Back in the courtyard, Austin cleared the lingering blue skybox from his peripheral vision and flicked his wrist to summon the character HUD.
A muted amber notification popped up three inches in front of his nose, buzzing against his molars like a dentist's drill before settling into clean monospace:
"Stamina buff," Austin grunted.
He rolled his neck. *Pop. Pop. Pop.* Three vertebrate clicks in clean succession, followed by a faint static prickle running down his forearm to the calloused pad of his thumb. His lower back didn't ache quite as fiercely. Small miracles. After thirty years humping subfloor plywood and wrestling crooked two-by-fours into plumb, you appreciate any perk that keeps your L4 vertebra from pinching the sciatic nerve.
"Five percent stamina ain't a full union health package, but it beats popping generic ibuprofen like breath mints," he muttered, squinting at the macro. "Now what in the hell is `/ignite_hearth`? Sounds like a glorified pilot light. If the dev team gave me an active heat utility, I might as well put it to work. A man can't live off radioactive chicken eggs forever. Need some actual roughage before my plumbing locks up."
He eyed the southeast corner of his leveled hardscaping.
Earlier that morning, after clearing the southern drop-off with a quick thermal pulse, he had hauled half a dozen chunks of volcanic basalt up from the cliff face. Dense rock. Heavy enough to take off a toenail through cheap hemp sandals. In the real world, laying up a masonry bread oven was an all-day chore. You needed refractory fireclay, masonry sand, hydrated lime, and enough patience to butter every bed joint to three-eighths of an inch so thermal expansion didn't crack the dome on the first firing.
Here? The dev console had no union steward checking timecards or wet-cure schedules.
Austin dragged four basalt slabs into an interlocking horseshoe against the cliff rock, dropping two salvaged iron spikes in as alignment pins. He knocked the jagged edges flat with the heel of his palm, checking square by eye.
"Close enough for rough framing," he muttered.
He slapped his bare hand flat against the keystone at the apex of the curve, dialed up his mental interface, and toggled the macro.
`[/ignite_hearth: Target = Masonry_01, Temp = 1,400°C]`
A thin, silent jolt of violet-white plasma snapped from his lifeline directly into the rock.
The basalt hissed. The jagged seams softened on contact, glowing cherry-red, then blinding magnesium-white, flowing into each other like warm wax. Zero mortar. Zero trowel work. In three heartbeats, the joints fused into smooth, vitrified black glass, perfectly sealed without a millimeter of gap. When Austin rapped the dome with his knuckle, it rang clear and deep, like a cast-iron skillet.
"Clean weld," Austin grunted, wiping a soot smudge off his forearm with his sleeve. "Zero thermal bridging. Flue draw looks tight. Draft ought to pull twenty cubic feet a minute without choking the firebox."
He walked over to the lean-to shed, boots crunching on quartz grit.
Behind a broken wicker basket lay a burlap sack stuffed with six shriveled mountain radishes. Miserable specimens. Dug out of the frost by the body's previous tenant weeks ago and left to shrivel in the dark. Tough as shoe leather. Gnarly, dirt-caked, and bitter enough to strip the enamel off your back teeth.
Austin hauled a bucket of cold well water over, dumped the roots in, and scrubbed the caked grit off with a handful of coarse straw. He took a sharp flint scraper, scored deep cross-hatches along their pale bellies, and crushed a pinch of wild mountain pepper seeds over the wet skin.
He laid the roots on a flat granite slab and slid the whole assembly into the belly of the new dome.
Then he bent low to the draft intake, puckered his lips, and blew.
A soft, controlled breath. Just a pilot flare from the spinning fire in his gut.
*Whuff.*
The domed chamber flooded with a pale, steady glow of pure ultraviolet radiation. Flameless. Sootless. Inside the radiant chamber, trapped moisture in the woody pulp flashed instantly to high-pressure steam, puffing the wrinkled skins taut like little golden sausages. Deep inside, bitter starches broke down into rich, bubbling amber sugars. The syrup seeped through the scored skin, caramelizing against the hot stone floor with a steady, rhythmic sizzle.
Within four minutes, the draft pipe on top of the dome began to belch.
A ribbon of pale lavender vapor curled out of the vent, caught the morning breeze, and rolled down the cliff face.
The exhaust pipe belched a rich, heavy scent: slow-roasted parsnips dripping with clarified butter, caramelized clover honey, and the sharp metallic snap of ozone right before a summer thunderstorm.
Austin leaned his elbows on his knees, his belly letting out a greasy, hollow growl.
"Hell yeah," he chuckled, tapping his bamboo tongs against the stone hearth. "That's proper game food. Whoever balanced the cooking mechanic in this build deserves a raise. If the developers ever open up multiplayer trade servers, I'm setting up a diner right on this ridge. Charge fifty copper a plate and retire by season three."
***
Half a mile down the southern trail, crouched behind a jagged pile of limestone boulders, twenty disciples of the Iron Sword Hall were sweating through their padded leather jacks.
"Young Master Bai..." Senior Brother Shen whispered. His jaw rattled so hard his teeth sounded like dice in a leather cup. He kept both clammy hands clamped around the sharkskin hilt of his spirit-iron saber, knuckles stark white against the dark leather. "We... we gotta pull back. You heard that subterranean shriek earlier! That was an Earth-Fiend! An ancient subterranean beast, weeping like a whipped dog while it burrowed back into the mantle!"
"Shut your face, Shen," Bai Chen spat.
The young master was crouched low behind a rotten juniper bush, his silk slippers ankle-deep in damp red clay. His knees were shaking, but his jaw was set with the ugly, stubborn greed of a minor clan heir who had never been told no.
"You think Chu Yuan commands demons?" Bai Chen hissed, wiping red dirt from his cheek with a trembling silk sleeve. "That worthless trash couldn't command a three-legged mule! His spirit roots were shattered three years ago! He lives in a hut held together with bird spit and dry grass! What we heard was an ancient ward. The Founding Ancestor left an array buried on that peak, and that beggar tripped the trigger wire by sheer dumb luck!"
"B-but the sky turned purple—"
"A consumable talisman!" Bai Chen snapped, bloodshot eyes darting toward the ridge. "One charge! That's it! If he had real power, would he be wearing a hemp sack that smells like a wet goat? Would he be picking weeds with a rusty hoe? The treasure is exposed, you idiot! If we bag that ancient relic before the inner sect elders notice the spike, my father will hand you an Inner Deacon tablet and five bottles of Foundation Pills! You want to spend the next forty years scraping rust off practice blades in the outer armory?"
Shen swallowed a mouthful of sour spit. The Foundation Pills were a potent hook. His throat tightened with conflicting urges—run like hell or gamble his neck for a breakthrough.
The high mountain breeze suddenly swung around from the north.
A warm thermal draft tumbled off the lip of Sunset Peak. It drifted down the limestone scree, cool mountain air suddenly laced with thick, sweet vapor.
*Sniff.*
Shen took an involuntary breath through his nose.
His spine jerked straight.
His pupils dilated until the dark brown iris was almost swallowed whole. The damp leather hilt slipped through his sweaty fingers, clattering into the gravel.
The scent hit his lungs like a cup of boiling spirits chased with liquid sugar. The moment that honeyed, roasted vapor touched his bronchial tubes, the sluggish, mud-thick qi in his lower meridians went wild. It surged forward like river water breaking through a rotten beaver dam!
At the base of his tailbone, an old injury—a hardened blockage from an improperly treated sword strike seven years ago—gave a dry, brittle *SNAP*.
A golden shimmer flared from the pores of Shen's neck.
His lungs cleared. His shoulders loosened. The stubborn wall that had kept him trapped at the Early Foundation realm for nearly a decade simply dissolved, swept away like dry sawdust before a shop vac!
"The... the smell..." Shen gasped, clutching his throat as hot tears flooded his red-rimmed eyes. "My meridians... they're running free!"
Behind him, the twenty outer disciples dropped their crossbows and serrated spears into the weeds, staggering like drunks.
"My wrist sprain... the tendon reattached!" "My frost-lung rime! I can breathe without coughing blood!" "It's an ancient pill! A ninth-tier Heaven-cleansing marrow elixir! Someone unsealed an immortal furnace on the peak!"
Bai Chen sucked in a massive chestful of the lavender air. His jaw dropped. The rich, buttery ozone coated his palate, and the spiritual energy slammed into his dantian like a sledgehammer hitting a pine wedge. His greedy eyes bulged until the veins in his sclera showed bright red.
"A Dao-Marrow Pill!" Bai Chen shrieked, scrambling to his feet and kicking his broadsword out of the mud. "The cripple broke into the Patriarch's hidden stash! Attack! Up the slope! Even the soot off the lid is enough to push us into Golden Core! Charge, you dogs, charge—!"
He barely cleared two strides.
The sky above the valley tore in half with a deafening *CRACK*.
*BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!*
The sonic boom hit the limestone crags like a direct artillery strike. Loose gravel showered down the slope, bouncing off helmets and armor. A terrifying streak of emerald-and-violet sword glare ripped through the low cloud deck at Mach 4, shearing the tops off thirty ancient pines in the gorge below.
Down from the clouds came an old man with wild, unwashed white hair and a beard that looked like it had been through a brushfire. His robes were a disaster—patched hemp, grease spots, dried herbal gunk, and circular scorch marks from exploded crucibles. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and burning with the frantic mania of a tweaker who hadn't slept since last Tuesday.
In his left fist, held casually by one massive leg like a butcher's mallet, was a six-ton bronze alchemy cauldron covered in green verdigris.
The raw, suffocating pressure of a Late Golden Core powerhouse rolled down the slope, pinning Bai Chen and his men flat to the gravel like wet towels.
Bai Chen's bladder almost gave out.
"E-Elder... Elder Mu?!" Bai Chen squeaked, his voice cracking into a dog whistle.
Elder Mu! The reclusive lunatic who ran the Medicine Pavilion! A three-hundred-year-old monster who had sealed himself into the subterranean magma vents forty years ago, swearing to either forge the legendary Nine-Solar Reversal Pill or rot in the dark!
Elder Mu never looked down, blind to the twenty disciples groveling in the scrub brush like beetles.
His bloodshot, twitching eyes were locked entirely on the thin wisp of lavender steam rising from the little basalt dome on the ridge above.
A manic, tearful grin tore across the old man's soot-caked face, revealing yellowed, crooked teeth.
"PURPLE CLOUD DAO GAS!" Elder Mu bellowed, his voice echoing across the gorge like rolling thunder. "THREE HUNDRED YEARS! THREE HUNDRED YEARS OF BURNING COAL AND EATING DROSS! THE HEAVENLY DAO HAS OPENED ITS EYES!"
Abandoning his flying sword entirely, he pitched the blade into the hillside like a tent peg, bunched his scrawny legs, and hurled himself off the air currents. He hit the basalt courtyard of Sunset Peak on his knees at two hundred miles an hour, sliding across the vitrified glass in a shower of friction sparks and burning fabric, barreling straight toward Austin's lunch like an unguided missile.