“Halt! Why are the front riders stopping?!”
Pei Heng rode up to the front of the cavalry column, glaring angrily at the red-and-white painted wooden barrier pole blocking the highway.
Compared to the towering fifty-foot Black-Iron Dragon Walls of Red-Sand Oasis City looming behind it, the little wooden toll booth on the side of the road looked almost comical. Inside the booth, a huge man in a dark blue cotton uniform sat on a stool with his back turned, noisily slurping a large porcelain bowl of Old Guo’s braised beef noodles.
“A toll booth?!” Pei Heng sneered, pointing his riding whip at the wooden sign. “On land that belongs to our Iron-Wolf Marquisate, some country bumpkin dares to put up a wooden pole and demand toll money from my father’s army?! And what is that nonsense about horse manure bags?!”
Beside him, Marquis Pei Zhan frowned coldly, sitting tall on his black warhorse as his two thousand armored riders came to a halt behind him. After being scared by the thirty-foot Scorpion Buses on the highway a few minutes ago, the Marquis was desperate to show off his dominance in front of his men.
“Heng’er,” Marquis Pei Zhan said in a deep, arrogant voice without even looking down at the booth. “Go smash that wooden pole and drag the toll collector out by his collar. Ask him who gave him the guts to block the Iron-Wolf Marquis’s banner!”
“Yes, Father! Watch me cut this pole into firewood with one swing!”
Wanting to show off his Rank 2 Peak Bone-Tempering strength, Pei Heng didn’t even bother getting off his horse. He spurred his black stallion forward three paces, stood up in his silver stirrups, and channeled all his Bone-Tempering blood-energy into his heavy gold-hilted broadsword!
“Out of the way, peasant!”
Pei Heng swung his broadsword down with a fierce roar—using enough force to split a five-hundred-pound boulder in half—right onto the middle of the red-and-white painted wooden pole!
However, he had no idea that this pole was the [Rank 3 “Pay-Your-Toll” Spring-Back Barrier Gate] that Pei Xuan had fused out of Rank 3 Elastic Iron-Mud and a spring-loaded flyswatter blueprint for 15,000 LP!
BOOOOING—CLANG!
The moment Pei Heng’s broadsword struck the painted pole, not even a single speck of red paint chipped off!
Instead, the pole bent downward three feet like a giant steel bowstring, glowed with a bright golden rune that read `[TOLL UNPAID — RETURNING 200% FORCE]`, and snapped straight back up into Pei Heng’s blade!
“Wha—?!”
Pei Heng’s eyeballs nearly popped out of his head as a terrifying rebound force—twice as strong as his own full-power strike—blasted straight back through the hilt of his sword!
CRACK!
The web of his right hand split open with blood, his gold-hilted broadsword went spinning fifty feet into the air like a silver pinwheel, and the leftover force slapped Pei Heng flat across the chest!
“AAAAARGH!”
Like a ragdoll hit by a siege ram, the proud eldest son of the Iron-Wolf Marquis flew backward right out of his silver saddle, sailed over the heads of three rows of stunned cavalrymen, and landed face-first in the dirt ditch beside the highway with his silk boots sticking straight up in the air!
THUD!
Dead silence fell over the two thousand Iron-Wolf Heavy Riders.
Marquis Pei Zhan’s jaw dropped. “Heng’er?! What kind of wood is that pole made of?!”
Just then, inside the blue wooden toll booth, the giant man in the blue cotton uniform finished slurping the last drop of beef broth from his bowl.
He set the porcelain bowl down neatly on the counter, wiped his thick black beard with a clean white napkin, put on his tall blue peaked cap, and stepped out of the booth carrying a brass ticket-puncher and a stack of pink violation slips.
As the seven-foot-tall giant stepped into the sunlight—revealing the hideous diagonal knife-scar across his nose, his bulging Rank 3 Peak Grandmaster muscles, and the shiny brass badge pinned to his chest that read [CHIEF TOLL OFFICER HEI — STAR EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH]—Marquis Pei Zhan gasped so hard he choked on his own spit!
“H-Hei Feng?!” Marquis Pei Zhan’s voice went up three octaves as he pointed a trembling finger at the blue-uniformed toll guard. “The Black-Wind Bandit King?! You—aren’t you the ferocious warlord of Black-Wind Mountain who killed three royal prefects?! Why are you wearing a blue cotton jacket and standing inside a toll booth?!”
Down in the ditch, Pei Heng spit out a mouthful of dirt and scrambled behind his father’s horse in total terror. In the northwest borderlands, the name of Hei Feng, the Black-Wind Bandit King, was enough to make grown soldiers wet their armor! Just last month, Pei Heng’s mother, Lady Wang, had secretly bragged to Pei Heng that she paid Hei Feng fifty thousand silver taels to butcher Pei Xuan and wipe Dry-Well Village off the map!
Yet here stood the terrifying Rank 3 Peak Bandit King—not holding a blood-stained iron mace, but holding a little brass ticket-puncher and glaring at Pei Heng with the righteous fury of a dedicated municipal civil servant!
CLACK-CLACK!
Hei Feng punched two holes in a pink paper slip with his brass puncher, marched right up to Marquis Pei Zhan’s trembling warhorse, and slapped the pink ticket straight onto the horse’s forehead!
“Who is the Bandit King?! Don’t slander a law-abiding municipal officer on duty!” Hei Feng roared, his Rank 3 Peak Internal Qi booming like a brass bell and making all two thousand enemy warhorses take three steps back in panic. “Look at the badge on my chest, Old Man Pei! I am Chief Toll Officer Hei of the Red-Sand Oasis City Department of Highways and Sanitation!”
Marquis Pei Zhan stared at the pink slip stuck between his horse’s ears, his brain completely short-circuiting. “Department of... Highways and Sanitation?! Hei Feng, have you lost your mind?! Who made you a toll collector?!”
“Lord Pei Xuan, the Sovereign of Red-Sand Oasis City, gave me this honorable post after I passed the Municipal Civil Service Exam with a score of sixty-two out of a hundred!” Hei Feng puffed out his broad chest proudly, pointing at the red-and-white barrier pole that Pei Heng had just attacked. “And your idiot son just violated City Bylaw #1: Malicious Destruction of Municipal Traffic Equipment, as well as City Bylaw #7: Riding an Unregistered Warhorse on a Grade-3 Spirit Highway Without a Rear Manure Bag!”
Down in the ditch, Pei Heng wiped the dirt off his nose and screamed shrill and high, “My father is the Iron-Wolf Marquis! This whole desert belongs to our Pei Clan! What dog-fart City Bylaws?! Hei Feng, my mother paid you fifty thousand silver taels last month to—”
“SHUT YOUR TRAP, BRAT!”
Before Pei Heng could finish that sentence, Hei Feng stomped one heavy blue-booted foot onto the edge of the granite highway!
BOOM!
A visible ring of Rank 3 Peak golden-red Internal Qi—sharper and denser than anything Hei Feng had ever possessed when he was a wild bandit, thanks to practicing Pei Xuan’s fused [Dragon-Blood Anvil Manual] for a week—blasted across the ditch! The shockwave blew Pei Heng’s silk hat off his head and pinned him flat on his back in the weeds!
Marquis Pei Zhan’s pupils shrank to the size of pinholes.
As a Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster himself, Marquis Pei Zhan had fought Hei Feng once five years ago at the border pass. Back then, Hei Feng’s Internal Qi had been wild, muddy, and full of flaws from practicing a stolen half-manual.
Right now, however, the Internal Qi rolling off this “Chief Toll Officer” was as solid and heavy as a mountain of refined black iron! If the two of them fought to the death right here, Marquis Pei Zhan realized with a cold chill down his spine that he might not even last fifty moves against this blue-uniformed toll guard!
And worse—right behind the toll booth, the side doors of two stone guardhouses swung open!
CLACK! CLACK! CLACK!
Fifty burly men in matching blue traffic uniforms marched out in two neat lines, resting heavy Rank 2 black-iron halberds on their shoulders. Every single one of those fifty traffic guards was a Rank 2 Mid or Rank 2 Peak Bone-Tempering expert, and standing at the front of the squad were two captains whose auras gleamed with Rank 3 Early Grandmaster power!
“Two more Rank 3 Grandmasters?! Just guarding a highway toll booth?!”
Marquis Pei Zhan’s throat went completely dry. In his entire Iron-Wolf Marquisate, he was the only Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster! Even his most elite Deputy General was only at Rank 2 Peak! Yet at the outer toll booth of this desert city, three Rank 3 Grandmasters and fifty Rank 2 experts were handing out parking tickets?!
Just then, a horse-drawn carriage beside the Marquis’s vanguard—Wait, no, Marquis Pei Zhan’s warhorse, scared out of its wits by Hei Feng’s aura, lifted its tail and dropped three steaming piles of horse dung right onto the spotless gray granite pavement!
PLOP! PLOP! PLOP!
Silence fell over the checkpoint.
Slowly, fifty blue-uniformed traffic guards and three Rank 3 Martial Grandmasters lowered their eyes to stare at the three piles of horse dung on their freshly swept highway.
Hei Feng’s left eyelid twitched. He slowly pulled out a second pad of bright yellow paper—the dreaded [Sanitation & Environmental Violation Ledger] given to him personally by Abacus Su.
“He...” Hei Feng whispered, his voice shaking with pure bureaucratic joy as five Little Red Flowers practically danced before his eyes. “He actually let his horse poop on Lane Three without a manure bag! Boys! Did you all see that?! That’s a Class-A Sanitation Violation!”
“Wait! Hold on!” Marquis Pei Zhan hastily raised one hand, cold sweat pouring down his back as he felt three Rank 3 Grandmaster auras lock onto his chest at the same time. If a battle broke out right here in front of the city gates, his two thousand thirsty, tired riders would be chopped into mincemeat before they could even turn their horses around!
“Brother Meng—no, Officer Hei!” Marquis Pei Zhan forced a stiff, ugly smile onto his face, swallowing his pride for the moment. “I am Pei Xuan’s biological father! I came all the way from Iron-Wolf City to visit my ninth son! Even if you have rules here, surely a father visiting his own son doesn’t need to fight at the gate? How much is the highway toll? I’ll pay it!”
Hei Feng lowered his ticket puncher slightly and squinted at the Marquis. Above Hei Feng’s head, the tooltip visible to Pei Xuan back on the city wall read: `[Hei Feng — Thought: "Lord Pei told me to let the old man and the brat inside the city on foot after fleecing their pocket change, so we can separate them from their two thousand cavalrymen!"]`
“Hmph! Visiting your son?” Hei Feng snorted, tearing off three tickets and shoving them into Marquis Pei Zhan’s leather glove. “Even if the King of Great Yan rides down this road, he pays the toll! Here is the breakdown according to City Bylaw #4:”
Hei Feng counted on his thick fingers: “First: One copper coin per person for Pedestrian Highway Entry! Second: Five copper coins per horse for a [Municipal Canvas Manure Bag]! You have two thousand horses, so that is ten thousand copper coins—or ten silver taels! Third: Your horse just dropped three unauthorized turds on Lane Three, and your son tried to hit the barrier pole! That is a Two-Hundred-Silver On-The-Spot Sanitation & Vandalism Deposit! Fourth: Foreign military cavalry are not allowed inside the residential districts of Red-Sand Oasis City! Your two thousand horsemen must park their horses in [East Gate Parking Lot B] outside the wall! Only you, your son, and twenty bodyguards on foot may enter the city!”
“Two hundred and ten silver taels just to walk through the gate?! And I have to leave my two thousand cavalry outside in a parking lot?!” Marquis Pei Zhan’s face turned purple with rage.
Hei Feng cracked his huge iron-like knuckles with a loud POP-POP-POP, while the two Rank 3 Early captains behind him stepped forward and tapped the shafts of their black-iron halberds against the granite road, sending sparks flying.
“Pay the two hundred and ten silver taels and put the manure bags on your horses,” Hei Feng grinned fiercely, showing two rows of white teeth, “or my fifty traffic officers will confiscate all two thousand horses right now and put you in a yellow Debtor Vest to shovel that horse poop off Lane Three with a spoon! Your choice, Marquis!”
Behind the Marquis, Pei Heng crawled out of the ditch holding his bruised chest and whispered in a trembling voice, “Father... pay him! Pay him first! Let’s get inside the city and find Pei Xuan! Once we have that coward Pei Xuan in our hands, we can make him order these crazy guards to give our silver back!”
Marquis Pei Zhan took a deep, ragged breath. Thinking that Pei Xuan was still the timid, weak-willed ninth son who used to bow his head whenever the Marquis glared at him, Marquis Pei Zhan gritted his teeth, reached into his saddlebag, and slammed three fifty-tael silver ingots and six ten-tael ingots onto the counter of the wooden toll booth!
“Here is your two hundred and ten silver!” Marquis Pei Zhan hissed through clenched teeth. “Now open the gate!”
“Pleasure doing business with a civilized taxpayer!”
Hei Feng cheerfully swept the silver ingots into the municipal lockbox, tossed two thousand canvas manure-bags to the stunned cavalrymen, and pressed a green wooden button inside the booth.
DING!
The red-and-white barrier pole lifted smoothly into the air, and a hundred yards ahead, the massive fifty-foot-tall Black-Iron Dragon Gates of Red-Sand Oasis City slowly swung open with a deep, resonant rumble.
Leaving his two thousand riders outside at Parking Lot B (where Old Guo’s second squad of soup-cart ladies was already setting up free “Welcome Tea & Pork Bun Samples”), Marquis Pei Zhan and a limping Pei Heng marched through the open city gates with twenty Rank 2 Peak family guards—still foolishly believing that once they saw Pei Xuan, they would be the masters of this city!
As soon as the Marquis and his twenty guards stepped inside the shadow of the fifty-foot gate tunnel, Hei Feng leaned back against his toll booth and gave a thumbs-up toward a bronze speaking-tube mounted on the wall.
“Lord Pei! Abacus Su! The old wolf and the little wolf just paid two hundred and ten silver taels in cash and walked into District One on foot!” Hei Feng chuckled into the brass tube. “And their two thousand cavalrymen are parked right outside in Lot B staring at Old Guo’s steamed pork buns like starving dogs!”
Through the brass speaking-tube came Abacus Su’s delighted giggle and the rapid clack-clack-clack of his abacus beads.
“Well done, Officer Hei! I have already recorded five Little Red Flowers under your name for the monthly bonus! Remember to charge their two thousand horses two copper coins per hour for ‘Lot B Shade & Hitching-Post Rental’—if they stay past noon, we round it up to a full day!”
Hei Feng grinned and saluted the brass tube. “Don’t worry, Chief Su! Not a single horse leaves this lot without paying overtime!”
Out in Parking Lot B, the two thousand Iron-Wolf Heavy Riders dismounted stiffly from their horses, their faces burning with confusion and embarrassment as they tied the canvas [Municipal Manure Bags] around their warhorses’ rumps according to the instructions printed on the side of the bags.
“Brother Liu, pinch my arm,” a young cavalryman whispered to his squad leader as he buckled a yellow canvas bag under his stallion’s tail. “We are the elite Iron-Wolf Heavy Cavalry! When we rode out of Iron-Wolf City four days ago, didn’t Young Master Pei Heng tell us we were coming to Dry-Well Village to dig up Ninth Young Master Pei Xuan’s bones and trample a bunch of half-dead beggars?”
Squad Leader Liu stared up at the fifty-foot-tall gleaming Black-Iron Dragon Walls, where automated ballista turrets and rows of armored town guards in shining black scale-mail stood looking down at them like giants looking at ants.
“Shut up and tie the poop bag tight!” Squad Leader Liu hissed back, his hands trembling slightly. “Did you see that Chief Toll Officer Hei Feng just now? Five years ago, when Hei Feng raided the northern border pass with his Black-Wind Bandits, our Marquis led three thousand men and still couldn’t catch him! Now that terrifying Rank 3 Peak Bandit King is wearing a blue cotton jacket, saluting a brass pipe, and calling Ninth Young Master Pei Xuan ‘My Lord’! If we drop a single piece of horse dung on this granite road, not even the Marquis can save our legs!”
Across the parking lot, two thousand fierce cavalrymen nodded furiously and double-checked the knots on their horses’ manure bags, terrified of offending the sanitation laws of Red-Sand Oasis City!