Marquis Pei Zhan slumped back against the marble railing of the Keep balcony, looking as if he had aged twenty years in a single afternoon.
Below the city walls, eighteen hundred of his former elite heavy cavalrymen were laughing and singing as they led their warhorses—now officially registered as Red-Sand Oasis City Municipal Cavalry—into the city stables while chewing on roasted lamb skewers. Even the eight thousand foot porters who had been stuck in Dry-Gulch Basin were marching up the ten-lane highway in neat rows behind Old Guo’s soup carts, waving their new citizen booklets in the air!
Out of the mighty ten-thousand-man army that Marquis Pei Zhan had led into the desert that morning to “collect Pei Xuan’s bones,” only two hundred old inner-manor retainers remained outside the gate!
And inside the Lord’s Keep, fifteen Rank 3 Martial Grandmasters—led by General Tie Zhan, Chief Hulun, and Hei Feng—stood around the banquet hall doors like a wall of black iron.
“Sign over the land deeds to Iron-Sand Town, Willow-Brook Town, and Red-Cliff Town...” Marquis Pei Zhan looked down at the contract in Abacus Su’s hand, his voice hoarse and broken. “Those three border towns make up a fifth of my Marquisate’s western land! And you’re only giving me fifty ox-carts of grain for them?!”
“Fifty ox-carts of Grade-2 Golden-Blood Wheat, plus waiving the five-hundred-silver Debtor Vest fine for you, Young Master Pei Heng, and your twenty guards!” Abacus Su corrected him cheerfully, clicking his brass abacus. “Honestly, Marquis Pei, with the spring drought drying up the eastern rivers, those three border towns don’t have a drop of water left anyway! If you don’t trade them to our Lord Pei for fifty carts of spirit grain today, the thirty thousand farmers in those three towns will starve to death or walk over to our city for free next week!”
Behind the Marquis, Pei Heng was clutching his swollen, toothless jaw and pulling at the collar of his yellow [VIP DEBTOR #8,888] vest in pure terror. Earlier, when he walked past the kitchen window, he had seen Hong Ling sharpening her twin black-iron cleavers on a whetstone while staring at his neck!
“F-Father! Sign it! Sign it quick so we can get out of this ghost-place!” Pei Heng whimpered, tugging on the Marquis’s sleeve with both hands. “Wait until we get back outside the desert! Didn’t my master—Envoy Lin of the Crimson Cloud Immortal Sect—give you a Crimson Jade Talisman last year?! An Immortal Cultivator is ten times stronger than any mortal Martial Grandmaster! Once we call Envoy Lin here on his flying sword, we can take back the three towns AND this whole city!”
Hearing Pei Heng whisper the words “Crimson Cloud Immortal Sect” under his breath, a vicious light suddenly flashed deep inside Marquis Pei Zhan’s bloodshot eyes!
That’s right! Marquis Pei Zhan thought fiercely to himself. No matter how many Rank 3 Martial Grandmasters Pei Xuan has gathered, they are all still mortal ants who walk on the dirt! Lady Wang’s brother-in-law is Envoy Lin, an inner-sect Rank 4 Peak Qi Gathering Immortal* of the Crimson Cloud Sect! Envoy Lin can fly three hundred feet in the air on a bronze spirit sword and blast twenty-foot fireballs from the sky where mortal martial artists can’t even touch his hem!*
As long as I swallow this humiliation today, get out of Pei Xuan’s city gates alive, and crush the Crimson Jade Talisman, Envoy Lin will fly here in three days and burn Pei Xuan to ash!
With that venomous plan hidden in his heart, Marquis Pei Zhan suddenly stopped arguing.
He grabbed the heavy bronze Marquisate Seal from his belt, slammed it down in red ink right onto the cession deeds for the three border towns, and pressed his thumbprint beside it!
“There!” Marquis Pei Zhan snarled, ripping off the yellow [SUPREME DEBTOR #9,999] vest and throwing it onto the table as Abacus Su stamped his receipt. “The three border towns are yours! Have the fifty carts of grain delivered to the eastern border stone! Heng’er, guards—we are leaving right now!”
Without looking back for even a second, the disgraced Iron-Wolf Marquis grabbed his limping, toothless eldest son by the arm and practically ran down the stairs of the Keep, followed by his twenty released guards.
On the balcony above, Old Wei frowned as he watched Marquis Pei Zhan and the two hundred remaining retainers scramble onto their horses outside the East Gate and flee down the ten-lane highway as if ghosts were chasing them.
“Young Master,” Old Wei said in a low voice, his hand on his saber hilt. “Look at Marquis Pei Zhan’s eyes before he left. That old wolf didn’t really give up—he’s definitely plotting to bring back someone stronger to take revenge! Should General Tie and I ride out and keep him here permanently?”
Pei Xuan shook his head calmly, pointing at the fading red tooltip floating over the fleeing Marquis’s head in the distance.
CRACK!
Five miles down the eastern highway, riding at full gallop, Marquis Pei Zhan reached inside his sleeve and crushed the blood-red jade talisman with his Rank 3 Internal Qi!
A streak of crimson light shot out of his sleeve, pierced straight through the clouds at a hundred miles an hour, and vanished toward the Crimson Cloud Mountains in the far east!
“Haha! Hahahaha!” Riding on his horse, Marquis Pei Zhan laughed like a madman as tears of humiliation and spite ran down his face. “It’s sent! Envoy Lin will arrive in three days! Pei Xuan, enjoy your oasis city for three more days—because once the Immortal arrives, everything you built will belong to me and Heng’er!”
Back on the Keep balcony of Red-Sand Oasis City, however, Pei Xuan wasn’t scared at all. In fact, his eyes were shining with intense excitement!
“A Rank 4 Peak Qi Gathering Immortal Envoy from the Crimson Cloud Sect is coming in three days?” Pei Xuan murmured, a wide grin spreading across his face.
For the past month, ever since he reached Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster, Pei Xuan had been thinking about one crucial problem: How to step from Rank 3 Mortal Martial Arts into Rank 4 Immortal Cultivation (Qi Gathering)!
Even though Ye Guhan was a Rank 5 Sword Cultivator, Ye Guhan practiced a pure, specialized Sword Dao that required an innate Sword Bone, and his Loyalty was still stuck at 59.8/100 so Pei Xuan hadn’t looted a general-purpose Rank 4 Qi Gathering Manual yet.
And now, Marquis Pei Zhan was personally summoning a Rank 4 Peak Immortal Envoy—essentially a flying treasure-bag carrying a complete Immortal Qi-Gathering Manual and hundreds of Spirit Stones—straight to Red-Sand Oasis City!
“Three days,” Pei Xuan said, turning back into his private cultivation chamber at the top of the Keep. “Before our ‘flying treasure-bag’ arrives from the Crimson Cloud Sect, I need to push my own martial cultivation to the absolute mortal limit: Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster!”
Right now, with the 1,800 elite heavy riders and the 8,000 infantry porters finishing their registration in the outer squares, plus the thirty thousand residents of the three newly ceded border towns coming under Red-Sand City’s jurisdiction, Pei Xuan’s RTS screen was ringing nonstop!
Pei Xuan sat cross-legged on the heated jade meditation platform at the center of his chamber and opened the Fusion Cube.
To break through from Rank 3 Mid to Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster in a single night—and temper every single drop of bone marrow and internal Qi in his body to perfection—ordinary training would take ten years.
But Pei Xuan had the Fusion Cube!
He tossed four top-grade items into the glowing slots of the Cube:
1. [Rank 3 Dragon-Blood Anvil Manual (Current Version)]
2. [3 Drops of Ao Ming's Pure Golden Heart-Marrow]
3. [10x Boom-Pot Sun's High-Pressure Nine-Dragon Stamina Pills]
4. [The Frost-Crystal Sandworm's 1,000-Year Ice Core Pearl]
“Spend 100,000 Loyalty Points!” Pei Xuan commanded. “Fuse into the ultimate Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster Manual and Supreme Marrow-Tempering Elixir!”
WHOOOOSH!
A jade-and-gold gourd filled with swirling red-and-blue glowing elixir appeared in Pei Xuan’s palm, while a flood of golden martial insights poured directly into his mind!
Without hesitation, Pei Xuan uncorked the [Supreme Ice-Fire Dragon Marrow Gourd] and drank the entire elixir in one gulp!
ROOOOOAAAR!
Inside Pei Xuan’s body, it sounded as if an ancient golden dragon had awakened inside a blazing iron forge!
First, a wave of icy blue Frost-Crystal energy swept through his veins, cooling and condensing his muscles and tendons until they were as tough and elastic as braided dragon-sinew. A split second later, Ao Ming’s golden Dragon Heart-Marrow erupted like liquid magma deep inside his spine!
CRACK-POP-CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Every single bone in Pei Xuan’s body vibrated with the clear, ringing sound of hammered divine iron! Deep inside his bone marrow, the red blood cells turned a brilliant, shimmering gold-crimson color!
And down in his lower abdomen—around his once-weak, crippled dantian that had kept him from cultivating since birth—the boiling golden blood-Qi formed a spinning vortex as hot as a miniature furnace, pressing right against the sealed gate of Rank 4 Qi Gathering!
When the first ray of morning sunlight shone through the Keep window, Pei Xuan slowly opened his eyes.
ZING!
A three-inch beam of solid golden blade-light flashed out from his pupils and sliced a floating dust mote in the air cleanly in half!
He stood up, casually flicked his right index finger toward a three-foot-thick block of black testing granite at the corner of the room—and a hundred-foot-long golden Internal Qi Blade-Wave shot across the room, slicing the granite block into two mirror-smooth halves without making a sound!
“Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster... and five hundred and fifty thousand Loyalty Points in my pocket,” Pei Xuan clenched his fist, feeling the explosive, unstoppable power surging through his limbs.
Before stepping out of the cultivation chamber, he opened the Fusion Cube one more time and glanced at a pile of black-iron road bricks stacked in the corner of the courtyard for the Keep renovation.
A mischievous light glinted in Pei Xuan’s eyes.
“Wait. If an arrogant Rank 4 Immortal Cultivator comes flying over my city on a sword, shooting him down with an anti-air cannon is only half the fun,” Pei Xuan chuckled softly to himself. “Immortal cultivators spend all day sitting on cushions breathing Qi and never train their physical skulls. Once I knock him off his flying sword, what weapon hits an arrogant Immortal’s face best?”
Not a sword. Not a spear.
A solid, humble municipal road brick!
Pei Xuan tossed [1x Standard Red-Sand Municipal Road Brick], [100 Jin of Rank 3 Meteorite Black-Iron], and [1x Stun-Shock Rune Blueprint] into the Fusion Cube and spent 5,000 LP!
Pei Xuan weighed the sleek, palm-sized black-iron brick in his right hand, admiring its smooth corners and cold metallic sheen, before slipping it neatly into his wide silk sleeve.
Then he walked out onto the Keep balcony and looked east toward the distant horizon, where dark red clouds were already beginning to gather above the mountain peaks.
Down in the central square below, General Tie Zhan was leading the newly recruited eighteen hundred heavy riders in their morning drill, Old Guo was handing out steaming bowls of beef noodles to Ye Guhan under the willow tree, and Ao Ming was happily snoring inside the warm spirit well.
Forty-four thousand loyal citizens were going about their morning with bright smiles on their faces.
“Come on then, Envoy Lin of the Crimson Cloud Immortal Sect,” Pei Xuan whispered with a fierce grin, patting the heavy black-iron brick hidden inside his sleeve. “You think flying three hundred feet in the air makes you a god above mortals? In three days, I’ll show you how a town mayor brings an Immortal down to earth—and introduces your face to a black-iron road brick!”
Down below the Keep balcony, General Tie Zhan looked up from the training square and cupped his iron-gauntleted fists with a booming laugh.
“My Lord! Did you just break through to Rank 3 Peak Grandmaster?! Even from down here in the square, the golden blood-heat rolling off the Keep roof made our eighteen hundred new warhorses stand at attention!”
Beside the well, Ao Ming poked his silver dragon snout out of the bubbling water and sniffed the air in amazement. “Hey, Kid! Did you drink those three drops of my Heart-Marrow with the Sandworm’s Frost Pearl?! Your physical shell right now is harder than my third cousin’s dragon scales! Next time you drop roasted lamb down the well, don’t accidentally drop your fist on my nose!”
Pei Xuan laughed aloud, his voice carrying clearly across the four thriving districts of Red-Sand Oasis City.
“Everyone, eat well and sharpen your tools for the next three days!” Pei Xuan called out to his generals and specialists. “In three days, a distinguished guest from the Crimson Cloud Immortal Sect is flying over to deliver our city’s first Rank 4 Immortal Cultivation Manual! Let’s make sure we give him an unforgettable welcome!”