Morning sun shone down on the wide stone streets of Red-Sand Oasis City.
Three days had passed since Marquis Pei Zhan had signed over three border towns in exchange for fifty carts of Golden-Blood Wheat and Snow-Crystal Salt. Most of the Marquis’s two thousand elite soldiers had already traded their rusty family armor for crisp blue Red-Sand City work uniforms, and right now they were happily jogging down the ten-lane highway singing the city’s morning breakfast song.
Up on the balcony of the Lord’s Keep, Pei Xuan stretched his arms and let out a long breath of warm white steam.
Crack! Pop! Crack!
Every bone in his body rang like tempered black iron. Beneath his skin, thick golden-red blood roared through all one hundred and eight meridians like a river in spring flood. Now that he stood at the very top of Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster, he felt like he could punch through a city gate with one hand and still have enough breath left to drink a bowl of soup.
With a thought, Pei Xuan pulled up his translucent blue RTS Territory Screen.
Pei Xuan rubbed his chin as he stared at the line for Rank 5 Foundation Establishment.
Down in the central square below the keep, a young man in patched white robes was sitting on a wooden stool outside Old Guo’s noodle shop. He had a bamboo broom in one hand and a big porcelain bowl in the other. Above his head floated a bright green bar that had not moved an inch in two weeks:
“Still fifty-nine,” Pei Xuan muttered, shaking his head with a laugh. “I gave him a goose-down pillow, two pairs of silk socks, and a gold-painted wooden plaque that says Number One Swordsman of the Red Wastes, and he hung the plaque over the toilet door so he wouldn’t feel indebted to me.”
Behind Pei Xuan, fifteen-year-old Hong Ling walked out onto the balcony carrying a tray of hot steamed mutton buns and sweet well tea. Two heavy black-iron kitchen cleavers hung from her waist, clinking lightly against her apron.
“Young Master, don’t waste any more silk socks on that stubborn plank of wood,” Hong Ling said, puffing out her cheeks as she set the tray down. “Yesterday I tried to slip an extra piece of braised tendon into his bowl for free, and he chased me half a block to throw two copper coins into my pocket! He said a true swordsman’s heart must remain spotless like snow.”
“Let him take his time,” Pei Xuan said, picking up a hot mutton bun. “After spending two hundred thousand points on the city walls, we’re sitting on three hundred and sixteen thousand Loyalty Points. Once we hit half a million at midnight, I can start looking at the Rank 4 array blueprints.”
Just as Pei Xuan took a bite of his bun, a sharp red warning box flashed across the edge of his twenty-mile RTS mini-map!
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Pei Xuan narrowed his eyes and swallowed his mouthful of bun. He wiped his fingers on a clean cloth and stood up, walking to the stone railing of the balcony.
“Looks like my dear father didn’t just sit quietly in his guest courtyard waiting for his grain carts to be loaded,” Pei Xuan said softly.
Down in the eastern guest courtyard, a heavy wooden door banged open.
Marquis Pei Zhan rushed out into the street wearing his wrinkled purple noble robes, followed closely by his eldest son, Pei Heng. Since Hong Ling had slapped three of Pei Heng’s front teeth out two days ago, Pei Heng’s right cheek was still swollen as big as a winter melon, and he had to hold a silk handkerchief over his mouth to keep from drooling.
“Th-there! Up in the sky!” Pei Heng lisped through his missing teeth, pointing a trembling finger toward the southeastern horizon. “Father! Look at the red clouds! Master’s senior brother is here! Uncle Lin from the Crimson Cloud Immortal Sect has arrived!”
Marquis Pei Zhan stared up at the southeastern sky, and his pale, sunken face broke into a wild, twisted grin. For the past three days, walking through Pei Xuan’s clean, bustling city had felt like having his face rubbed in the dirt every ten steps. Seeing his own elite soldiers begging Abacus Su for citizenship papers had nearly made the Marquis vomit blood.
Now, his biggest trump card had finally arrived!
“Haha... hahaha!” Marquis Pei Zhan threw his head back and laughed out loud right in the middle of the street. “So what if that little bastard Pei Xuan tamed a few desert bandits and built a tall stone wall? So what if he reached Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster? Before a true Immortal Cultivator of the Crimson Cloud Sect, mortal Grandmasters are nothing more than bigger ants on the ground!”
Across the wide avenues of Red-Sand Oasis City, the morning breeze suddenly turned hot and dry.
Low on the southeastern horizon, a bank of unnatural dark-red clouds rolled across the clear blue desert sky like spilt blood. From inside the red clouds came the shrill, piercing cry of a giant bird, followed by the hum of vibrating bronze metal.
SCREEEEECH!
Forty-four thousand citizens stopped what they were doing and looked up.
High above the fifty-foot black-iron city walls—hovering three hundred feet in the air where no mortal martial artist could ever jump—flew a snow-white crane with awingspan of thirty feet and a bright red crown on its head. In its talons, the giant crane carried two long crimson silk banners embroidered with golden thread: THE HEAVENS BOW BEFORE CRIMSON CLOUD.
Ten paces ahead of the crane stood a middle-aged man in flowing, gold-trimmed red Daoist robes.
His hands were tucked lazily behind his back, his chin was tilted up at a forty-five-degree angle, and his silk boots were planted atop a five-foot-long bronze broadsword that floated in midair without any rope or wings! Red Spirit Qi swirled around the edges of the bronze sword like tongues of flame, holding him three hundred feet above the central square as steady as if he were standing on a stone floor.
This was Envoy Lin Cang—Outer Deacon of the Crimson Cloud Immortal Sect, younger brother to Pei Xuan’s stepmother Lady Wang, and a genuine Rank 4 Peak Qi Gathering Immortal Cultivator!
Up on his flying sword, Envoy Lin looked down expecting to see a dusty desert fort full of mud huts and smelly sheep pens.
Instead, his eyes widened until they nearly popped out of his sockets.
Beneath his boots lay a sprawling, shining city of gray-and-black stone! Ten-lane paved highways stretched out into the desert like giant black ribbons. Fifty acres of glass greenhouses sparkled in the sunlight on the west side, bursting with green melons and red peppers. Clear spring water ran through marble channels along willow-lined streets, and huge twelve-legged armored scorpions carrying loads of snow-white salt stopped neatly at red-and-green painted wooden signs at the street corners!
Even more shocking, the thick, refreshing mist rising from the central well carried a trace of pure, sweet spiritual vitality that made Envoy Lin’s own dantian tingle with greed!
Pei Xuan glanced up at the floating red bar above Envoy Lin’s head:
“Look! Is that a flying person?!”
“He’s standing on a sword three hundred feet in the air! That’s an Immortal from the legends!”
In the central plaza, several hundred newly arrived border refugees gasped and took a step back, their faces turning pale. In the Kingdom of Great Yan, common folks heard stories from childhood that Immortal Cultivators lived in the clouds, breathed wind and fire, and could kill a thousand mortal soldiers with a wave of their sleeves.
Seeing the fear on the new refugees’ faces, Marquis Pei Zhan and Pei Heng puffed out their chests and sprinted into the center of the square. They dropped straight to their knees on the flagstones and banged their foreheads on the ground toward the sky.
“Brother-in-Law Lin! Immortal Envoy Lin!” Marquis Pei Zhan howled at the top of his lungs, crocodile tears streaming down his cheeks. “You have finally come! This unfilial ninth son of mine, Pei Xuan, rebelled against the Iron-Wolf Marquisate, stole my two thousand soldiers, beat his eldest brother half to death, and robbed our family of three border towns! Please, Immortal Envoy, strike down this wicked traitor and uphold justice for the Crimson Cloud Sect!”
“Mashter! Uncle Lin!” Pei Heng bawled right beside him, spitting blood-stained drool onto the stones. “That little maid with the kitchen knives knocked out my teeth! Break all their bones and give this city to me!”
Three hundred feet up in the sky, Envoy Lin stroked his neat black goatee and smiled coldly.
He channeled a strand of Rank 4 Spirit Qi into his throat. Instantly, his voice boomed across the entire five-mile width of Red-Sand Oasis City like rolling summer thunder:
“MORTAL ANTS OF THE RED SANDS! LISTEN WELL!”
The thunderous voice rattled the wooden shutters of the shops. Envoy Lin spread his wide red sleeves, letting fiery red Qi flare ten feet around his body so every person in the city could see him.
“I am Envoy Lin Cang of the Crimson Cloud Immortal Sect! Before an Immortal of the Qi Gathering Realm, your mortal fists, iron walls, and Rank 3 Grandmasters are no different from mud dolls! Today, I hand down three Immortal Decrees!”
Envoy Lin held up three fingers in the sky, his eyes gleaming with naked greed as he stared at the Lord’s Keep and the Sweet-Spring Well.
“First! Pei Xuan and all his officers will crawl out to the central square on their knees, cripple their own martial meridians, and hand over the control seal of this Spirit Well to me!”
“Second! Ninety percent of all gold, silver, snow-salt, grain, and young women in this city shall be packed onto carts today as tribute to my Crimson Cloud courtyard!”
“Third! The remaining forty thousand mortals in this city are hereby drafted as lifelong mine-slaves for my sect! Anyone who dares to stand upright when I count to three shall be burned to grey ash by my Immortal Flame!”
The echoes of his voice rumbled across the city walls.
Marquis Pei Zhan’s smile froze slightly when he heard Envoy Lin claiming ninety percent of the wealth and all forty thousand people for his own courtyard instead of giving them back to the Marquisate—but the Marquis quickly swallowed his words and glared triumphantly toward the Lord’s Keep. As long as Pei Xuan was crushed into the dirt, the Marquis would get his share!
However, the panic Envoy Lin expected did not happen.
Down on the streets, the thirty-five thousand veteran citizens of Dry-Well Village didn’t kneel at all. Instead, they looked up at the man on the sword the same way they had looked at One-Eyed Jack, Boss Qian, and the Black-Wind Bandit King—like a fat sheep that had just jumped over the fence into Old Guo’s butcher shop.
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!
Before Pei Xuan even spoke, a small skinny man wearing thick round spectacles hurried out onto the steps of the City Tax Office. Abacus Su held a gleaming gold-plated abacus in his left hand and a three-foot-long Fused Loudspeaker Conch Shell in his right hand.
He peered up at the sky, adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose, and clicked five brass beads across his abacus with lightning speed.
“Ahem! Testing, one, two, three!” Abacus Su spoke into the conch shell, and his sharp, nasally voice blasted three hundred feet straight up into the clouds, just as loud as Envoy Lin’s Spirit Qi roar!
“Attention to the red-robed individual currently hovering above Municipal Grid Sector One! According to the Red-Sand Oasis City Traffic & Public Order Code, Article 12, Section 4: any person operating an unlicensed flying sword, spirit boat, or feathered beast below five thousand feet without a valid City Air-Traffic Permit is subject to an immediate fine of ten thousand silver taels!”
Abacus Su clicked another three beads on his abacus.
“Furthermore! Your giant white bird just dropped approximately two pounds of bird manure onto the roof of the West Street Public Bathhouse! Adding the High-Altitude Noise Pollution Surcharge for shouting after breakfast and the Unpermitted Cloud-Cover Fee for blocking sunlight to our fifty acres of winter-spring greenhouses, your current balance owed to the City Treasury is thirty-two thousand, four hundred and fifty silver taels! Will you be paying in Spirit Stones, silver bullion, or sixty years of quarry labor?!”
Dead silence fell over the central plaza.
Marquis Pei Zhan’s jaw dropped so hard his chin hit his chest. He turned and stared at Abacus Su as if the accountant had lost his mind. That was a Rank 4 Immortal Cultivator flying in the sky! And this four-eyed lunatic was charging him a bird-poop cleaning fee?!
Three hundred feet up, Envoy Lin nearly slipped off the nose of his bronze flying sword.
For three full seconds, the proud Outer Deacon of the Crimson Cloud Sect couldn’t believe his ears. Whenever he visited mortal cities in the Great Yan Kingdom, county magistrates and royal dukes kissed the dust beneath his boots and offered him boxes of gold just to hear him speak a single word.
“You... you four-eyed mortal bug!” Envoy Lin’s face turned the color of pig liver. “You dare charge an Immortal a parking and bird-droppings fee?!”
Right at that moment, the heavy oak doors of the Lord’s Keep swung open at the north end of the square.
Pei Xuan walked calmly down the wide stone steps, flanked by one-armed Old Wei with his gleaming Blood-Iron Mechanical Arm, burly General Tie Zhan chewing on his third lamb bun of the morning, seven-foot-tall barbarian Chief Hulun carrying a pair of heavy iron axes, and the former Black-Wind Bandit King wearing his proud blue Star Employee of the Month sash.
Four Rank 3 Martial Grandmasters walked shoulder to shoulder, their combined blood-Qi rising into the air like four invisible furnaces that blew away the hot wind from Envoy Lin’s red clouds.
Pei Xuan stopped at the edge of the Sweet-Spring Spirit Well in the middle of the plaza. He tilted his head back, shading his eyes with one hand as he looked up at the tiny red figure hovering three hundred feet overhead.
“Abacus Su,” Pei Xuan said in a clear, calm voice that carried easily through the loudspeaker conch. “You forgot to add the Attempted Extortion & Armed Robbery Tax. Round his bill up to an even one hundred thousand taels.”
“Right away, My Lord!” Abacus Su cheered, his brush flying across a yellow debtor ticket. “One hundred thousand taels recorded!”
Pei Xuan looked back up at the sky and smiled warmly. “Envoy Lin, was it? My city has an honest business policy. If you fly down right now, put a diaper on your bird, and pay your one hundred thousand taels at Window Three, I’ll let you buy two bowls of noodles before you roll back to your Crimson Cloud Sect. Otherwise, we have a very nice yellow vest in your size waiting down here.”
Down on the cobblestones, Marquis Pei Zhan pointed a shaking finger at Pei Xuan and shrieked, “Pei Xuan! Have you gone completely mad?! He is three hundred feet in the air! Even if you have four Rank 3 Grandmasters, how high can a mortal jump? Fifty feet? Eighty feet?! You can’t even touch the hem of Brother-in-Law Lin’s robe while he rains Immortal fire down on your heads!”
Up on his bronze sword, Envoy Lin let out a shrill, furious laugh.
Marquis Pei Zhan was right! That was the absolute gulf between Rank 3 Mortal Martial Artists and Rank 4 Immortal Cultivators! A mortal Grandmaster could split rocks on the ground, but as long as Envoy Lin stayed three hundred feet up in the sky, he was an untouchable god who could bombard this city until his Spirit Qi ran dry—and then simply eat a pill and bombard it some more!
“Good! Very good!” Envoy Lin roared, his red robes whipping violently as crimson fire-Qi surged out of his dantian and gathered between his palms. “Since you mortal ants don’t know the height of the heavens, this Immortal will burn your precious square into charcoal first, and then pull your teeth out one by one!”
Down outside the noodle shop, Ye Guhan didn’t even look up from his broom. He swept the last pile of dust into a pan, walked over to Old Guo’s steaming twelve-hour broth cauldron with his empty wooden bowl, and said calmly, “Chef Guo, my morning sweeping shift is done. One large bowl of dragon-marrow beef noodles, extra tendon, and two spoons of red chili oil.”
“Coming right up, Little Brother Ye!” Old Guo grinned, lifting the heavy wooden lid off the giant iron pot as rich, golden-red meat aroma drifted across the square. “This pot has been simmering on Ao Ming’s dragon-fire since midnight! The beef shanks are so tender they’ll melt on your tongue!”
Up in the sky, Envoy Lin’s hands pushed down—and a blazing twenty-foot sphere of crimson Immortal fire screamed straight toward the center of the plaza!