WHOOOOOOSH!
The twenty-foot sphere of Rank 4 Crimson Immortal Fire dropped from three hundred feet in the sky like a falling mini-sun.
Even before it reached the rooftops, the scorching heat wave turned the air in the central plaza dry as an oven. The red flames twisted into the shape of a grinning fire-skull, howling with concentrated Spirit Qi that only a cultivator who had opened his dantian could command.
Down on the cobblestones, Marquis Pei Zhan and his toothless eldest son Pei Heng scrambled backward behind a stone horse-trough, their faces glowing red in the firelight as they laughed like madmen.
“Burn! Burn it all down!” Pei Heng shrieked, pointing his stubby finger at Pei Xuan and Hong Ling while drool flew from his swollen mouth. “Uncle Lin’s Crimson Cloud Fire Spell can melt solid iron! Let’s see your stupid mud walls and kitchen cleavers block real Immortal magic! Kneel and beg for your lives, Pei Xuan!”
“Pei Xuan, if you kowtow right now and hand over the Spirit Well deed, I might ask Brother-in-Law Lin to leave your corpse whole!” Marquis Pei Zhan shouted, his eyes wide with excitement. For three whole days he had been terrified of Pei Xuan’s four Rank 3 Grandmasters, and now he finally felt his spine straighten up again.
Up in the clouds, Envoy Lin sneered as he watched the fireball plunge toward the crowd around the Sweet-Spring Well. At the same time, he tapped his boot against the neck of his Rank 3 Peak Red-Crested Wind Crane.
“Crane, fan the flames!” Envoy Lin ordered lazily. “Blow away their market stalls so these mud-legged peasants learn what happens when they talk about tax bills to an Immortal!”
SCREEEEECH!
The giant thirty-foot white crane flapped its wings with all its might. Four crescent-shaped blades of compressed green wind shot down behind the fireball, feeding the flames with oxygen and making the twenty-foot fireball swell to nearly thirty feet wide!
Across the plaza, a few hundred new refugees who had arrived only yesterday screamed and covered their heads, dropping their baskets as they looked for somewhere to hide.
Yet the veteran citizens of Red-Sand Oasis City didn’t run around like headless chickens.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
At the corners of the square, the captains of the City Defense Guard struck their brass alarm gongs three times.
“Code Red! Unlicensed aerial fireball in Sector One!” Captain Hu—the former mercenary leader who now wore a shiny captain’s badge—bellowed at the top of his lungs. “First and Second Iron-Bone Shield Squads, cover the civilian stalls! Third Squad, open the high-pressure dragon-well fire hydrants! Nobody drops their steamed buns—if you drop a bun on the ground, Old Guo will make you peel onions for a week!”
“Yes, Sir!”
Three hundred Rank 2 Iron-Bone city guards moved like clockwork. Their heavy black-iron shields locked together with loud metallic clanks over the heads of the frightened newcomers, while twenty burly barbarian fighters from Chief Hulun’s tribe twisted the brass wheels on the street-corner water hydrants.
Meanwhile, right in the center of the plaza, Pei Xuan didn’t take a single step back.
His RTS Territory Screen flashed in the corner of his eye, calculating the incoming spell’s exact trajectory and power level in real time:
“Forty-five thousand silver taels of property damage?” Pei Xuan’s eyes turned cold. “Not in my city! Old Wei, General Tie, Chief Hulun, Bandit King—on my mark, aim eighty feet up and slice that red meatball into pieces!”
“Hahaha! Leave the left side to me, My Lord!” General Tie Zhan swallowed the last bite of his lamb bun, wiped his greasy mouth with the back of his arm, and gripped his eight-foot heavy iron halberd.
“My axes were getting rusty anyway!” Seven-foot-tall Chief Hulun roared, his bronze muscles swelling until his sleeveless wool vest creaked as twin eddies of fierce northern blood-Qi swirled around his heavy war-axes.
“Wait for me! If that fireball chips a single cobblestone in Sector One, Abacus Su will deduct my Star Employee of the Month bonus!” The former Black-Wind Bandit King panicked, pulling out his repaired heavy mace as his Rank 3 Peak Internal Qi flared like a black tornado.
Beside Pei Xuan, Old Wei stepped forward and locked his left Rank 2 Blood-Iron Mechanical Arm onto the hilt of his Heavy Mountain-Cleaver Saber, his single eye blazing with 100/100 Die-Hard Loyalty.
Pei Xuan bent his knees slightly on the stone rim of the Sweet-Spring Well. Within his meridians, the Rank 3 Peak Dragon-Blood Anvil Manual roared like a thousand blacksmith hammers striking an iron anvil at once. A faint phantom of a golden-red dragon coiled around his right fist!
“NOW! SLASH!”
BOOM-SHING!
Five Rank 3 Martial Grandmasters struck the air at the exact same instant!
Pei Xuan punched straight toward the heavens, blasting out a fifty-foot-long golden-red Dragon-Blood Fist Wave! Flanking him, General Tie Zhan’s halberd wave, Old Wei’s broadsword beam, Chief Hulun’s twin axe crescents, and the Bandit King’s heavy mace shockwave shot eighty feet into the sky like five roaring flood-dragons!
At the same time, over on the roof of the City Alchemy Workshop, a soot-covered old man wearing brass goggles popped his head out of a skylight.
“Don’t forget old Boom-Pot Sun!” Sun Baolu cackled wildly, hugging his Rank 3 Nine-Dragon High-Pressure Alchemy Pot aimed upward like a mortar tube. “Eat a batch of my failed Cold-Frost Radish Cooling Pills!”
THOOM!
The pressure valve shrieked, and a cluster of twenty white frost-pills shot into the air right behind the five Grandmaster blade-waves!
Three hundred feet up, Envoy Lin was already smiling and waiting to hear the screams of burning mortals.
Instead, five blinding beams of condensed Rank 3 Grandmaster Internal Qi—backed by a bursting cloud of freezing white pill-mist—slammed directly into the belly of his thirty-foot Crimson Fireball eighty feet above the square!
KRA-KOOOOOM!
A deafening thunderclap shook the entire oasis!
The shockwave blew Marquis Pei Zhan’s purple noble hat clean off his head and sent him tumbling backward over the stone horse-trough into the mud.
Up in the air, the giant Rank 4 Crimson Fireball didn’t reach the ground at all! Pei Xuan’s golden-red Dragon-Blood Fist Wave punched straight through the center of the fire-skull, while General Tie Zhan and Old Wei’s blade-waves sliced the spinning wind-blades to ribbons! Boom-Pot Sun’s twenty Cold-Frost Pills exploded inside the fireball’s core, freezing eighty percent of the flames into harmless white steam and black soot!
“What?!” Envoy Lin’s eyeballs nearly fell out of his head as he looked down through the white steam. “Five mortal martial artists actually broke my Rank 4 Crimson Cloud Fire Spell with bare Internal Qi?!”
Down in the mud, Marquis Pei Zhan spat out a mouthful of dirty water and stared up in disbelief. “Impossible! That’s an Immortal spell! How can Pei Xuan’s punch reach eighty feet into the air?!”
However, while eighty-five percent of the giant fireball had been smashed into harmless steam, six smaller chunks of compressed Rank 4 Immortal Fire—each about the size of a washbasin—scattered outward from the midair explosion like flaming meteors!
Five of those burning chunks slammed into the walls and roofs of the surrounding buildings around the plaza.
“Watch out for the roofs!” a new refugee yelled.
BOING! BOING! BOING! BOING! BOING!
To the shock of Marquis Pei Zhan and Envoy Lin, the five flaming fire-chunks hit the gray-brown [Lv.2 Elastic Iron-Mud Walls] of the City Tax Office and the Bathhouse, dented the elastic rubber-clay mortar inward by six inches, and bounced straight back up into the sky where they fizzled out like wet fireworks! Not a single wall cracked or caught fire!
“Hahaha! Our Elastic Iron-Mud mortar doesn’t even burn!” One-Eyed Jack, the Chief Construction Foreman, cheered from a scaffolding pole while waving his iron trowel.
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!
On the steps of the Tax Office, Abacus Su didn’t stop clicking his brass beads for a single second. “Five soot marks on the exterior elastic plaster of Municipal Buildings Two and Four! Cleaning fee: five thousand silver taels per smudge! Envoy Lin’s total debt is now one hundred and twenty-five thousand taels!”
Wait—there were six fire-chunks! Where did the sixth one go?!
Pei Xuan’s head snapped around as the sixth and fastest chunk of compressed Rank 4 Crimson Fire ricocheted off the curved elastic roof of the Bathhouse at a freak angle, streaking low across the flagstones straight toward the open front counter of Old Guo’s Number One Central Noodle Shop!
Over at the noodle shop, fat Old Guo had just ladled a massive scoop of steaming, golden-red Twelve-Hour Braised Dragon-Marrow Scorpion-Beef Broth into a big blue-and-white porcelain bowl.
Inside the giant four-foot-wide iron cauldron, thirty pounds of prime beef shank, chewy scorpion-fed ox tendon, and spiced honeycomb tripe were bubbling gently over a copper pipe connected directly to Ao Ming’s dragon-fire down in the well. Old Guo had stayed up since midnight skimming the foam, adding twenty-four secret desert spices, and simmering the bones until the soup was so thick and fragrant that a single whiff could make a starving man cry.
Sitting on a small wooden stool right in front of the counter was Ye Guhan.
The young Rank 5 Foundation Establishment sword genius had worked up a sweat sweeping five streets that morning. He had neatly folded his patched white cuffs, washed his hands three times at the tap, laid six shiny copper coins on the counter—not a single coin short!—and was holding out both hands with solemn, pious respect to receive his big bowl of extra-tendon beef noodles.
Above Ye Guhan’s head, his tooltip read:
“Here you go, Little Brother Ye!” Old Guo beamed, his fat cheeks shining as he reached for the jar of chopped green scallions to sprinkle on top. “Eat it while it’s piping hot! After this bowl, I’ll—”
Old Guo never finished his sentence.
WHAM-CRASH!
The stray basketball-sized chunk of Envoy Lin’s Rank 4 Crimson Fireball screamed down from the bathhouse roof and slammed straight into the wooden awning of Old Guo’s noodle shop!
Unlike the main fortress walls, the noodle shop’s front awning was made of ordinary carved pine wood and three decorative gray roof tiles that Ye Guhan himself had helped hang last week.
The Rank 4 Immortal fire blasted the wooden signboard—OLD GUO’S DRAGON-MARROW BEEF NOODLES—into burning splinters! Three heavy roof tiles shattered like clay pigeons, and the main charred wooden support beam snapped with a loud CRACK, dropping straight down onto the rim of the giant twelve-hour iron broth cauldron!
“MY POT!” Old Guo screamed, lunging forward with his iron ladle.
He was half a second too late.
CLANG—SPLAAAAAASH!
Struck by the falling beam and the residual blast of the Rank 4 fireball, the four-hundred-pound iron cauldron flipped completely off its brick stove!
Fifty gallons of priceless, twelve-hour simmered golden-red beef broth poured out across the dusty flagstones in a steaming, fragrant flood! Thirty pounds of melt-in-your-mouth braised beef shanks, ox tendons, and spiced tripe rolled out into the dirt and ashes, while the knock-back wave slapped the porcelain bowl right out of Old Guo’s hands!
SMASH!
The blue-and-white bowl shattered on the ground between Ye Guhan’s cloth shoes.
Hot soup splashed over Ye Guhan’s clean white socks, and then rapidly drained away down the storm-water grate at the edge of the curb—glug, glug, glug—until not a single drop of broth remained on the surface.
A single, sad, half-charred green scallion leaf drifted down from the smoky air and landed right on top of Ye Guhan’s outstretched right palm.
Even down inside the storm-water grate connected to the deep well shaft, a deep, horrified roar echoed up from underground:
“ROOOOAR?! Why is my noon beef soup pouring down the dirty drain pipe mixed with roof ashes?! Who flipped Old Guo’s pot?!”
Up in the sky, Envoy Lin didn’t even notice what the sixth fire-chunk had hit. Seeing that his first spell had only knocked down a wooden shop awning in the corner of the square, he felt his face burn with embarrassment in front of Marquis Pei Zhan.
“Hmph! Lucky mortal rats!” Envoy Lin scoffed loudly from three hundred feet up, raising both hands to gather an even bigger cloud of crimson Spirit Qi. “You managed to block eighty percent of my casual warning strike, and only one little food stall got smashed! Let’s see how many of your dirty soup pots can survive when I use fifty percent of my Rank 4 Peak Immortal power!”
Down in the square, Marquis Pei Zhan climbed out of the mud and pointed at the wrecked noodle stall, laughing wildly to cover up his own embarrassment.
“Hahaha! Did you see that, Pei Xuan?! Brother-in-Law Lin smashed your cook’s soup pot with just a stray spark! Wait until the next fireball lands on your head!”
Nobody in Red-Sand Oasis City was looking at Marquis Pei Zhan.
Pei Xuan, Old Wei, General Tie Zhan, Hong Ling, Abacus Su, and forty-four thousand citizens all slowly turned their heads toward the smoking ruins of the noodle counter.
There, Old Guo was sitting on the ground holding his empty iron ladle, big fat tears rolling down his flour-covered cheeks as he stared at the dirt-covered beef shanks.
And right beside the overturned cauldron stood Ye Guhan.
The young man in patched white robes hadn’t moved a muscle. His hands were still held out in the air in the exact posture of receiving a noodle bowl, with that single charred green scallion leaf resting on his palm.
Slowly, very slowly, Ye Guhan lowered his eyes and looked at the puddle of greasy red broth soaking into the cracks between the cobblestones. Then he looked at the piece of prime braised ox tendon—the piece he had been staring at for twenty minutes while sweeping the street—now covered in black soot, broken roof tile crumbs, and a footprint from a panicked duck.
“My soup...” Ye Guhan whispered, his voice so quiet that only the people standing within ten feet could hear him. “Old Guo boiled that broth for twelve hours... I swept East Willow Street three times this morning... I even scraped the camel gum off the crosswalk...”
Above Ye Guhan’s head, the little green number `[Loyalty: 59 / 100]`—which had not budged a single fraction of a point through forty-two chapters of canal-slicing, highway-paving, locust-fighting, and duck-roasting—suddenly began to shake like an earthquake!