Outside the front gate of Dry-Well Village, twenty large canvas tents stood in two neat rows on the sand, with wooden drainage troughs running down into a lime-lined pit.
Inside each tent sat four big wooden bath tubs filled to the brim with steaming, crystal-clear water from the Sweet-Spring Well. Next to every tub was a long-handled boar-bristle scrub brush and a glowing emerald-green bar of [Jade-Clear Healing Soap].
However, the four hundred nomads of the Wind-Wolf Tribe were standing in front of the tents looking as terrified as sheep outside a slaughterhouse.
Born and raised in the dry depths of the Red-Sand Wastes, where a single cup of muddy water was precious enough to trade for a sheepskin, most of these nomads had only had three full baths in their entire lives: the day they were born, the day they got married, and the day they died!
To see three hundred buckets of sweet, clear drinking water poured into wooden tubs just to wash dirty feet made the old nomad herders feel like heaven was going to strike them with lightning for wasting water.
Even worse was the rule that Scarface Wolf—now wearing a red armband that said CHIEF HYGIENE INSPECTOR—had just barked out at the entrance to the men's tents:
"Listen up, you smelly desert wolves!" Scarface Wolf roared, holding a long iron fire-tongs in one hand and a wooden paddle in the other. "By order of Lord Pei: every single person entering Dry-Well Village must strip completely naked at the tent door, throw all your old bug-bitten rags onto the bonfire pile with my iron tongs, and scrub yourself three times from head to toe with this green Immortal Jade Soap!"
He pointed to fifty stacks of neatly folded gray cotton shirts and trousers sitting on clean tables at the far end of the tents—looted from the Sand-Jackal Gang's cloth warehouse and freshly washed by the village women.
"Anyone who passes the scrub inspection gets a brand-new set of clean cotton clothes, a pair of hemp sandals, and two big bowls of hot Meat-Potato and green-onion soup!" Scarface Wolf shouted. "Anyone who tries to sneak in without scrubbing gets thrown back into the tub by me and my sixty brothers!"
At the front of the line, the seven-foot-tall Nomad Chief Batu stared at the emerald bar of [Jade-Clear Healing Soap] in his rough palm.
It looked like a piece of carved green treasure jade and smelled like cool mountain mint.
"Lord Pei..." Batu turned his head toward Pei Xuan with trembling hands. "This green treasure... is it really for rubbing on our dirty skin? And that water in the tubs is pure spring water! If we drink just half a ladle, we can live another three days. How can lowly herders like us ruin thirty tubs of drinking water with our blistered bodies?"
"In Dry-Well Village, we have an endless Spirit Well," Pei Xuan smiled warmly, gesturing toward the village square where water was gushing merrily down the stone irrigation ditches. "You can drink all the sweet water you want after you wash. As for the blisters on your tribe's skin, drinking water alone won't pull out the alkali poison before nightfall. Only scrubbing with this Jade-Clear Soap will cure the children tonight. Chief Batu, your people look up to you—why don't you go in Tent Number One and set an example?"
Batu looked back at the seven-year-old boy Little Hu, who was crying softly as his mother tried to keep him from scratching the bleeding red blisters on his neck.
Batu gritted his teeth. "If I die from wasting Immortal water, let the sky strike me alone!"
He marched up to Tent Number One, ripped off his tattered, lice-ridden wolf-skin vest and stiff leather trousers, tossed them into Scarface Wolf's iron tongs, and stepped inside the canvas tent with Little Hu in his arms.
Inside the tent, two burly former bandits wearing yellow Debtor vests stood ready with long-handled scrub brushes.
"Sit down in the tub, big guy!" Bone-Chopper Ma grinned, ladling a bucket of warm Sweet-Spring water over Batu's broad shoulders and lathering up the emerald bar of Jade-Clear Soap.
The moment the Jade-Clear Soap touched the warm Spirit-Well water, it didn't just make ordinary white suds—it whipped up into rich, fragrant, pale-green foam that hummed with a cool, soothing herbal energy!
Bone-Chopper Ma slapped a huge handful of green mint foam onto Batu's blistered back and scrubbed down hard with the bristle brush.
Scrub-scrub-scrub!
"OHHHHH!"
Inside Tent Number One, Chief Batu let out a roar so loud and strange that the four hundred nomads waiting outside jumped a foot in the air!
"Chief!" twenty nomad hunters shouted in alarm, reaching for the tent flap. "What are they doing to the Chief inside?!"
"Don't stop! Scrub harder on the left shoulder blade!" Batu's booming voice echoed from inside the tent, sounding half like a groaning bear and half like a man who had just stepped into heaven. "Heavens above! The burning itch is gone! It feels like a cool mountain breeze is blowing right into my bones! Look at Little Hu's arms!"
Batu lifted the seven-year-old boy out of the warm green foam and poked his head out the front flap of the tent so the whole tribe could see.
Right before four hundred pairs of wide eyes, as the pale-green soap foam slid down Little Hu's skinny arms, tiny black specks of dead sand-mites and muddy yellow threads of alkali salt-poison washed straight out of his pores into the tub!
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Where angry, oozing red blisters had covered the boy's neck and arms just five minutes ago, the swelling was already shrinking at a speed visible to the naked eye! The red sores dried up, flaked off like dead skin, and revealed healthy, smooth pink skin underneath!
"My blisters don't itch anymore, Mama!" Little Hu giggled, splashing the warm mint-scented water onto his face. "The green bubbles feel cold and tingly! Look, my hands are all clean!"
Outside the tent, Little Hu's mother clapped both hands over her mouth, tears pouring down her face.
"It's gone! The Sand-Rot is really washing right off!"
"Lord Pei's green jade stone is divine medicine!"
"Quick! Get out of these bug-bitten rags and get in the tubs!"
Instantly, the fear outside the twenty canvas tents turned into a frantic stampede!
Men tore off their filthy felt coats and threw them onto the bonfire pile. Across the partition wall, Grandma Zhang and thirty village women led the nomad mothers and girls into the ten women's tents, helping them wash their tangled hair and scrub the toddlers from head to toe with huge clouds of minty green foam.
As four hundred stacks of lice-ridden, alkali-encrusted rags burned into clean ash in a lime-pit bonfire downwind, the sounds of vigorous scrubbing, splashing water, and sighs of pure relief filled the desert evening.
Inside the men's tents, Scarface Wolf and his ex-bandit crew took their jobs as Hygiene Inspectors dead seriously. After all, these former bandits had just become proud residents of clean, bug-free Cool-Breeze Stone Houses—if anyone brought a single sand-flea into the village, it would ruin their hard work!
"Hold it right there, beardy!" Scarface Wolf grabbed a nomad hunter by the ear as the man tried to step out the back of Tent Number Four after only one quick rinse. "Did you scrub behind your ears and between your toes?! Look at your heels—there's still a layer of yellow Dead-Salt mud on them! Boys, put him back in the tub and give him the double-brush treatment!"
"Mercy, Inspector! It tickles!" the nomad hunter howled with laughter as two ex-bandits held him down and scrubbed his feet until they shone pink.
An hour and a half later, as the first stars came out in the clear desert sky, the back flaps of the twenty wash-tents opened.
Walking out toward the village gate were four hundred people who looked so clean and refreshed that they barely recognized each other!
Every single angry red blister on their faces, necks, and arms had faded into faint pink marks that were already vanishing. Their tangled hair was washed clean and tied back with neat cloth strips, their skin smelled of cool mountain mint, and everyone was dressed in clean, soft gray cotton shirts and trousers.
Even the seven-foot-tall Chief Batu, who had looked like a terrifying wild savage covered in scabs and mud two hours ago, now looked like a handsome, bronze-skinned border general—except that he kept touching his own smooth cheek in confusion.
"My skin..." Batu muttered, rubbing his jaw where rough calluses and blisters had been for years. "Why does my face feel smoother than a rich silk merchant's wife?"
Before he could figure it out, a wave of heavenly, mouth-watering aroma hit his nose.
Right inside the village gate, along the cleanly swept stone pavement of East Well Street, Old Guo had set up forty wooden tables lit by bright oil lanterns.
On every table sat steaming wooden tubs of golden Meat-Potato and Wild Green-Onion Soup, baskets of Grandma Zhang's chewy Potato-Wheat Flatbreads, and plates of crispy Spicy Deep-Fried Scorpions!
"Sit down, new brothers and sisters!" Old Guo shouted, waving his giant iron ladle with a beaming smile. "Young Master Pei says nobody in Dry-Well Village goes to bed hungry! Eat all the soup and bread you can hold, and make sure the little ones drink two bowls of green-onion broth so their gums stop bleeding!"
The four hundred clean nomads sat down at the tables with shaking hands.
When Chief Batu picked up a big wooden bowl and gulped down his first mouthful of rich, savory Meat-Potato soup mixed with Sweet-Spring Well water, his eyes rolled back slightly in pure bliss.
For thirty days, his tribe had chewed on dry leather straps and bitter sand-weed while watching their children cry from thirst and skin sores. Now, sitting on a clean stone street in fresh cotton clothes, his belly was filling up with hot soup that tasted like boiled lamb and melted away every trace of hunger and exhaustion in his Rank 2 body!
Around the forty tables, four hundred nomads ate with tears streaming into their bowls.
When the last drop of soup was finished, Chief Batu stood up from his bench, walked straight to the stone platform where Pei Xuan was sitting, and signaled to his entire tribe.
THUD!
All four hundred members of the Wind-Wolf Nomad Tribe dropped to their knees in unison across the stone street!
Batu placed both palms flat on the gray stone bricks and slammed his forehead against the pavement three times—bang, bang, bang—so hard the stones echoed.
"Four hours ago, Black-Sand Town and Salt-Pool Town shot fire arrows at our children and left us to die in the dunes like mangy dogs!" Batu's booming voice echoed across the whole village. "Lord Pei not only saw through our sickness with one glance, he gave us Immortal green soap to wash away our sores, clean cotton robes for our backs, and hot meat soup for our bellies!"
Batu raised his head, his eyes burning with fierce devotion.
"From this night until the day the Red-Sand Wastes turn into an ocean, the four hundred souls and sixty camels of the Wind-Wolf Tribe belong to Lord Pei Xuan! Point your finger, My Lord—whether it is hunting desert beasts, herding livestock, or charging into a forest of spears, Batu and the Wind-Wolf Hunters will die before taking half a step back!"
"WE SWEAR TO FOLLOW LORD PEI UNTO DEATH!" four hundred voices roared into the night sky.
DING! DING! DING!
In Pei Xuan's mind, a tidal wave of green and gold notifications flooded his RTS Territory Screen!
==================================================================== [ MASS RECRUITMENT & LOYALTY SURGE! ] * 400 Wind-Wolf Nomads have officially joined Dry-Well Village! * Because you cured their [Alkali Blister Sickness] and clothed/fed them on Day 1, Initial Loyalty starts at 75–88/100! - Chief Batu (Rank 2 Early Martial | Loyalty: 88/100) = +100 LP/day! - 25 Nomad Veteran Hunters (Rank 1 Early Martial | Loyalty 78+) = +250 LP/day! - 374 Nomad Civilians/Herders (Rank 0 | Loyalty 75+) = +374 LP/day! -------------------------------------------------------------------- [ TERRITORY STATUS UPDATE ] * Total Population: 985 / 1,000 (15 away from Level 2 Territory!) * Loyal Citizens (60+): 972 / 985 * Building Queue: Foreman Jack's crew is building 40 new Cool-Breeze Stone Houses on West Well Street tonight using stockpiled bricks! >> NEW DAILY INCOME: +2,100 LP/day! >> CURRENT BALANCE: 2,400 LP! ====================================================================
Pei Xuan smiled broadly as he helped Chief Batu to his feet.
In a single afternoon, spending just 200 LP on a batch of Jade-Clear Soap had netted him four hundred loyal citizens, a third Rank 2 martial expert after Old Wei and Scarface Wolf, twenty-five Rank 1 hunters, and boosted his daily income by five hundred points to 2,100 LP/day!
Just as Pei Xuan was about to assign Batu's hunters to their new stone houses on West Well Street, a loud, angry HONK-SCREECH echoed from the livestock corral behind the granary, followed by the sound of wooden fence rails snapping!
"Lord Pei! Come quick!" a young stable boy came running down the street waving his arms. "Chief Batu's sixty pack-camels are picking a fight in the corral! They cornered Old Yellow by the water trough and bit off the last tuft of hair on his head!"