Up on the thirty-foot stone battlements of Frost-Pine Town’s north gate, Gu Changsheng took a slow sip of hot wolfberry tea from his clay thermos. Five hundred drugged wolves against two kids who just finished their morning porridge, Gu Changsheng thought calmly. One-Ear Scar really picked the wrong morning to skip breakfast.
Beside him, Town Magistrate L Town Magistrate Liu covered his face with both hands and shrieked. One hundred and fifty ox-sized, red-eyed Berserk War-Wolves thundered within ten yards of the eight-year-old boy and the six-year-old girl!
Down on the swept stone highway in front of his father’s bamboo lounge chair, however, eight-year-old Gu Nian didn’t blink once.
“Nuannuan, stand half a step behind my right elbow so the road dust doesn’t get on your pink dress,” eight-year-old Gu Nian instructed calmly. Planting his left yellow bunny slipper forward on the flagstones and gripping the handle of his four-foot [Fused Iron-Wood Broom] with both small hands. “I’ll sweep the front rows into a pile first, and then you sneeze on their sharp knives!”
“Okay, Big Brother Nian!” six-year-old Su Nuannuan nodded obediently. Holding her [Rank 2 Little Fairy Pink Watering Can] in her left hand.
Grandpa Yao poked his chubby green plush turtle head out of her backpack and held a tiny pinch of golden [Tickle-Pepper] under Nuannuan’s button nose with his fuzzy flipper!
In the front rank of the charging mercenary vanguard, a scarred squad leader riding a six-hundred-pound war-wolf grinned savagely as he raised his serrated iron broadsaber above eight-year-old Gu Nian’s head:.
“Out of the way, you little bunny-apron brat!”
HUMMM—ROOOAAR!
At that exact instant, all two hundred and six newly tempered Rank 2 Early Chaos Golden Bones inside eight-year-old Gu Nian’s four-foot frame ignited with a warm. Majestic golden-dragon light beneath his yellow bunny apron!
Channeling his full 3,500 pounds of Rank 2 Chaos-Bone Strength into the bristles of the [Fused Iron-Wood Broom] that his father had reinforced in the [Upgrade Box]. The eight-year-old boy pivoted his hips in a textbook Gu Family Courtyard-Sweeping curve and swung the broom horizontally across the stone highway!
“Family Rule Number Three—NO MUDDY PAWS IN FRONT OF THE GATE!”
SWOOOOOSH—BOOOOOOM!
That single horizontal swing of a four-foot wooden broom by an eight-year-old boy didn’t just stir up a breeze—it unleashed a forty-foot-wide. Crescent-shaped hurricane of compressed golden Rank 2 Chaos-Bone Gale that roared across the stone highway like a low-flying golden flood-dragon!
The hurricane struck the front three ranks of the charging vanguard—all one hundred and fifty six-hundred-pound Berserk War-Wolves and their armored riders—simultaneously at ankle height!
YELP! CRASH! TUMBLE-THUD!
Like one hundred and fifty bowling pins hit by a golden cannonball. Every single Berserk War-Wolf in the vanguard had all four paws swept clean out from under its belly at fifty miles an hour!
Without a single wolf’s leg bone being broken by the flat, controlled broom-gale. All one hundred and fifty giant war-wolves and their screaming mercenary riders flipped heels-over-head through the air and crashed into a massive, ten-foot-high, tangled mountain of kicking legs, furry tails. Dented helmets right in the middle of the road—blocking the remaining three hundred and fifty riders behind them in a colossal traffic jam!
“W-WHAT?!”
Atop his giant war-wolf in the center of the halted formation, Commander One-Ear Scar , at Rank 2 Peak, nearly bit his own tongue in half as his jaw dropped to his collarbone:.
“One... one swing of a wooden house-broom from an eight-year-old kid in a bunny apron just swept one hundred and fifty six-hundred-pound war-wolves off their feet into a pile?!”
Right beside him, thirty-eight-year-old Mercenary Vice-Captain Bull yanked so hard on his reins that his saddle leather groaned. Staring in utter terror at the two-inch-deep crescent groove where the broom’s wind-pressure had scrubbed every speck of snow and gravel off the granite highway for forty yards:.
“Boss Scar! That eight-year-old kid isn’t an ordinary mortal child—his broom wind carries genuine Rank 2 Iron-Bone force! Even I couldn’t block that sweep with both arms!
That eyebrowless liar Lin Fan told us Gu Changsheng’s son was just a sickly little brat!”
“Don’t panic! He’s only one kid, and we still have three hundred and fifty riders behind the pile!” Commander One-Ear Scar roared, trying desperately to rally his stunned cavalry.
“Archers in the third row, notch your iron arrows!
Axemen, ride around the pile and—”
Before a single archer in the third row could pull an iron-tipped arrow from his quiver, six-year-old Su Nuannuan stepped out from behind her big brother’s elbow. Sniffed the tiny pinch of [Tickle-Pepper] on Grandpa Yao’s fuzzy green turtle flipper, wrinkled her rosy little nose, and took a giant breath:.
“Ah... ah... AH-CHOOOOOO!”
PUFF—WHOOOOOOSH!
Boosted by the warm dragon-marrow rib soup she had drunk. Lunch—and fanned forward by a gentle wave of Grandpa Yao’s Rank 3 Peak plush turtle flipper from her backpack!—that single sneeze from six-year-old Su Nuannuan billowed outward into a rolling. Hundred-yard-wide cloud of shimmering purple-black mist that smelled deliciously of sweet black-licorice candy!
In less than three seconds, the rolling wave of [Weapon-Melting Black-Licorice Gas] washed over the tangled pile of one hundred. Fifty vanguard riders and swept straight through the remaining three hundred and fifty mounted mercenaries all the way to the rear of the formation!
“Watch out! Poison gas! Hold your breath!”
Commander One-Ear Scar roared, raising his ninety-pound double-bladed steel battle-axe in front of his chest to block the mist.
*Sizzle... drip... splat!
Splat! Splat!*
The sweet-smelling black-licorice mist didn’t hurt a single man’s lungs or sting a single wolf’s eyes.
Instead, the moment it touched refined iron, steel, and bronze across the five-hundred-man army—.
Every single mercenary’s steel battle-axe, serrated broadsaber, spiked mace, iron arrowhead, steel helmet, chainmail hauberk, iron belt buckle. Heavy iron stirrup melted like butter on a hot skillet into gallons of thick, super-sticky, sweet-smelling black-licorice taffy!
Flop! Squelch! Splat!
Across the entire northern plain outside Frost-Pine Town, five hundred ruthless Blood-Wolf Mercenaries watched in utter, mind-shattering horror. The steel blades in their hands dripped off their wooden handles onto the ground. Their melted chainmail vests and iron stirrups fused with their leather saddles into giant blobs of warm black-licorice glue!
“My iron arrowheads! They turned into soft black candy on the bowstring!” a mercenary archer in the third rank screamed in a high-pitched voice.
Trying to pull his right hand off his bow only to find that his melted iron bracer had glued his palm fast to the wooden bow-grip!
“My pants! My iron belt buckle melted and my trousers glued my knees to Old Gray’s saddle!” Mercenary Vice-Captain Bull wailed.
Tugging with all his Rank 2 Mid strength at his waist.
The sticky black-licorice taffy stretched like ten-inch strands of warm maltose sugar and snapped his backside right back down onto the saddle leather with a loud SMACK!
Up on the thirty-foot stone battlements of Frost-Pine Town, Rank 2 Mid Poison-Hand Wu and all eighty-one pink-aproned herb gardeners pointed down at the five hundred glued mercenaries and roared with triumphant, sympathetic laughter:.
“Bwahaha! Welcome to the club, brothers! Four nights ago Little Fairy Boss sneezed on all eighty-one of us in the courtyard, and we couldn’t pull our boots off the flagstones until morning!”
“Don’t pull too hard on your trousers, mountain brothers, or you’ll rip the seat right out of your winter underpants just like our vice-captain did!”
Within three seconds flat:.
- The one hundred and fifty riders piled in the front were glued together into a single giant ball of human-and-wolf licorice candy;.
- The three hundred and fifty riders in the rear had their boots and trousers glued solidly to their saddles without a single piece of sharp metal left in their hands;.
- And in the center of the army, Commander One-Ear Scar was left holding a bare wooden axe-pole. His iron belt buckle melted away and his armored breeches glued his backside fast to his saddle!
Up on the thirty-foot stone battlements of the north gate, thirty-five-year-old Captain Gu Tie’s steel spear slipped right out of his fingers and clattered onto the bricks. Town Magistrate Liu grabbed his own cheeks and screamed in delirious disbelief:.
“One broom-sweep from the eight-year-old boy knocked down one hundred and fifty war-wolves, and ONE SNEEZE from the six-year-old girl melted five hundred sets of steel weapons and armor into black taffy?!”
Beside Magistrate Liu on the watchtower parapet, his two county clerks were so stunned that one of them accidentally dipped his brush pen straight into Magistrate Liu’s teacup instead of the inkstone. Writing three lines of wolfberry-tea characters across his sleeve while muttering in a trance:.
“Record it in the county annals... On the eighteenth day of the twelfth winter month, five hundred Blood-Wolf Mercenary Riders besieged Frost-Pine Town... Patriarch Gu sat in a bamboo chair and drank one cup of wolfberry tea...
Young Master Gu Nian swept once with a broom... Little Miss Nuannuan sneezed once... Total enemy steel melted: approximately fifteen thousand pounds...
Total arrows fired by our town garrison: zero!”
Along the stone battlements on both sides of the gatehouse. The eighty Gu Clan mansion guards and two hundred town militiamen who had been bracing themselves for a life-or-death siege stared down at the field of five hundred helpless. Taffy-glued mercenaries for three seconds—and then erupted into a deafening, earth-shaking roar of cheers, laughter, and banging shields!
“Long live Little Master Nian! Long live Little Miss Nuannuan!”
“Did you see that golden wind from Little Master Nian’s broom?! He swept one hundred and fifty six-hundred-pound war-wolves into a neat pile like autumn leaves!”
“And Little Miss Nuannuan’s sneeze reached all the way to the fifth row! Look at those ferocious mountain bandits—not one of them has a knife left in his hand, and they’re all stuck to their saddles by their underpants!”
Down on the swept stone highway in front of the open gate, six-year-old Su Nuannuan rubbed her rosy button nose with the back of her small mitten. Blinked her big dark eyes at the five hundred disarmed mercenaries stuck in shiny black-licorice taffy. Turned around to look at her father sitting in the bamboo lounge chair:.
“Dad! Grandpa Yao’s Tickle-Pepper worked super well! Nuannuan sneezed all their sharp axes and pointy arrows into candy in one breath!”
“And I kept the broom wind flat at ankle height just like Grandpa Yao said, Dad,” eight-year-old Gu Nian reported dutifully. Standing beside his little sister in his yellow bunny apron and yellow bunny slippers without a single speck of dust on his cuffs. “None of the big doggies in the front pile got their legs broken—they’re just tangled up in their harnesses.”
Sitting comfortably in his folding bamboo chair, twenty-eight-year-old Gu Changsheng took another unhurried sip of hot wolfberry tea from his porcelain cup and gave both children a warm, proud nod:.
“Clean sweep, zero sharp metal left on the street, and not a single scratch on your clothes before tomorrow’s math test. Both of you just earned two Little Red Flowers for the morning chore chart!”
In the rear of the formation on his borrowed donkey—which had been spared only. Donkeys wore hemp rope halters instead of iron stirrups—eighteen-year-old Lin Fan stared at the five hundred disarmed, taffy-glued mercenaries with his eyeballs nearly popping out of his skull!
“Impossible... Five hundred armored cavalrymen of the Blood-Wolf Mercenary Corps... wiped out in one broom-sweep and one sneeze by an eight-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl?!”
Lin Fan whispered, his charcoal-drawn eyebrows twitching violently as cold terror gripped his throat.
He looked down at his own hands on the donkey’s hemp reins and suddenly realized why his borrowed donkey was the only mount in the entire field that hadn’t been glued to the ground:.
Because he had been too stingy after losing his ring to buy a real leather saddle or iron stirrups at the river camp. He was sitting on a coarse straw sack tied with hemp rope—which meant Nuannuan’s [Weapon-Melting Black-Licorice Gas]. Had only dissolved the cheap iron belt buckle at his waist while leaving the donkey’s hooves completely free!
Yet before Lin Fan could even think about turning his donkey around. Commander One-Ear Scar in the center of the army let out an earth-shaking roar of humiliation that froze the blood in every spectator’s veins!
Up on the gate tower, Gu Changsheng smiled and screwed the lid back onto his clay thermos. Nothing builds a nine-year-old’s confidence quite like sweeping five hundred mercenaries into a neat pile before lunch, Gu Changsheng thought, while Nuannuan’s black-licorice sneeze saves us a fortune in rope.
[ DING! 500-MAN MERCENARY ARMY DISARMED BY TWO GRADE-SCHOOLERS! ]
* Combo Attack : Gu Nian’s [Rank 2 Chaos-Bone Broom Sweep] +.
Su Nuannuan’s [Weapon-Melting Licorice Sneeze]!
* Casualties : 0 Dead | 500 Weapons Melted | 500 Riders Glued!
* Daily Income : +55,000 DP/day -> +60,000 DP/day!