At the crack of dawn, twenty miles east of Red-Sand Oasis City, the ten-thousand-man army of the Iron-Wolf Marquisate was trudging through the bottom of Dry-Gulch Basin.
For four days, they had marched under a baking sun across cracked red dirt. The two thousand elite Iron-Wolf Heavy Riders at the front still had half a waterskin each, though their horses were foaming at the mouth and kicking up choking clouds of yellow dust. Behind them, however, the eight thousand conscripted foot soldiers pushing the five hundred empty wooden ox-carts looked like walking skeletons. Their lips were cracked and bleeding, their shoulders were raw from the hemp cart ropes, and their stomachs were so empty they could barely lift their straw sandals out of the dirt.
At the head of the column, Eldest Young Master Pei Heng wiped sweat from his forehead with a silk handkerchief and spat a mouthful of sand onto the ground.
“Bah! What a cursed ghost-land!” Pei Heng complained, Fanning himself with a folded paper fan while riding his tall black warhorse beside Marquis Pei Zhan. “Father, I can see why you threw that useless ninth brother of mine out here! Look at these barren hills—not even a single blade of grass or a wild rabbit! Pei Xuan was born with a broken dantian and weak arms; I bet he didn’t even last three days before drying up into human jerky!”
Marquis Pei Zhan squinted through the yellow dust haze toward the western ridge ten miles ahead. His throat felt like he had swallowed hot gravel, and his bad mood was growing worse by the minute.
“Stop talking and speed up the march,” Marquis Pei Zhan growled, his rough hand gripping his iron reins. “According to the old border map, Dry-Well Village is just past that western ridge, right at the foot of Black-Wind Mountain. Once we cross this clay basin, we go straight up to Black-Wind Fortress and break open the bandits’ grain caves!”
Just as the Marquis finished speaking—
GURGLE—ROOOAAAR!
Ten miles away, behind the western ridge, a strange sound echoed across the morning sky. It sounded like a giant beast burping after eating ten honey-roasted lambs.
Pei Heng blinked and looked up. “Father, did you hear thunder? How can there be thunder in the Red-Sand Wastes when Iron-Wolf City hasn’t seen a cloud in four months?”
Before Marquis Pei Zhan could answer, a massive, pitch-black cloud the size of three mountains suddenly shot up from behind the western ridge like a dark cannonball!
Powered by Ao Ming’s Rank 3 Peak Flood Dragon water-control breath, the black cloud ignored the wind direction completely. It zoomed straight across the sky, stopped directly over the middle of Dry-Gulch Basin—right above the eight thousand foot soldiers and the five hundred empty ox-carts—and opened up like a bottomless bucket!
SPLAAAASH!
It was not normal rain. It was a torrential downpour as thick as waterfall curtains!
Within thirty seconds, the bone-dry yellow clay at the bottom of Dry-Gulch Basin turned into three feet of thick, soupy, sticky yellow mud!
“Whoa! It’s raining! Open your mouths and drink!”
At first, the eight thousand starving, thirsty foot soldiers threw back their heads and cheered, catching the cool dragon-rain in their helmets and iron pots. Noticeably, the rain carried a tiny trace of Sweet-Spring Well water, instantly soothing their cracked lips and burning throats.
However, ten seconds later, the cheering turned into shouts of panic!
SQUELCH! CRACK!
“Sergeant! The cart wheels are sinking!”
“Pull! Pull harder—argh, my straw sandals got sucked off by the mud!”
“The oxen are stuck up to their bellies! They can’t move an inch!”
Five hundred heavy wooden ox-carts sank axle-deep into the churning yellow clay-mud! The more the oxen kicked and struggled, the deeper the wheels sank, until the whole five-mile column of eight thousand infantry porters was glued to the floor of the basin like flies in thick molasses!
Up at the higher northern slope of the basin, Marquis Pei Zhan, Pei Heng, and their two thousand elite Iron-Wolf Heavy Riders barely caught the outer edge of the raincloud. Wait—even worse, the rain stopped the exact second the clay basin turned into a giant mud swamp, and the black cloud zipped right back behind the western ridge as if someone had pulled it on a string!
Marquis Pei Zhan reined in his warhorse and stared back down at the basin in disbelief.
All five hundred empty grain carts and eight thousand foot soldiers were thrashing around waist-deep in sticky yellow mud. Even when the camp sergeants cracked their leather whips and screamed until their throats went hoarse, not a single cart wheel moved forward a single inch!
“My Lord!” Rear-Guard Commander Zhou came galloping up the muddy slope, his armor splattered with yellow clay from head to toe. “The clay in this basin turned into glue! It will take the eight thousand foot soldiers at least six hours to dig the five hundred ox-carts out by hand!”
“Six hours?!” Pei Heng shouted, pointing his riding whip at Commander Zhou’s nose. “Are you crazy?! Look at the sun coming out! Do you want my father and me to sit here in the mud baking for six hours while we wait for those lazy porters?!”
Marquis Pei Zhan frowned darkly. His water skin was nearly empty, and his stomach was rumbling.
“Forget the foot soldiers for now,” Marquis Pei Zhan ordered coldly, not caring a bit that eight thousand of his own men were exhausted and trapped in the mud without food. “Commander Zhou, leave four sergeants behind to whip those eight thousand porters until they drag the carts out! Once they get out of the mud, have them follow our hoofprints to Dry-Well Village!”
“And what about us, Father?” Pei Heng asked eagerly.
“You and I will take the two thousand Iron-Wolf Heavy Riders ahead right now!” Marquis Pei Zhan barked, kicking his warhorse’s flanks. “Two thousand armored cavalry is more than enough to crush any surviving desert stragglers and take over Black-Wind Fortress! By the time those slow foot soldiers drag the empty carts over the ridge this afternoon, we can already have the grain bags stacked up waiting for them to haul!”
“Yes, Father! Vanguard, follow me!”
Leaving eight thousand muddy, hungry foot soldiers groaning in the swamp behind them—where Old Guo and Boom-Pot Sun were already waiting behind a sand dune with twenty steaming cauldrons—Marquis Pei Zhan and Pei Heng led their two thousand heavy horsemen up the steep sandy slope of the western ridge.
As they climbed the last hundred yards of the ridge, Pei Heng laughed loudly to his twenty personal Rank 2 bodyguards.
“Keep your eyes open, boys! Right on the other side of this hill is Dry-Well Village! Last year the tax ledger said it had thirty-five broken mud huts, one dry hole in the ground, and a hundred half-dead beggars! First man who spots my ninth brother Pei Xuan’s white skull in the sand gets five silver taels!”
The two thousand riders chuckled darkly as their horses crested the top of the sandy ridge.
Then—
Every single horseman at the front pulled back on his reins so hard that two hundred horses reared up and neighed in confusion.
The laughter died instantly.
Nobody spoke. Nobody breathed. The only sound on the ridge was the desert wind whistling past two thousand wide-open mouths.
Below the ridge, the rough desert sand suddenly ended as if cut by a giant knife.
Starting right at the foot of the hill, a massive, gleaming Ten-Lane Spirit-Paved Highway made of smooth, interlocking gray granite blocks stretched ten miles straight west toward the horizon! The road was so wide and so flat that fifty warhorses could ride abreast without bumping stirrups!
Running down the center of the ten-lane highway was a raised white marble divider planted with blooming red desert roses and shady green willow trees. Every hundred yards along both sides of the road stood tall, carved stone streetlamps topped with fist-sized white glow-stones, alongside neat blue-and-white iron mile-markers and clean stone rest pavilions with bubbling brass drinking fountains!
And ten miles down the straight granite highway, rising above a vast ocean of emerald-green willow trees and ten thousand acres of shining golden wheat, stood a city wall so tall and so dark-purple-black that it looked like a mountain range forged out of solid iron!
Pei Heng sat frozen in his silver saddle. His mouth hung open wide enough to fit a whole duck egg.
He raised both hands and rubbed his eyes—once, twice, three times—rubbing so hard with his sandy knuckles that the corners of his eyelids actually cracked and bled!
“F-Father...” Pei Heng stammered, his voice cracking like a rooster’s as he pointed a shaking finger down at the ten-lane granite highway and the towering fifty-foot black-iron city walls in the distance. “Did... did our compass break?! Did we take a wrong turn in the mud basin and march all the way south into the Southern Imperial Capital?!”
Marquis Pei Zhan’s face was as stiff as carved wood. Even as a Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster who had visited the Royal Capital of Great Yan three times in his life, he was staring at the road below with his eyeballs nearly popping out of his skull.
“Impossible!” Marquis Pei Zhan gasped, his chest heaving. “Even the Royal Avenue outside the King’s Palace in the capital is only four lanes wide and paved with ordinary bluestone! This road is ten lanes wide, and every single slab is cut from high-grade mountain granite without a single crack between them! How much silver would it cost to pave ten miles of desert like this?! Not even the Royal Treasury has that kind of money!”
“My Lord! Young Master! Look—look at the road!”
One of the Marquis’s personal bodyguards screamed in terror, pointing down the highway.
RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE!
Coming down the westbound lane of the highway at the speed of a galloping warhorse were three massive, thirty-foot-long creatures covered in shining dark-red chitin armor!
They were Rank 2 Giant Red-Tail Scorpion Kings—beasts so deadly that meeting even one in the desert meant certain death for a whole merchant caravan!
Except right now, these three terrifying Scorpion Kings had polished wooden passenger cabins bolted onto their flat backs, complete with glass windows, brass handrails, and little yellow flags fluttering on their front pincers that read:
* [RED-SAND MUNICIPAL BUS #07 — MORNING SCHOOL & MARKET EXPRESS] * [NEXT STOP: EAST FARMING SUBURB — FARE: 1 COPPER COIN]
Inside the open windows of the first Scorpion Bus, thirty rosy-cheeked seven- and eight-year-old village children wearing matching blue school uniforms were eating buttered Golden-Blood Wheat rolls and singing a multiplication song at the top of their lungs:
“One times eight is eight! Two times eight is sixteen! If a bandit breaks a brick, Abacus Su takes his pants!”
Seated on the front driver’s seat of the lead Scorpion King was a one-eyed former desert bandit wearing a neat blue bus-driver cap. As the three giant Armored Scorpion Buses zoomed past the foot of the sandy ridge at forty miles an hour, the driver pulled a brass cord.
DING-DING!
A cheerful brass bell rang out, and the thirty-foot Scorpion King obediently clicked its giant pincers twice to signal a lane change before cruising smoothly down the highway toward the fifty-foot black-iron city gates!
Up on the sandy ridge, Marquis Pei Zhan’s warhorse was so terrified by the sight of three thirty-foot Scorpion Kings jogging down a paved road in traffic lanes that its legs gave out.
THUD!
The warhorse dropped straight to its knees in the sand, nearly pitching the dignified Iron-Wolf Marquis headfirst over its neck!
“Scorpion... Scorpion Kings pulling public passenger buses?!” Pei Heng shrieked, grabbing his horse’s mane with both hands as his teeth chattered together. “And those kids inside the bus were eating white-flour butter rolls?! Even in our Marquisate manor, we haven’t had pure white flour since the frost started!”
Marquis Pei Zhan scrambled back into his saddle, his face burning hot and red with embarrassment as he looked at the ten thousand acres of golden wheat waving in the breeze on both sides of the highway.
Each stalk of [Rank 2 Golden-Blood Wheat] stood four feet tall, heavy with plump, glowing golden grains that gave off a rich, sweet aroma of spirit energy. And flying in neat V-formations above the wheat fields were two hundred plump, iron-feathered ducks (Jet-Powered Iron-Belly Ducks) patrolling the sky like miniature fighter jets!
After ten seconds of dead shock, intense greed flared up inside Marquis Pei Zhan’s eyes, overpowering his confusion.
He drew his heavy wolf-head broadsword from its scabbard and pointed it down at the Ten-Lane Highway.
“Listen to me!” Marquis Pei Zhan roared to his two thousand heavy riders, trying to puff up his chest and restore his authority. “This land is Dry-Well Village! Thirty years ago, the King of Great Yan granted the deed of this entire western wasteland to my Iron-Wolf Marquisate! I don’t care if Pei Xuan got lucky and found a secret underground spring or if some rich merchant built a city here behind my back—every blade of wheat, every stone brick, and every copper coin inside those walls is the property of the Pei Clan!”
Pei Heng’s eyes instantly turned red with greed too. He stopped rubbing his bleeding eyelids and licked his dry lips as he stared at the distant city gates.
“Father is right!” Pei Heng shouted Excitedly. “That trash Pei Xuan is still your ninth son! Under the laws of Great Yan, a son’s property belongs to his father, and once you pass the Marquis title to me, it all belongs to me! Let’s ride down this highway right now, kick open those city gates, and move into the Lord’s Mansion!”
“Cavalry! Down the hill! Onto the highway!”
Marquis Pei Zhan kicked his horse and led the two thousand dusty, mud-splattered Iron-Wolf Heavy Riders down the sandy slope and onto the gleaming granite surface of the Ten-Lane Spirit-Paved Highway.
As soon as their horses’ iron shoes clattered onto the smooth granite slabs, the riders couldn’t help gasping in amazement. Walking on this road felt like stepping onto a firm, springy carpet—even the tired warhorses suddenly lifted their heads and trotted twice as fast!
However, they had barely ridden half a mile down the highway when a huge red-and-white painted wooden pole dropped down across all ten lanes ahead of them.
Right beside the pole stood a neat blue wooden booth with a tiled roof, and a giant iron sign hanging overhead that read in three-foot-tall red letters:
[RED-SAND OASIS CITY — EAST HIGHWAY TOLL & SANITATION CHECKPOINT] [ALL HORSES MUST WEAR MUNICIPAL MANURE BAGS! VIOLATORS WILL BE FINED AND PAVED!]
Behind Marquis Pei Zhan, Deputy Captain Wu of the personal guard rode up and squinted at the giant iron letters on the sign.
“My Lord,” Deputy Captain Wu whispered, his voice shaking slightly after watching the thirty-foot Scorpion Buses zoom past them. “What does ‘Violators Will Be Fined and Paved’ mean? Don’t tell me they pave people into the road?!”
Before the Marquis could reply, a flat-bed work wagon pulled by two giant iron-horned desert oxen rumbled past them in the opposite lane.
Standing on the back of the wagon were five men wearing bright yellow vests that read [HIGHWAY DEBTOR CREW — EX-SHADOW-BAT ASSASSINS]. All five of them were Rank 3 Early Martial Grandmasters! Right now, those five former assassins were happily tossing hot black asphalt-tar onto a roadside ditch while singing a work chant:
“Shovel the sand, tamp the stone! Two bowls of roast duck and a big meat bone! If you break a brick in Red-Sand Town, Abacus Su turns your pants upside down!”
One of the yellow-vested Rank 3 assassins looked over at Marquis Pei Zhan’s dusty horses, waved a heavy iron shovel that weighed four hundred pounds, and called out in a friendly voice:
“Hey, new guys! Make sure you buy the five-copper manure bags at Officer Hei’s booth! Last week a horse bandit tried to run the toll gate without paying, and he’s still scrubbing the public toilets in District Four!”
Marquis Pei Zhan’s face twitched violently. Even the road-paving laborers in yellow vests had Rank 3 Internal Qi flowing through their arms?! What kind of monster den had Dry-Well Village turned into?!