Stepping out of the fifty-foot-deep gate tunnel of Red-Sand Oasis City felt like walking from a burning iron stove straight into a cool spring garden.
Marquis Pei Zhan, Pei Heng, and their twenty Rank 2 Peak family guards stopped dead on the inner plaza.
Outside in the desert, the morning temperature was already climbing toward a hundred degrees. Yet the moment their boots touched the white-and-gray cooling stone tiles of East Willow Boulevard, a gentle seventy-two-degree breeze brushed across their sweaty faces.
On both sides of the hundred-foot-wide avenue, three-story stone shopfronts with glazed green roof tiles and carved wooden balconies stood in neat rows. Crystal-clear water from the Sweet-Spring Spirit Well flowed through open white marble channels along the curbs, so pure that fat red koi fish were swimming lazily through the water right beside the sidewalks!
And the smell—
Instead of the stink of sweat, horse manure, and rotting garbage that filled Iron-Wolf City and even the Royal Capital, the air in Red-Sand Oasis City was thick with the mouth-watering smell of sizzling cumin lamb skewers, freshly steamed Golden-Blood Wheat pork buns, sweet osmanthus cakes, and boiling beef noodle broth!
GURGLE-ROOOOAR!
Twenty-two stomachs rumbled in loud unison.
Marquis Pei Zhan’s face turned red as his own belly let out a long, hollow growl. For the past four days on the march, even he had only eaten dry salted beef strips and hard wheat biscuits. Now, looking at a street stall just twenty paces away where a fat, smiling butcher was slicing golden, dripping roasted lamb legs and piling them onto hot sesame flatbreads for two copper coins a piece, the dignified Marquis actually swallowed a mouthful of saliva!
“F-Father!” Pei Heng clutched his bruised chest and pointed at the grain shop across the street with a shaking hand. “Look at those open barrels in front of that grain store! That’s... that’s husked snow-white rice and golden spirit wheat! And look at the wooden sign—only three copper coins per catty?!”
“Three copper coins?!” Deputy Captain Wu gasped, his eyes nearly falling out of his sockets. “In Iron-Wolf City, even dirty brown millet mixed with sand costs sixty copper coins a catty right now! And here they are piling snow-white rice in open barrels on the sidewalk without even armed guards watching it?!”
“Why would anyone steal grain when every household gets ten catties of free Golden-Blood Wheat flour every month as their citizen dividend?”
A cheerful voice came from right beside Deputy Captain Wu’s elbow.
Marquis Pei Zhan and his guards jumped back half a step and looked down.
Standing on the sidewalk was a tiny, silver-haired old lady—no taller than five feet—wearing an orange vest that read [MUNICIPAL SANITATION GRANDMA #12]. It was seventy-year-old Grandma Zhang, one of the original hundred starving villagers of Dry-Well Village who used to cough blood from drinking salty mud-water a year ago.
Right now, however, Grandma Zhang’s cheeks were pink and healthy, her back was straight as a pine tree, and she was humming a tune while sweeping fallen willow leaves with a bamboo broom.
Pei Heng glared down at the tiny old lady in annoyance. After getting bounced into a ditch by a wooden toll pole and yelled at by the Black-Wind Bandit King, he was desperate to find someone weak he could look down on.
“Old woman!” Pei Heng sneered, sticking his nose in the air. “What nonsense are you babbling about? Ten catties of free white flour a month? Who do you think you’re fooling? Your Lord Pei Xuan probably forced you all to put out these grain barrels just to put on a fake show for my father! Move aside—you’re sweeping dust near my boots!”
Grandma Zhang blinked her bright eyes at Pei Heng, not the least bit scared of his purple silk robes or the twenty armored guards behind him.
“Young man, why is your mouth as crooked as a stepped-on gourd?” Grandma Zhang clicked her tongue and shook her head. “Lord Pei told us that refugees from the east have suffered from the drought and might be cranky from hunger, so I won’t argue with you. Excuse me—two leaves blew under the paw of this stone lion.”
Right beside the entrance of the grain shop sat a massive, carved granite guardian lion statue—six feet tall and easily weighing one thousand two hundred pounds!
In front of the twenty-two stunned men from the Iron-Wolf Marquisate, seventy-one-year-old Grandma Zhang didn’t call for help or use a lever.
She simply held her bamboo broom in her right hand, reached down with her wrinkled left hand, grabbed the granite lion by its stone mane, and lifted the 1,200-pound stone lion three feet into the air as easily as lifting a wicker basket!
WHOOSH-WHOOSH!
With the thousand-pound stone lion held casually in her left hand at waist height, Grandma Zhang swept the three willow leaves out from underneath its pedestal with her right hand, blew a speck of dust off the stone base, and set the giant granite lion back down!
THUMP!
Not a single stone tile cracked, and Grandma Zhang wasn’t even breathing hard!
“There, all clean!” Grandma Zhang smiled warmly at the frozen Marquis and his twenty guards. “If you boys are starving and don’t have copper coins yet, go two blocks west to Abacus Su’s Municipal Labor Office! Anyone who signs up to dig the southern canal for three days gets a free bowl of braised mutton noodles up front!”
Humming her little square-dance tune, the seventy-one-year-old Rank 2 Iron-Bone grandma strolled off down the sidewalk with her broom over her shoulder.
Behind her, Marquis Pei Zhan, Pei Heng, and all twenty elite family guards stood like twenty-two clay statues.
“A... a Rank 2 Bone-Tempering street sweeper?!”
Deputy Captain Wu looked down at his own rough, calloused hands, which he had trained for twenty years by punching hot iron sand just to reach Rank 2 Peak and become the head of the Marquis’s personal guard. His voice trembled as if he were about to cry.
“My Lord... that old grandma is at least seventy years old! Yet her bone-blood Qi is as thick as an ox’s! She just lifted a twelve-hundred-pound stone lion with one hand to sweep three leaves!”
“It must be a trick! That stone lion must be hollow inside!” Pei Heng refused to believe it. His face was flushed red as he stomped over to the granite lion statue outside the grain shop, wrapped both arms around the lion’s waist, and tried to lift it using his own Rank 2 Peak strength!
“HUP—URGH!”
Pei Heng’s face turned purple, the veins on his neck bulged like earthworms, and his knees buckled with a loud POP—Wait, because his right hand was still split open from hitting the toll pole earlier, his grip slipped and he banged his forehead straight against the stone lion’s nose!
BONK!
“Ow! My head!” Pei Heng stumbled backward, holding a big red bump on his forehead while tears welled in his eyes. That stone lion wasn’t hollow at all—it was solid mountain granite!
Before Marquis Pei Zhan could even scold his son for embarrassing himself again—
“Beep-beep! Hot noodle delivery coming through! Please keep to the right lane!”
A clear teenage voice rang out down the street.
A fourteen-year-old boy wearing a red apron that read [OLD GUO’S EXPRESS NOODLE RUNNER] came sprinting down the pedestrian delivery lane at fifty miles an hour!
Balanced on the boy’s right palm was a six-foot-tall wooden tray stacked with thirty full bowls of boiling beef noodles—and even though the boy’s feet were moving so fast they left blurred afterimages on the stone tiles using the Rank 2 Dragon-Step Footwork, not a single drop of soup splashed over the rims of the thirty bowls!
When the teenage delivery boy saw Pei Heng stumbling backward into the delivery lane holding his forehead, the boy didn’t even slow down. He simply tapped one toe against the marble curb, leaped twelve feet straight into the air right over Pei Heng’s head while keeping all thirty bowls of soup perfectly level, landed silently on the other side, and zoomed around the corner in a gust of wind!
“Sorry, Uncle! Watch your step next time!” the boy’s voice drifted back from half a block away.
“T-T-That fourteen-year-old waiter...” one of the Marquis’s guards stammered, his legs shaking so badly his iron knee-plates clanked together. “His movement technique is faster than our warhorses! Even if all twenty of us chased him on foot, we would only eat his dust!”
Marquis Pei Zhan felt a cold sweat soak through the back of his silk inner shirt.
First, three Rank 3 Grandmasters and fifty Rank 2 experts guarding a wooden toll booth. Second, a seventy-year-old grandma with Rank 2 Iron-Bone strength sweeping leaves. Third, a fourteen-year-old noodle delivery boy using high-level Rank 2 footwork just to carry lunch boxes!
Wait—it didn’t stop there!
As Marquis Pei Zhan and his twenty guards walked another fifty yards down East Willow Boulevard, keeping their backs pressed nervously against the shop walls, they passed an open-air kindergarten courtyard next to the public bathhouse.
Inside the yard, thirty chubby six-year-old boys and girls were lining up in front of a row of three-inch-thick wooden planks.
standing in front of them was a former Frost-Mane barbarian huntress wearing a pink teacher’s apron with a little red flower pinned to her collar.
“Class! Remember what Principal Tie Zhan taught us before nap-time!” the barbarian teacher called out in a sweet voice. “Drink your morning cup of Sweet-Spring milk, tuck in your tummy, and punch from the heel! One, two, THREE!”
“HA!”
Thirty six-year-old kids shouted in cute, squeaky voices and punched their tiny fists forward at the same time!
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
Thirty three-inch-thick pine planks snapped cleanly in half! Several of the kids had faint wisps of Rank 1 Early Martial skin-tempering glow on their chubby knuckles!
One little boy in tiger-head shoes looked at his broken plank, pouted, and raised his hand. “Teacher! This three-inch wood is too soft! My big brother in second grade gets to punch limestone bricks! When do we get to punch rocks?”
“Be patient, Little Hammer!” the teacher smiled, patting his head and handing him a Meat-Flavored Stamina Pill like a piece of candy. “Eat your stamina candy and finish your multiplication homework first, and tomorrow you can punch all the limestone bricks you want!”
Outside the fence, Deputy Captain Wu of the Iron-Wolf Marquisate slowly slid down the stone wall and sat on the curb, staring at his own hands with hollow, lifeless eyes.
“Six years old...” Deputy Captain Wu whispered, his soul practically floating out of his mouth. “When I was six years old, I was still eating dirt in the backyard... and the kindergarteners in this city are already breaking three-inch planks at Rank 1 Early Martial?!”
Even Marquis Pei Zhan’s fingers were trembling inside his wide sleeves.
In the Iron-Wolf Marquisate, only the richest noble sons could afford medicinal baths to start Skin-Tempering at age twelve! How could every six-year-old child in this city have the stamina and blood-energy to practice martial arts?! Unless... the water they drank and the bread they ate every single day were actual spirit treasures!
Up on the high balcony of the Lord’s Keep half a mile away, Pei Xuan was watching his father’s pale face through a fused brass telescope while laughing with General Tie Zhan and Old Wei.
At the same time, a pleasant chime rang inside Pei Xuan’s head as a large caravan of two thousand desert herbs-collectors and border iron-smiths finished registering at the West Gate.
“Three hundred and twenty thousand points a day,” Pei Xuan smiled, lowering the brass telescope. “Look at my father down on East Willow Boulevard. Five minutes ago he marched through the gate like he was going to conquer the city, and now he’s walking close to the wall so he doesn’t bump into Grandma Zhang!”
Beside Pei Xuan, Old Wei grinned broadly, his hand resting on his broadsword. “Young Master, look! Pei Heng is wandering toward the central silk market while rubbing the bump on his forehead—and isn’t that Hong Ling leading Old Yellow out of the ribbon shop?”
Pei Xuan raised the telescope again, and a wide grin spread across his face.
“Oh, my poor eldest brother,” Pei Xuan chuckled, shaking his head. “Walking into Grandma Zhang only hurt his pride. Walking into Hong Ling and Old Yellow is going to cost him his front teeth!”
Beside Pei Xuan on the balcony, General Tie Zhan swallowed a mouthful of pork bun and squinted through his own pair of field glasses down at the Central Market Plaza.
“My Lord,” General Tie Zhan rumbled with a wide grin, “should I take Chief Hulun and Hei Feng down to the Dragon-Blood Tavern across from the silk stall right now? If Marquis Pei Zhan gets mad after Miss Hong Ling slaps Pei Heng and tries to bully her with his Rank 2 Peak guards, the three of us can step right out the tavern door and give the Marquis a warm welcome!”
“Go ahead,” Pei Xuan laughed, waving his hand. “Tell the tavern keeper to put your roast duck and two jars of Golden-Blood Wheat wine on my personal tab. Oh—and take Abacus Su and twenty yellow Debtor Vests with you. Since my father and brother love throwing their weight around so much, let’s make sure they experience our city’s signature fashion before lunch!”
“Yes, My Lord! Hahaha!”
General Tie Zhan clapped his iron gauntlets together in delight and hurried down the stairs of the Keep to gather Chief Hulun, Hei Feng, and Abacus Su, eager to watch the show up close.