper! Is that true?!”
Pei Xuan walked down the stone stairs of the keep and patted the Flood Dragon’s wet silver snout.
“Not just ten honey-roasted lambs, Senior Ao,” Pei Xuan said with a smile. “I also had Boom-Pot Sun brew a barrel of [Rank 3 Spicy Dragon-Marrow Chili Sauce] using the pressure cauldron. One spoonful will warm your scales all the way to the tip of your tail.”
Ao Ming’s golden vertical pupils widened until they filled his whole eye sockets. A bucket-sized drop of dragon drool splashed onto the cobblestones.
“Deal! Tell me who needs drowning!” Ao Ming roared, thumping his chin against the well rim. “Even with this cursed black nail pinning my tail down in the cavern, I can still blow a three-mile rainstorm out my nose! Where do you want the mud?”
Pei Xuan pointed east, beyond the ten-mile stone highway, to a low basin of soft yellow clay-sand twenty miles away where the Iron-Wolf Marquisate’s ten-thousand-man army would have to march tomorrow morning before reaching the highway entrance.
“My father and my eldest brother are marching through that clay basin right now with ten thousand men and five hundred heavy ox-carts,” Pei Xuan explained calmly. “They think the desert is bone-dry. Wait until their eight thousand rear infantry and ox-carts walk right into the middle of Dry-Gulch Basin—then give them twenty minutes of heavy rain!”
Beside Pei Xuan, General Tie Zhan blinked around his pork bun. “Wait, My Lord. If Senior Ao floods Dry-Gulch Basin, the Marquis’s five hundred heavy ox-carts and eight thousand foot soldiers will get bogged down waist-deep in sticky clay-mud! Only the Marquis, Pei Heng, and their two thousand horsemen at the front will make it onto our ten-lane highway first!”
“Exactly,” Pei Xuan smiled, tapping his temple. “Divide and conquer! Look at their army: Marquis Pei Zhan and Pei Heng are arrogant nobles riding at the front with two thousand elite riders, while the eight thousand foot soldiers behind them are starving conscripts who have been pulling heavy carts on empty stomachs for five days.”
Pei Xuan turned to Old Guo and Boom-Pot Sun, who had just rolled up pushing a row of gleaming, six-foot-tall iron cauldrons mounted on Scorpion-Bus wheels.
“Tomorrow morning,” Pei Xuan ordered, “once Senior Ao’s rainstorm traps the eight thousand starving foot soldiers in the mud ten miles outside the city, they will be cold, wet, exhausted, and abandoned by the Marquis’s vanguard. While the Marquis and Pei Heng ride ahead onto our highway and get stopped at our Toll Booth...”
Old Guo slapped his round belly and laughed loudly, waving a giant iron soup ladle the size of a shovel. “While they are stuck in the mud, Master Sun and I will drive twenty cauldrons of boiling [Rank 2 Braised Mutton & Meat-Potato Stew] right up to the edge of the mud pit with giant wind-fans!”
“And I added three pinches of [Five-Spice Appetite-Opening Powder] to every pot!” Boom-Pot Sun cackled, adjusting his soot-stained goggles. “One whiff of that steam from two miles away makes a hungry man’s stomach growl so loud it echoes! If those eight thousand soldiers don’t trade their spears for a soup bowl within half an hour, I’ll eat my own cauldron!”
Abacus Su adjusted his spectacles and held up ten thick stacks of freshly printed paper forms.
“And I have already printed eight thousand [Voluntary Citizenship & Road-Building Employment Contracts]!” Abacus Su beamed. “Meanwhile, for the two thousand horsemen riding with the Marquis onto our Ten-Lane Highway, Hei Feng and fifty former Black-Wind Captains are already putting on their blue Municipal Traffic Officer uniforms at the East Gate Toll Booth!”
Hei Feng—the seven-foot-tall Black-Wind Bandit King—marched over wearing a freshly ironed dark blue coat, a tall peaked cap, and a shiny brass badge pinned to his chest that read: [CHIEF TOLL OFFICER HEI — STAR EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH].
He held up a heavy iron ticket-puncher and grinned from ear to ear.
“My Lord, don’t worry!” Hei Feng boomed, his eyes gleaming with excitement. “Last month Lady Wang paid me fifty thousand silver taels to kill you, and now her husband is riding straight to my toll booth! I memorized all forty-eight rules of the Red-Sand City Traffic Code! If the Marquis’s horse drops a single turd on our new granite highway without a manure bag tied to its tail, I’m writing him up on the spot!”
“Hold on, Hei Feng,” Pei Xuan said, his eyes glinting as a new idea struck him. “Since my father is a Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster and has two thousand armored riders with him, what if he gets angry at the Toll Booth and tries to smash the wooden barrier with his horse?”
Hei Feng scratched his thick black beard. “Well, My Lord, I am also a Rank 3 Peak Grandmaster, so I can trade thirty blows with him, or General Tie and Chief Hulun can jump out and sit on him—”
“No, no, fighting right away isn’t civilized enough for a Level 4 Regional Capital,” Pei Xuan chuckled, shaking his head. “In our Red-Sand Oasis City, public infrastructure must be able to teach rule-breakers a lesson all by itself!”
Pei Xuan opened the Fusion Cube again and selected three items from the municipal warehouse:
1. [The East Gate Highway Toll Barrier Arm]
2. [500 Jin of Leftover Rank 3 Elastic Iron-Mud]
3. [1x Automated Spring-Loaded Flyswatter Blueprint]
ZING!
Ten miles down the newly paved granite highway, right where the ten lanes met the desert sand at the outer checkpoint, the red-and-white painted barrier pole beside the wooden toll booth flashed with a hidden golden light and settled into its iron bracket.
“Now that is what I call modern traffic control,” Pei Xuan nodded in satisfaction, his remaining balance sitting at a comfortable 120,000 LP.
Just then, Hong Ling came trotting out of the textile workshop behind the keep, followed by twenty barbarian women carrying huge bundles of bright yellow cloth.
“Young Master! Look!” Hong Ling held up two freshly sewn vests that were so bright yellow they practically glowed in the afternoon sun.
The first vest was stitched from rough hemp and had big black block letters painted across the front and back: [VIP DEBTOR #8,888 — YOUNG MASTER PEI LONG (ARROGANT BRAT DIVISION)]
The second vest was even more eye-catching. It had little fake cloth tassels sewn onto the shoulders and bold red characters across the belly: [SUPREME DEBTOR #9,999 — FORMER MARQUIS, CURRENT DITCH-DIGGER CAPTAIN]
Abacus Su adjusted his spectacles and nodded approvingly. “Miss Hong Ling’s needlework is truly top-notch! Look at the double stitching on the armholes! Even if the Marquis flexes his Rank 3 Grandmaster muscles, he won’t be able to rip this vest without paying a fifty-silver ‘Municipal Uniform Destruction Fine’!”
“Wait,” Chief Hulun of the Frost-Mane Tribe asked, scratching his braided hair with a grin. “Lord Pei, what about the ten thousand Scorpion-Bus passengers and our barbarian sheep-riders? Should we hide them inside the walls tomorrow so the Marquis doesn’t get scared away before he reaches the toll booth?”
“Hide them? Why hide?” Pei Xuan laughed, waving his hand toward the busy streets. “Tomorrow is our regular market day! I want the Armored Scorpion Buses running on their normal schedule up and down the Ten-Lane Highway! I want the schoolteachers taking the children on their morning field trip to the wheat farms! I want Old Grandma Zhang sweeping the street corner just like she does every morning!”
Pei Xuan’s eyes narrowed with amusement as he looked out over the thriving city.
“My father and Pei Heng think they are the high and mighty rulers of the northwest, while we are starving dogs eating sand in a dry pit. Nothing will crush their arrogant pride harder than realizing that while their Iron-Wolf City is starving to death in a drought, even an ordinary street sweeper or a traffic guard in my city lives ten times better—and hits ten times harder—than their elite guards!”
Down in the central well, Ao Ming let out a happy rumble and blew a ring of misty white water vapor a hundred feet into the air.
“Kid! Tell Old Guo to put the ten lambs on the spit right now!” the ancient Flood Dragon roared cheerfully. “My scales are tingling! Those ten thousand fools just camped inside Dry-Gulch Basin for the night! Tomorrow at sunrise, this old dragon is going to give them a morning bath they will never forget!”
Pei Xuan looked at his band of specialists—a greedy flood dragon, a gluttonous general, an exploding alchemist, a demonic bookkeeper, and a terrifying bandit king who was thrilled to be a traffic cop—and couldn’t help feeling a warm sense of pride.
He turned his gaze toward the eastern horizon, where a tiny dark line of dust was just beginning to appear twenty miles away.
“Get a good night’s sleep, everyone,” Pei Xuan said softly. “Tomorrow, the Iron-Wolf Marquis comes to collect my bones. Let’s make sure he pays the entrance toll first!”