At the watchtower scout's shout, the festive chatter in Dry-Well Village stopped instantly.
In the Red-Sand Wastes, bandits and wolves were dangerous, but at least you could fight them with a blade. The one thing that struck cold terror into every desert resident's heart was the word blisters—because every ten years during a great drought, the dreaded Red-Sand Plague would sweep through the border towns, wiping out whole settlements in days.
Pei Xuan didn't hesitate. "Old Wei, bring twenty Rank 1 guards to the front gate! Have everyone else stay behind the cactus line until I inspect them!"
Within two minutes, Pei Xuan stood on top of the wooden gatehouse alongside Old Wei, Hong Ling, and Scarface Wolf.
Looking out across the golden evening sand dunes half a mile away, a heartbreaking sight came into view.
A ragged column of nearly four hundred desert nomads—men, women, gray-haired elders, and crying toddlers—was stumbling across the sand toward the green trees and stone houses of Dry-Well Village. Behind them trudged sixty skinny, ribs-showing pack camels loaded with torn felt tents and empty water skins.
Leading the caravan was a seven-foot-tall giant of a man wearing a worn wolf-skin vest. Even though his lips were cracked and bleeding from thirst, he was carrying two sick children in the crooks of his muscular arms while pulling a camel rope with his teeth.
On every exposed arm, neck, and cheek of the nomads, angry red blisters the size of copper coins were oozing yellow water under the hot desert wind.
"Stop! Don't come another step closer!"
Down behind the village gate, Scarface Wolf's face turned pale beneath his scar as he pointed a shaking finger at the nomads. "Young Master! I know that tribe! That's the Wandering Wind-Wolf Tribe led by Chief Batu! Six days ago, word came from Black-Sand Town and Salt-Pool Town that Batu's tribe drank from a cursed well and caught the Sand-Rot Plague! Both towns shot fire arrows at them and chased them into the deep desert! Don't open the gate—if that rot gets into our village, everyone's skin will fester and fall off!"
Beside Pei Xuan, Hong Ling gripped her two kitchen cleavers tightly, stepping in front of Pei Xuan to block the wind blowing from the northeast.
"Young Master, please go back inside your stone courtyard!" Hong Ling begged, her voice trembling with worry. "Throw them twenty bags of Meat-Potatoes over the fence and tell them to go away! You just built sixty stone houses and got everyone healthy—we cannot let four hundred plague victims into Dry-Well Village!"
Even several of the newly promoted Rank 1 villagers behind the gate took a nervous step backward, covering their mouths and noses with their sleeves.
Fifty yards outside the line of [Needle-Spitting Guard Cactuses], the giant nomad chief Batu saw the guards aiming spears from the gatehouse and stopped in his tracks.
He gently set the two crying children down in the shade of a skinny camel, walked ten paces forward alone, and dropped heavily to both knees in the hot sand.
"Lord of this oasis!" Batu's voice was hoarse and raspy like grinding gravel, yet carried the deep boom of a Rank 2 Early Martial hunter. "I am Batu, Chief of the Wind-Wolf Tribe! My four hundred people have not had a drop of clean water in four days! We know we have the Sand-Rot on our skin—we do not ask to enter your clean stone walls and infect your people!"
Batu pulled a curved hunting knife with a silver-inlaid scabbard from his belt, along with a leather pouch of rough desert gems, and laid them in the sand before slamming his forehead against the ground until blood stained the dirt.
"I beg you, Lord! Take our sixty camels, our weapons, and my life as a slave if you wish! Just leave ten buckets of clean water and a few sacks of grain on the sand for our women and children! Once they drink, we will walk into the dead dunes and never trouble your oasis again!"
Behind Batu, four hundred starving nomads knelt in the sand, weeping silently as they scratched uncontrollably at the burning red blisters on their arms.
On the gatehouse roof, Old Wei sighed softly, his hand tightening on his saber hilt. "That Batu is a real man. Even at Rank 2, he didn't try to rush our fence to rob water—he knelt to trade his own life for his tribe's children. What a pity they caught the plague..."
"Who said they have the plague?" Pei Xuan asked suddenly.
Hong Ling blinked. "Young Master? Look at the red blisters all over their faces and arms! Scarface Wolf said Salt-Pool Town's doctor called it the Sand-Rot Plague!"
"Salt-Pool Town's quack doctors couldn't tell a scorpion bite from a mosquito bump," Pei Xuan snorted.
In Pei Xuan's eyes, a crystal-clear RTS Medical & Citizen Tooltip was floating right above Chief Batu and the sick child behind him:
==================================================================== [ INCOMING REFUGEE GROUP: WIND-WOLF NOMAD TRIBE (400 People) ] * Leader: Batu (Rank 2 Early Martial Hunter | Loyalty if Saved: 78!) * Group Composition: 120 Skilled Desert Hunters & Camel Herders, 160 Leatherworkers/Tent-Weavers, 120 Elders & Children. (Includes 60 Adult Pack-Camels!) -------------------------------------------------------------------- [ SYSTEM MEDICAL SCAN: "SAND-ROT BLISTERS" ] * Contagious Plague?: NO! (0% Infection Risk between humans!) * True Cause: [Alkali Bittern-Water Poisoning + Severe Scurvy/Mite Rash] - Two weeks ago, their oasis dried up. The tribe was forced to drink stagnant, high-alkali bitter mud-water full of sand-mites while eating zero fresh greens for 30 days. - The alkali poison is sweating out through their pores while sand- mites bite the salty skin, causing painful red blisters! * Cure Required: Wash skin thoroughly with [Purifying Spirit-Alkali Soap] to kill mites and draw out salt toxins, drink [Sweet-Spring Spirit Water], and eat fresh vitamin-rich greens/potatoes! ====================================================================
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Pei Xuan's eyes lit up as he read the scan.
Zero percent contagious!
It wasn't a plague at all! It was just dirty alkaline mud-water poisoning combined with desert sand-mites and vitamin deficiency!
Those greedy town lords in Black-Sand Town and Salt-Pool Town hadn't bothered to examine the nomads—they had simply seen red blisters on poor refugees who couldn't pay gate taxes and chased them away with fire arrows!
And because of those town lords' stupidity, a whole tribe of four hundred tough desert nomads—including a Rank 2 Chief, one hundred and twenty skilled hunters, and sixty pack-camels—had walked right up to Pei Xuan's front door!
If he took them in and cured them today, his village population would jump from 585 to 985—putting him right on the doorstep of the 1,000 Population Requirement needed to upgrade Dry-Well Village to Level 2 Territory!
Pei Xuan leaped straight off the twelve-foot gatehouse roof, landing lightly in the sand outside the gate.
"Young Master! Don't go near them!" Hong Ling screamed, nearly dropping her abacus as she scrambled down the ladder after him.
Pei Xuan waved his hand behind him without slowing down. He walked right past the green Guard Cactuses, stopped in front of the kneeling Chief Batu, and reached out to check the pulse of the seven-year-old boy sitting in the shade of the camel.
Batu gasped and tried to pull back in shock. "My Lord! Don't touch Little Hu! The blisters on his hands are bursting—you will catch the Sand-Rot!"
"Look at me," Pei Xuan said calmly, pressing two fingers against the boy's wrist while letting a tiny thread of warm blood-Qi check the boy's skin. "If this were the real Red-Sand Plague, your tongues would be black and your lungs would be coughing up blood within three days. Have any of you coughed blood?"
Batu froze. He looked back at his elders and shook his head slowly. "No... nobody has coughed blood. It just itches and burns like fire whenever we sweat, and our gums bleed when we chew dry meat..."
"That is because two weeks ago, your tribe drank stagnant bitter salt-water from a dry gully, didn't you?" Pei Xuan asked in a ringing voice that carried to both the nomads and his own villagers on the wall.
Batu's eyes widened as if he were looking at a living god. "How... how did My Lord know?! Our well dried up eighteen days ago, and we dug up yellow mud-water from Dead-Salt Gully for five days!"
"That water was full of poisonous earth-alkali and microscopic sand-mites!" Pei Xuan declared loudly. "Your bodies are trying to sweat the bitter salt poison out of your skin, and the sand-mites in your unwashed clothes are biting the sores! You don't have a plague at all—you just have salt-poisoning and bug bites!"
A collective gasp went up from both the four hundred nomads on the sand and the villagers watching from the gatehouse!
"Not a plague?!"
"It's just salt-water poison and sand-mites?!"
Down in the sand, elderly nomad women burst into loud sobs of relief, hugging their children tightly. For two weeks, they had believed the gods had cursed them to rot alive in the desert!
On the gatehouse wall, Scarface Wolf slapped his own thigh. "I knew it! Nothing hides from our Young Master's Immortal eyes! Back in Dead-Salt Gully, my horses got itchy red sores on their legs whenever they stepped in that yellow mud!"
"Since it is not a plague, Dry-Well Village will take in every single one of your four hundred people!" Pei Xuan announced to Batu.
Batu's huge frame trembled violently. Above his head, his Loyalty bar didn't just climb—it rocketed from 35 straight to 65/100 on the spot!
"However," Pei Xuan held up one finger with a strict expression, "Dry-Well Village is a clean town! Before a single one of you steps inside my stone streets, you must strip off those mite-infested rags, wash the salt poison out of your pores from head to toe, and pass hygiene inspection!"
Pei Xuan turned toward the village gate and barked out three crisp orders:
"Foreman Jack! Take forty men and twenty bolts of heavy canvas from the bandit loot warehouse! Set up twenty enclosed wash-tents in the open sand lot outside the gate—ten for men on the left, ten for women and children on the right, with wooden drainage troughs leading into the salt ditch!"
"Yes, Young Master!" One-Eyed Jack saluted and ran off barking orders.
"Old Guo! Fire up six giant iron cauldrons! Boil three hundred buckets of warm Sweet-Spring Well water, and start cooking forty pots of Meat-Potato and fresh green wild-onion soup to cure their bleeding gums!"
"On it, Young Master!" Old Guo spun his iron ladle and sprinted for the kitchen.
"And Hong Ling," Pei Xuan said to the young maid running up beside him, "bring me five buckets of concentrated Sweet-Spring Water, a basket of fresh green cool-mint leaves from around the well, and twenty jars of purified yellow scorpion oil from the kitchen!"
Ten minutes later, while One-Eyed Jack's crew was hammering tent stakes into the ground outside the gate, Pei Xuan stood inside the supply shed with the three ingredients laid out before him.
Ordinary hot water could wash off surface dirt, but it couldn't pull deep alkali salt-poison out of festering blisters or kill sand-mite eggs buried under the skin in a single bath. For that, he needed the Fusion Cube.
He opened the golden 3-slot interface in his mind.
==================================================================== [ FUSION CUBE — MEDICAL & HYGIENE SYNTHESIS ] * Slot 1: [Sweet-Spring Spirit Water (x5 Buckets — Heals Skin)] * Slot 2: [Crushed Well-Side Cool-Mint Leaves (Clears Heat & Itch)] * Slot 3: [Refined Red-Scorpion Oil (Kills Bugs & Draws Out Poison)] -------------------------------------------------------------------- * Fusion Cost: 200 Loyalty Points (LP) * System Processing: Saponifying spirit oil with mint essence... Removing greasy residue... Condensing into 500 bars of medicinal spirit soap! >> FUSE NOW? [YES / NO] ====================================================================
"Fuse!" Pei Xuan whispered.
[-200 LP! Current Balance: 2,400 LP.]
SHING!
A cool, refreshing green light flashed across the wooden worktable, filling the entire supply shed with the heavenly fragrance of mountain mint and spring rain.
When the light faded, the five buckets of water and jars of oil were gone. In their place sat five neat wooden crates stacked with five hundred translucent, emerald-green bars of soap that looked like carved pieces of priceless green jade!
==================================================================== [ FUSION SUCCESS! NEW VILLAGE CONSUMABLE CREATED! ] >> [ Jade-Clear Healing Soap (500 Bars — Rank 1 Medical Item) ] << -------------------------------------------------------------------- * Effect 1 (Instant Detox & Bug Kill): Kills 100% of lice, fleas, and sand-mites on contact! Draws out alkali salt-poison and heals skin blisters within 30 minutes of scrubbing! * Effect 2 (Jade-Smooth Skin): Opens clogged sweat pores and leaves skin smooth, fragrant, and refreshed (+10% Stamina Recovery!). ====================================================================
Pei Xuan picked up one bar of the [Jade-Clear Healing Soap]. It felt cool and smooth in his palm, and just smelling the crisp mint aroma made his head feel ten times clearer.
He carried the crates out of the shed just as twenty big canvas bath-tents and steaming wooden tubs of warm Spirit-Well water were lined up outside the village gate.
"Uncle Wei! Pass out the soap and hard bristle brushes!" Pei Xuan called out with a grin. "Today, nobody enters Dry-Well Village until they shine!"