For five full seconds, the only sound in the central plaza was the drip, drip, drip of gray thirty-day fermented stinky-tofu brine running off the tip of Envoy Lin’s nose.
Then, from the roof of the bathhouse to the steps of the Lord’s Keep, forty-four thousand citizens of Red-Sand Oasis City burst into the loudest roar of laughter the desert had ever heard!
“Hahaha! Look at the great Immortal of the Crimson Cloud Sect! He’s wearing a pickled cabbage barrel for pants!”
“And three squashed tomatoes for a hat! Even Old Yellow looks more dignified taking a mud bath!”
“Did you see his flying sword bend like a yellow banana in the sky?! Lord Pei’s red lever is magical!”
Down by the stone horse-trough, Marquis Pei Zhan and Pei Heng stared at the soaked, foul-smelling figure sitting in the wreckage of the three vegetable carts. A warm breeze blew across the square, carrying the thick, sour stench of thirty-day fermented tofu brine straight into Pei Heng’s swollen mouth.
Gag!
Pei Heng clutched his throat and dry-heaved over the horse-trough. “F-Father... why does Uncle Lin smell like an outhouse that got struck by lightning?!”
Inside the broken cabbage barrel, Envoy Lin Cang slowly blinked his eyes open.
A chunk of mashed red tomato slid off his forehead and plopped into his lap. When he breathed in through his nose, the overpowering stench of Old Guo’s secret thirty-day fermented tofu brine hit the back of his throat like a physical punch, making his eyes water instantly.
All around him, forty-four thousand “mortal ants”—farmers, bricklayers, former bandits, and even five-year-old kids holding candied hawthorns—were pointing at him and laughing until they had to hold their bellies!
For thirty years since he had been detected with a Mid-Grade Fire Spirit Root and entered the Crimson Cloud Immortal Sect, Lin Cang had walked through the mortal world like an emperor among beggars. Whenever he entered a city, mortal nobles carried his palanquin on their shoulders and beautiful maids washed his boots with rosewater.
Never in his wildest nightmares had he imagined being dropped three hundred and fifty feet out of the sky into a vat of fermented bean curd!
“Ahhhhh! YOU MORTAL MAGGOTS! I WILL KILL YOU ALL!”
Envoy Lin let out a shrill, pig-like shriek of humiliation.
He circulated every drop of Rank 4 Peak Fire Qi in his dantian, making his skin glow red-hot for three seconds to burn away the sticky iron-silk capture net wrapped around his chest. With a furious kick, he shattered the pickled cabbage barrel wedged around his hips and scrambled up onto his feet in the middle of the squashed tomatoes.
Instinctively, Envoy Lin tried to leap ten feet into the air to escape the smelly puddle.
WHAM!
The moment his silk boots rose ten feet and one inch off the cobblestones, the golden-blue hexagons of the [Ten-Ton No-Fly Gravity Dome] overhead flashed once—and slammed him straight back down onto his knees on the stone floor!
Crack!
Both of Envoy Lin’s kneecaps bruised purple against the hard flagstones.
“The array only crushes things above ten feet!” Envoy Lin gasped, his bloodshot eyes darting around in panic as he stayed crouched on the ground.
Even though he couldn’t fly anymore, he was still a Rank 4 Peak Qi Gathering Immortal Cultivator!
Seeing Pei Xuan, Old Wei, General Tie Zhan, and Chief Hulun standing thirty paces away beside that weird six-piped iron cart, Envoy Lin reached into the collar of his stinky red robe with a trembling hand and pulled out a thumb-sized piece of emerald-green jade carved in the shape of a coiled dragon-turtle.
It was his most precious life-saving treasure, bestowed upon him by his brother-in-law’s master when he became an Outer Deacon: the [Rank 4 Peak Jade-Light Turtle-Shell Talisman]!
Without hesitation, Envoy Lin bit his finger, smeared blood across the jade turtle’s back, and crushed three Low-Grade Spirit Stones from his belt pouch directly into the talisman!
HUMMMMM—DING!
A blinding pillar of emerald-green Immortal light shot up from the jade pendant!
Within half a heartbeat, a three-inch-thick, semi-transparent green dome—carved with glowing phantom patterns of interlocking turtle shells—expanded five feet around Envoy Lin’s body, locking firmly onto the cobblestones beneath his feet!
Safe inside the glowing three-inch-thick emerald turtle shell, Envoy Lin let out a long, shaky breath. The terror on his soot-stained, beardless face twisted back into a vicious, arrogant grin.
He wiped a piece of sour cabbage off his ear and laughed loudly through the green light barrier:
“Hahaha! Did you think knocking this Immortal off his sword would let you win, Pei Xuan?!”
Envoy Lin slapped his palm against the inside of the glowing green turtle shell, making it ring like ten-inch-thick temple bronze.
“Open your dog eyes and look! This is a Rank 4 Peak Jade-Light Turtle-Shell Talisman, refined by an Inner Sect Elder of the Crimson Cloud Sect! Even if your crippled Rank 5 swordsman over there wasn’t coughing blood, he couldn’t break this shield without three full-power strikes! As for you mortal Rank 3 martial artists? Hahaha! You could stand here swinging your iron broadswords and halberds until tomorrow morning and you wouldn’t even scratch the green paint!”
Over behind the stone horse-trough, Marquis Pei Zhan saw the glowing green turtle shell around Envoy Lin and immediately jumped up, waving his arms excitedly.
“It’s true! That’s the Crimson Cloud Sect’s Jade-Light Talisman!” Marquis Pei Zhan shouted, his voice full of renewed confidence. “Three years ago on the northern border, an Immortal Deacon used one of those jade talismans when surrounded by three Rank 3 Barbarian Grandmasters! The three Grandmasters hacked at him for half an hour until their arms went numb and their blades snapped, and the Immortal didn’t lose a single hair! Then he cast one fire spell from inside the shield and burned all three Grandmasters into skeletons!”
Hearing this, Envoy Lin puffed out his stinky, tofu-soaked chest inside the green dome.
He began pinching rapid two-handed spell seals in front of his chest, drawing streams of fiery red Qi from his dantian to form three writhing Rank 4 Crimson Fire-Pythons inside his shield!
“Your father knows his place!” Envoy Lin sneered at Pei Xuan, his eyes glowing with cruel red light as the three fire-pythons hissed around his legs. “I don’t need to fly to slaughter a town of mortal pigs! Inside this Jade-Light Shield, I am completely invincible! In ten breaths, my Three-Python Ground Fire Wave will be ready—and this time, I will aim straight for your heart and your crippled swordsman’s neck!”
Thirty paces away, General Tie Zhan frowned and gripped his heavy halberd tighter. “My Lord, that green turtle shell does look pretty thick. Should Old Wei, Chief Hulun, and I charge up and hit the same spot together?”
“Why tire out your arms when we already paid two hundred and fifty thousand points for a can-opener?” Pei Xuan laughed.
He walked calmly behind the eight-wheeled iron cart and placed both hands on the polished iron firing handles of the [Rank 4 Six-Barrel Fireball Gatling Cannon].
With a smooth push of his Rank 3 Peak wrists, Pei Xuan swiveled the heavy turret downward until the six gleaming, octagonal black meteorite-iron barrels were pointed dead-level across the cobblestones—aimed straight at the center of Envoy Lin’s green turtle-shell shield thirty paces away!
Beside the boiler at the back of the cart, Boom-Pot Sun adjusted his brass goggles, spat on both palms, and grabbed the heavy iron pressure-crank with a maniacal grin.
“He said three Rank 3 Grandmasters hacking for half an hour couldn’t break his turtle shell, right, My Lord?” Boom-Pot Sun giggled, his white beard bristling with excitement. “Let’s ask him if his turtle shell can block six hundred compressed Rank 4 Blasting-Pill Fireballs in ten seconds!”
Pei Xuan squinted through the brass crosshair sight, lining up the center cross right over the smug grin on Envoy Lin’s face.
“Abacus Su,” Pei Xuan called out casually. “How much are we charging him for ammunition expenditure?”
CLACK-CLACK!
“One hundred silver taels per fireball, My Lord!” Abacus Su shouted back instantly with his brush poised over the ledger. “Six hundred rounds comes to a neat sixty thousand silver taels—plus a ten percent barrel-cleaning service charge!”
“Good. Put it on his tab!”
Inside the green turtle shell thirty paces away, Envoy Lin frowned as he saw the six black iron pipes point directly at his chest. For some reason, a sudden chill ran down his spine, making his bruised tailbone ache.
“Hmph! Trying to scare an Immortal with mortal iron pipes?” Envoy Lin scoffed, speeding up his hand-seals so his fire-pythons would finish in five seconds instead of ten. “Even a heavy siege ballista arrow will just bounce off my Jade-Light Shield like a toothpick! Shoot if you—”
Pei Xuan squeezed the twin iron triggers, and Boom-Pot Sun cranked the rotary wheel with all his might!
CLACK—WHIRRRRRRRRRR!
Inside the nine-dragon pressurized boiler, one hundred unstable Rank 3 Blasting Pills were crushed, superheated by Ao Ming’s dragon-marrow fire runes, and split into six hundred fist-sized, white-hot Rank 4 Armor-Piercing Fireball Shells!
The six octagonal meteorite-iron barrels spun into a howling black blur!
DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA!
A continuous, ear-splitting roar—like ten thousand giant strings of New Year firecrackers exploding inside an iron drum—shattered the air of the central plaza!
From the spinning muzzles of the six barrels, a solid, unbroken river of white-hot crimson fireballs erupted across the thirty paces of cobblestones at sixty rounds per second!
Second One (60 Fireballs):
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
Envoy Lin hadn’t even finished saying the word “toothpick” when the first sixty compressed Rank 4 Blasting-Pill Fireballs slammed into the exact same three-inch spot on the front of his Jade-Light Shield!
Each individual fireball carried the punch of a Rank 3 Peak Grandmaster swinging a flaming sledgehammer! Sixty of them hitting in a single second knocked the entire green turtle-shell dome—with Envoy Lin inside it—sliding backward six feet across the wet flagstones with a screech of grinding stone!
The smug smile on Envoy Lin’s face froze solid.
Second Three (180 Fireballs):
DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA!
“What—what is this?!” Envoy Lin screamed inside the dome as his eardrums nearly burst from the non-stop BOOM-BOOM-BOOM hammering six inches in front of his nose!
The emerald-green glow of the Jade-Light Shield turned a sickly, flickering yellow! Because sixty white-hot fireballs were detonating against the front of the dome every single second, the temperature inside the sealed turtle shell shot up to two hundred degrees!
Worse yet—Envoy Lin was soaked from head to toe in Old Guo’s thirty-day fermented stinky-tofu brine!
Under the intense heat of one hundred and eighty exploding alchemy fireballs, the gray stinky-tofu juice on Envoy Lin’s robes flash-boiled into a thick, greenish-yellow cloud of superheated Stinky-Tofu Steam that had nowhere to escape inside the sealed dome!
“Cough! ACK! BLURGH!”
Trapped inside his own airtight green turtle shell, Envoy Lin was being Dutch-ovened by boiling thirty-day fermented tofu gas while six hundred explosions rattled his teeth like dice in a cup! His eyes rolled back as he choked on the hot stink-steam, and the three fire-pythons he had been trying to cast fizzled out into puffs of smelly gray smoke!
Second Six (360 Fireballs):
DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA!
CRACK! CRACK! SNAP!
Spiderweb cracks two feet long burst across the front of the glowing turtle shell!
Inside the smoke-filled dome, Envoy Lin panicked completely. He didn’t look like a lofty Immortal anymore—he looked like a drowning rat! With tears and snot streaming down his soot-blackened face, he fumbled into his pouch and grabbed a handful of Low-Grade Spirit Stones, pressing them frantically against the cracking jade pendant on his chest.
“Hold together! Elder Sun said this talisman could block mortal attacks for half an hour!” Envoy Lin shrieked in terror as the jade turtle pendant in his hand burned his fingers and split down the middle. “Why isn’t it stopping?! How many fireballs are inside that iron pipe?! STOP SHOOTING! I’M AN OUTER DEACON OF THE CRIMSON CLOUD—”
Second Nine (540 Fireballs):
“More pressure! Give him the last sixty rounds with extra chili powder!” Boom-Pot Sun cackled on the back of the cart, spinning the iron crank so fast his arms turned into windmills.
Pei Xuan held the vibrating handles steady as a rock, keeping the stream of white-hot fireballs drilled dead-center on the largest crack in the green shield!
CRACK-KRA-KRA-KOOOOOOM!
At Second Ten, as the six-hundredth compressed Rank 4 Blasting-Pill Fireball hammered into the exact same spot—
The prized [Rank 4 Peak Jade-Light Turtle-Shell Talisman] on Envoy Lin’s chest exploded into tiny green dust motes!
The three-inch-thick emerald dome shattered like a cheap glass bowl hit by an iron brick!
“NOOOOO—BLURGH!”
The final twelve fireballs of the six-hundred-round burst didn’t kill Envoy Lin—because Pei Xuan had tilted the barrel up half an inch at the last millisecond so he wouldn’t lose a live prisoner—but the concentrated alchemy shockwave detonated right across Envoy Lin’s chest and collar!
BOOOOOOOM!
A cloud of black smoke and shredded red silk shot thirty feet into the air!
When the smoke cleared and the six smoking meteorite-iron barrels of the Gatling Cannon finally spun to a halt with a triumphant whirrrr-clink, the entire plaza gasped and then howled with laughter!
Standing in the middle of a black scorch mark on the cobblestones was Envoy Lin.
His gold-trimmed red Immortal robes had been blown completely off his body into fluttering black ribbons! All that remained was a pair of scorched, pink-flowered silk underpants tied with a yellow string around his waist. His hair stood straight up in a massive, two-foot-tall smoking black afro, and when he opened his mouth to cough, a little ring of white alchemy smoke floated out between his lips!