The NPC refused to stop headbutting the deck.
*Thud. Thud. Thud.*
Every rhythmic smack of the kid's skull against the black obsidian left another greasy smear of forehead sweat and roadside silt. Right on top of the muddy sandal footprint. Structural disaster.
"Hey. Kid. Kill the animation loop," Austin said, poking the boy's collarbone with the blunt ash haft of his hoe.
Li Xiaoyao froze mid-jolt, his nose hovering half an inch off the glass. His skinny shoulders shook so hard his shoulder blades clicked together like poker chips. "S-Senior Ancestor... this worthless worm awaits your divine thunder!"
"I don't know what quest script you're running, but you're scuffing up the finish," Austin sighed, leaning his hoe against his hip. He walked over to the lean-to shed tacked onto the side of the shack. Kicking through a pile of dry kindling, he hauled out an old bamboo broom with splayed, brittle bristles.
He tossed it onto the obsidian between the kid's knees.
`[Item: Worn Bamboo Broom (Durability: 8/30)]` `[Effect: Removes debris. Lowers memory usage by clearing loose clutter.]`
"There's a wooden pail of gray water sitting behind the rain trough," Austin said, pointing a thumb back. "Scrub that clay off coordinate fourteen-eight. Don't flick your wrists like swatting flies. Drag the bristles flat along the grain. Twelve-inch pulls. You flick it, you just throw fines in the air and they settle right back in the seam joints. If I come back from my menu and spot one smudge, I'm kicking you from the instance."
Li Xiaoyao raised his head, chin quivering.
He looked down at the broom.
To mortal eyes, it was dry yellow bamboo tied with rot-spotted twine. But to Li Xiaoyao's spiritual senses, every split fiber hummed with deep, unearthly power.
*A Divine Relic of Cleansing!* Li Xiaoyao's heart pounded against his ribs until his vision blurred. *He didn't obliterate me! The Senior is offering me a path to burn away mortal karma through sacred labor! And 'coordinate fourteen-eight'... that must be the heavenly alignment of the Great Nether Constellation! 'Drag the bristles flat... pull the cosmic dust in twelve-inch strokes...' Those aren't chores! Those are the sacred foundational hand-seals of the ancient Dust-Sweeping Dao!*
Tears of profound, religious ecstasy cut clean tracks through the soot on his cheeks.
"Disciple Li Xiaoyao obeys the Ancestor's Decree!" the boy wailed, snatching the broom and hugging it to his chest as if it were a high-grade immortal artifact. "Even if my marrow turns to powder and my spirit veins dry up like autumn weeds, I shall sweep this sacred ground until it reflects the purity of the Nine Heavens!"
"Yeah, whatever. Don't miss the corners," Austin grunted, turning his back on the hysterical teenager and plodding toward the porch bench. "Weird voice-actor direction on this NPC. Way too theatrical. Needs a patch to tone down the melodrama."
The moment Austin's rear hit the rough cedar bench, a soft chime rang in his ears.
Austin leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees, and tapped open the defense schematic.
"Perimeter defense wire," he muttered, nodding in professional approval. "Now that's what I call a milestone reward. In any sandbox worth its salt, if you don't fence your compound by nightfall on day one, wandering griefers and feral mobs clean out your storage chests while you're AFK."
He got up and rummaged through the scrap pile rotting behind the lean-to. Beneath waterlogged shakes, he found an old wooden spool of tarnished copper wire—heavy eight-gauge stuff the previous Chu Yuan salvaged for firewood bundles.
Austin dragged the spool out into the sun. The copper was greenish-black with thick verdigris oxidation, stiff as cold iron, and kinked in a dozen places.
"Rough as a cob," Austin muttered, testing the wire's ductility by bending a loop around his thumb. "Zero insulation. Pitted surface. But solid copper is solid copper. Good enough for an electric cattle fence."
He grabbed an iron grounding rod from the scrap heap and marched to the northwest corner. He hammered it into rocky soil with the hoe's flat back until three inches showed above shale. He stripped verdigris off the wire with a thumbnail, twisted it tight around the spike, and ran line toward the fence posts.
To Austin, he was setting up a standard paddock barrier against feral rabbits and boars. He worked like a proper tradesman—driving notched wooden standoffs into cedar posts so the wire wouldn't short against damp timber, pulling tension taut with a trucker's hitch.
He tapped into his dantian interface, mentally bridging the grounding circuit to the micro-plasma spark's stray 0.001% passive yield.
*Just a gentle twelve-volt trickle,* Austin thought. *Enough juice to give a stray pig an uncomfortable tickle on the snout.*
To Canglan's cosmology, however, connecting an unshielded stellar core to an earthing circuit was pure lunacy.
The instant the copper closed the circuit, the wire didn't carry twelve volts. The ambient potential spiked past five hundred thousand volts of pure, unshielded raw solar plasma.
The wire tightened with a soft, predatory hiss. It vibrated with an eerie violet glow. The heat warped the air around the wooden posts into shimmering mirages.
Austin wiped greasy verdigris onto his hemp trousers and nodded. "Simple. Grounded. Code compliant. Let's see any wandering pests chew through that."
***
Half an hour later, heavy, arrogant boots crunched up the gravel trail below.
"Hey! Dead man! Drag your worthless carcass out here and pay your dues!"
Three figures swaggered out of the bamboo thicket. Leading the pack was a burly youth in dark indigo robes, a broad iron saber across his shoulders. His flat face carried the casual cruelty of a bully who had never had his nose broken.
Wang Hu. Personal enforcer for Young Master Bai Chen.
Behind him lagged two lackeys carrying oak cudgels, grinning. Every month, Bai Chen sent them to shake down weak outer disciples for spirit stones, rations, and herbs. On Sunset Peak, Chu Yuan had always been the easiest mark.
"Brother Hu, look," one lackey muttered, pointing a club toward the courtyard. "Isn't that Li Xiaoyao? Why is that little worm crawling on his belly like a dog?"
Wang Hu squinted through the midday heat.
Sure enough, Li Xiaoyao was on his knees with the broom, sweat pouring in rivers, delicately dusting the obsidian floor with obsessive precision. Every stroke looked like a ritual prayer.
"Trash flocking with trash," Wang Hu spat, hawking a wad of phlegm into the shale. "Hey, Chu Yuan! Get out here! Young Master Bai has declared that your monthly grain allowance is seized for the sect's mountain defense tax! Hand over the sack, kowtow three times in the dirt, and maybe I won't snap your other shinbone!"
From the porch bench, Austin looked up from his crafting log.
Three humanoid models stood past the boundary posts. Red aggro diamonds—the universal indicator of a hostile mob—failed to render over their heads, which annoyed him.
"More wandering bandit NPCs," Austin grumbled under his breath. "The mob spawn rate on this mountain is ridiculous. Can't get fifteen minutes of peacetime base building without an invasion script."
He didn't bother getting up off the bench. He just flicked a dismissive hand toward the trail. "Hey. Keep off the grass. Fence is live."
Wang Hu's face flushed dark purple. "Keep off the grass?! You crippled dog, you think cleaning up your front porch makes you an Elder?! What is this pathetic piece of scrap wire? You think a single strand of copper can hold back the Iron Sword Hall?!"
Wang Hu took two heavy strides forward, raised his iron-capped leather boot, and aimed a savage kick straight at the thin copper wire strung between the fence posts.
Fifty yards back on the deck, Li Xiaoyao glanced up, eyes widening in horror.
"NO! SENIOR BROTHER, DON'T TOUCH THE BOUNDARY—!" Li Xiaoyao shrieked.
Too late.
The heavy leather sole hit the copper wire. The circuit closed.
*BZZZZZZZZT-KABOOOOOOOM!*
It didn't sound like thunder. It hit like an anti-tank shell detonating inside a steel shipping container.
A column of searing violet-white plasma blasted outward from the copper wire. The shockwave flattened fifty yards of scrub pine in a split second, vaporizing topsoil and ionizing the atmosphere into a concussive shockwave that rattled window frames three peaks away.
Wang Hu didn't even get out a syllable.
The kinetic backfeed of half a million volts hit his two-hundred-pound frame like a runaway locomotive. His iron saber shattered into ten thousand red-hot needles. His robes disintegrated into smoking rags. His body launched backward into the sky like a cork popping under extreme hydraulic pressure.
*WHOOOOOOSH—!*
Wang Hu drew a smoke-trailing arc through the mountain air. He soared three hundred and fifty meters over the ridge. Then he plunged straight through the thatched roof of the valley pigpens with a muffled, wet *SPLAT*.
The two surviving lackeys stood frozen on the path.
Their oak cudgels burned to charcoal in their grips. Eyebrows, eyelashes, and forelocks were seared away. Mouths hung open so wide their jaws threatened to unhinge, staring at the empty sky where their leader had stood half a second earlier.
On the porch, Austin slowly lowered his mug of cold water, his mouth open in genuine disbelief.
He watched Wang Hu vanish over the treeline, followed a moment later by distant squeals from several dozen swine.
Austin pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long, weary sigh.
"Unbelievable," he muttered, shaking his head in absolute disgust. "Look at that ragdoll velocity calculation. Who wrote this physics code? The guy tapped a low-voltage paddock wire and got launched three hundred meters into the sky box! The knockback vector has to be off by two decimal places. The collision calculation multiplied by mass instead of dividing by it."
He glanced at the two remaining lackeys, whose knees were now knocking together like wooden castanets.
"Hey," Austin called out, pointing a finger toward the distant pigpens. "Tell your developers to patch that knockback glitch. It completely ruins the game's physical immersion."
The two lackeys didn't hear a word about developers or immersion.
All their minds registered was the cold voice of an ancient calamity ordering them to recover whatever smoking meat remained before he incinerated their souls too.
"DEMON! HE'S AN ANCIENT DEMON! MERCY!" they shrieked in unison, flinging their charcoal cudgels into the weeds, wheeling around, and tumbling head-over-heels down the stone steps in blind, shrieking panic.
Inside the courtyard, Li Xiaoyao dropped his broom, fell flat on his stomach, and began weeping tears of pure, mind-melting enlightenment.
*The Nine-Solar Annihilation Array...* Li Xiaoyao prayed, his soul shivering with awe. *With a casual wave of his hand, Master Chu cast a Foundation Establishment powerhouse straight into the mortal muck three thousand paces away! And then he rebuked the heavens for their fragile laws! Truly... an unbelievable god walking the earth!*