Three hundred and fifty feet above the central square, Envoy Lin hovered on his bronze flying sword, clutching two glowing white Low-Grade Spirit Stones in his palms.
Because Ye Guhan’s terrifying Rank 5 sword slash had scared him out of his wits a moment ago, Envoy Lin refused to drop even a single foot lower. Instead, he floated right underneath the red clouds alongside his bald-butted Wind Crane, frantically sucking Spirit Qi out of the two stones to build a spell so huge that even five mortal Grandmasters wouldn’t be able to block it.
“Laugh! Go ahead and laugh down there, you dirt-eating ants!” Envoy Lin shouted down from the clouds, his smooth, beardless chin dripping with sweat as a forty-foot whirlpool of crimson fire began to spin above his head. “Wait another sixty breaths! Once I finish drawing the Qi from these two Spirit Stones and condense my Crimson Cloud Falling Sun Spell, I will flatten this entire square, roast that fat cook alive, and turn your crippled swordsman into ashes!”
Down by the stone horse-trough, Marquis Pei Zhan and Pei Heng scrambled up to their knees, cheering for Envoy Lin like two loyal dogs.
“Did you hear that, Pei Xuan?!” Marquis Pei Zhan yelled, wiping mud off his cheeks as he hid carefully behind the stone trough so Ye Guhan wouldn’t look at him. “Brother-in-Law Lin is condensing a forty-foot Immortal spell! And it only takes him sixty breaths! That crippled swordsman of yours can’t swing his sword a second time at that distance, and none of you can jump three hundred and fifty feet in the air! Why aren’t you running away?!”
Pei Xuan didn’t even glance at his father.
Sixty breaths? For Pei Xuan’s Fusion Cube, three breaths was already plenty of time!
Pei Xuan stepped over to the stone rim of the Sweet-Spring Spirit Well and tapped his boot twice against the red-copper heating pipe running down into the earth.
“Ao Ming! Stop licking the drain pipe!” Pei Xuan called down into the crystal-clear water. “Toss up that shed belly-scale you’ve been using as a back-scratcher! If it gets here in three seconds, I’ll have Old Guo roast two extra whole snow-sheep with double cumin and chili oil for your dinner tonight!”
Down in the deep underground cavern a thousand feet below the well, a pair of lantern-sized golden dragon eyes snapped open!
“ROOOAR! Double cumin and extra lamb fat?! Why didn’t you say so earlier, Little Kid Pei!”
SPLASH—WHOOSH!
A jet of warm, sparkling well water shot twenty feet up out of the well mouth!
Riding right on top of the water spout was a curved, shield-sized silver dragon scale that shimmered with deep, heavy blue runes. The moment the scale flew out of the well, the air around it grew so heavy that the cobblestones beneath the well rim creaked loudly!
Pei Xuan caught the heavy silver scale with one hand. Even with his Rank 3 Peak Dragon-Blood strength, the scale felt like it weighed five thousand pounds!
“Good dragon! Hong Ling, write down two extra roasted sheep on Ao Ming’s dinner tab!” Pei Xuan laughed.
At the same time, he turned toward the north side of the plaza, where General Tie Zhan, Chief Hulun, and twenty burly Rank 2 Iron-Bone guards were rolling a massive eight-wheeled iron cart out of the City Armory.
Strapped to the cart was a ten-foot-long [Heavy Steel Siege Ballista] that Pei Xuan had looted from Black-Wind Fortress last month. Right behind them ran soot-faced Boom-Pot Sun, pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with his [Spare Rank 3 High-Pressure Alchemy Cauldron], three wooden crates of [100x Rank 3 Blasting Pills], and twenty bundles of [Iron-Silk Scorpion-Glue Capture Nets].
“My Lord! Everything is here!” Boom-Pot Sun wheezed, his brass goggles crooked on his forehead as he patted his bronze pressure cauldron. “I packed a hundred of my most unstable, extra-spicy Blasting Pills into the crate! If I throw them by hand, they only go sixty feet high—how are we going to shoot them three hundred and fifty feet up into that red-robed donkey’s face?!”
Meanwhile, on the steps of the City Tax Office, Abacus Su saw that Pei Xuan was busy preparing materials by the well. Without needing to be told, the skinny accountant raised his Fused Loudspeaker Conch Shell toward the sky to keep Envoy Lin distracted!
“Ahem! Attention to Debtor #216, Lin Cang of the Crimson Cloud Sect!” Abacus Su’s nasally voice boomed through the clouds as his fingers danced across his golden abacus. “Following the destruction of Old Guo’s Number One Central Noodle Shop awning, the City Claims Department has completed an itemized damage assessment! Please listen carefully as I read out the forty-eight sub-clauses of your updated bill!”
Up in the sky, Envoy Lin was halfway through chanting his spell incantation when Abacus Su’s voice blasted right into his ears like a brass horn.
“Shut up, you four-eyed mortal bug!” Envoy Lin snarled, his concentration slipping for a second as the fireball above his head wobbled.
Abacus Su didn’t pause for a single breath:
“Item One: Fifty gallons of Twelve-Hour Dragon-Marrow Scorpion-Beef Broth, valued at ten thousand silver taels! Item Two: Thirty catties of prime braised ox tendon, honeycomb tripe, and beef shank—twenty thousand silver taels! Item Three: One charred green scallion leaf that landed on Citizen Ye Guhan’s palm, causing severe emotional and spiritual trauma to a Rank 5 Sword Cultivator—one hundred thousand silver taels! Item Four: Bald-butted bird feather littering cleanup fee across Municipal Sector One—fifteen thousand silver taels!”
All around the plaza, forty-four thousand citizens burst out laughing again as Abacus Su gravely read out the “bald-butted bird feather cleanup fee.”
Up on his bronze sword, Envoy Lin’s face turned from red to purple to black. His left eyelid twitched so hard he nearly bit his own tongue while chanting his spell. “Just twenty more breaths! In twenty more breaths, I will fry that four-eyed accountant first!”
Down by the well, Pei Xuan ignored the shouting in the sky and opened his Rank 4 Fusion Cube interface.
Since upgrading Red-Sand Oasis City to Level 4, the translucent glowing Cube floating before Pei Xuan’s eyes had expanded to six feet wide, with three deep golden-bordered material slots and an automatic City Array Link button at the bottom.
“Let’s see how well your flying sword works when the air weighs ten times as much,” Pei Xuan murmured with a grin.
He tossed `[Ao Ming's Deep-Sea Gravity Scale]` into Slot 1 of the Fusion Cube.
Next, he tapped Slot 2 on his RTS mini-map, selecting the `[100x Black-Iron Magnet Pillars]` that One-Eyed Jack’s construction crew had already built into the fifty-foot outer walls around the city.
Finally, in Slot 3, he selected the `[Red-Sand City Wall Defense Array (Lv.3)]`.
HUMMMMMM!
The three slots lit up with blinding blue-and-gold light as the System calculated the fusion recipe:
“Zero Spirit Stones to run, and it only crushes things flying without a city permit?” Pei Xuan’s eyes lit up. “Now that’s what I call municipal engineering! Confirm Fusion!”
CLANG-ZZZZZZT!
Two hundred and fifty thousand Loyalty Points vanished from Pei Xuan’s balance.
Inside the Fusion Cube, Ao Ming’s silver gravity scale melted into a stream of liquid blue starlight and shot straight down into the stone floor of the plaza! Through the underground copper pipes, the blue starlight raced out to all one hundred Black-Iron Magnet Pillars atop the fifty-foot city walls in less than two seconds!
Right beside Pei Xuan’s hand on the stone rim of the Sweet-Spring Well, a heavy brass control box rose up out of the flagstones. On top of the box sat a big red iron switch labeled in neat square characters:
[MUNICIPAL NO-FLY ZONE: OFF / 10X GRAVITY]
“One down!” Pei Xuan didn’t stop for a second. “Now for the main dish—we can’t just bring him down, we have to give our guest a warm welcome once he hits the ground!”
Pei Xuan turned to the eight-wheeled iron cart and slapped his palm onto the `[Heavy Steel Siege Ballista]`, dragging it into Slot 1 of the Fusion Cube alongside `[Boom-Pot Sun's High-Pressure Alchemy Cauldron]` in Slot 2, and the crates of `[100x Rank 3 Blasting Pills & Iron-Silk Capture Nets]` in Slot 3!
“Sixty rounds per second?!” Pei Xuan grinned from ear to ear and tapped [YES]!
WHOOOOM—CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!
Another two hundred and fifty thousand Loyalty Points burned away in a flash of golden light, bringing Pei Xuan’s remaining balance to 120,000 LP.
Right in front of General Tie Zhan, Boom-Pot Sun, and Ye Guhan, the wooden frame of the siege ballista and the fat bronze cauldron dissolved into a swirling vortex of black meteorite iron and red-gold dragon brass!
When the light cleared two seconds later, a terrifying, gleaming beast of heavy metal stood mounted on a swivel turret in the center of the eight-wheeled iron cart!
At the back sat a pressurized nine-dragon boiler humming with glowing red magma runes. Sticking out the front were six thick, five-foot-long octagonal barrels forged from black meteorite iron, bound together by heavy brass rings! Underneath the six spinning barrels hung a wide-mouthed seventh tube loaded with a glowing golden-silk capture net, while on the right side sat a polished iron hand-crank and twin firing handles with a brass crosshair sight!
“Heavens above...”
Boom-Pot Sun dropped to his knees beside the cart, his brass goggles sliding down his nose as tears of pure joy streamed through the soot on his cheeks. He reached out with trembling hands and stroked the six cold, gleaming meteorite-iron barrels.
“Six barrels... a rotary high-pressure pill chamber... and a safety valve that directs one hundred percent of the explosion out the front!” Boom-Pot Sun sobbed, kissing the side of the boiler even though it singed his whiskers. “For forty years the Royal Capital Alchemy Guild called me a lunatic because my pots blew up! They didn’t understand that alchemy is meant to have six barrels! Lord Pei, I would die for you ten times over!”
Even Ye Guhan, sitting on his wooden stool by the noodle shop, stared at the gleaming six-barrel rotary cannon with wide eyes. As a Rank 5 Sword Cultivator who had traveled across three kingdoms, he had seen flying swords, spirit bells, and flame talismans—but he had never in his life seen a hand-cranked six-barrel machine-gun cauldron!
“What... what kind of magic treasure is that?” Marquis Pei Zhan stammered from behind the horse-trough, pointing a shaking finger at the black iron barrels as Pei Xuan and General Tie Zhan tilted the turret upward toward the sky. “Why does it have six iron pipes stuck together?!”
“Bah! What are you scared of, Father?!” Pei Heng spat out a mouthful of blood-foam and laughed scornfully. “It’s just a bunch of iron stove-pipes welded onto a cart! Uncle Lin is three hundred and fifty feet in the air! Mortal crossbows and iron pipes can’t even shoot past one hundred and fifty feet before losing their strength!”
Up in the clouds, Envoy Lin finally finished sucking the last drop of Spirit Qi from the two Low-Grade Spirit Stones in his hands!
CRACK!
The two drained stones crumbled into white powder between his fingers.
Above Envoy Lin’s head, the [Rank 4 Peak Crimson Cloud Falling Sun] had swollen into a roaring, forty-foot-wide sphere of blinding scarlet fire! The terrifying spiritual pressure of a peak Rank 4 spell pressed down on the air, making the leaves on the willow trees curl up and smoke.
Envoy Lin looked down at Pei Xuan standing beside the well and the weird six-piped iron cart, and let out a triumphant, booming laugh that echoed for ten miles:
“MORTAL ANTS! YOUR SIXTY BREATHS ARE UP!”
Envoy Lin raised both arms high toward the forty-foot fire-sun, his red Daoist robes fluttering in the hot gale as his bald-butted Wind Crane screeched beside him.
“Look upon the true power of the Crimson Cloud Immortal Sect! Even if you have ten Grandmasters, you can only crawl in the mud like worms while this Immortal stands high high in the nine heavens! Now, kneel and watch your city burn!”
Down on the cobblestones, Pei Xuan didn’t kneel.
He had his left hand resting casually on the big red brass lever of the [Ten-Ton No-Fly Gravity Dome], and his right hand holding a loaded wooden pull-cord for the under-barrel [Spirit-Net Launcher].
Pei Xuan looked up at Envoy Lin, smiled politely, and spoke into Abacus Su’s loudspeaker conch:
“Envoy Lin, before you throw that big red ball, I have a quick question for you.”
Up in the sky, Envoy Lin paused for half a second, sneering down from his bronze sword. “What last words do you have, little bastard?”
“Have you ever wondered,” Pei Xuan asked cheerfully, “what happens when the fireball you’re holding above your head suddenly weighs ten times as much as you do?”
“Huh?!” Envoy Lin blinked. “What nonsense are you—”
CLUNK!
Pei Xuan slammed the big red brass lever all the way down to [10X GRAVITY]!