By afternoon, the outer ring of Dry-Well Village looked like the biggest mud-pie factory in the history of the Red-Sand Wastes.
Every man, woman, and sturdy teenager among the one thousand and fifty residents had rolled up their trouser legs and joined the great wall-building mobilization. Because almost two hundred villagers had already broken through to Rank 1 Martial by eating Meat-Potatoes, deep-fried scorpions, and practicing the Iron-Anvil Body Art, they didn't move like ordinary tired peasants.
They moved like human bulldozers.
"One, two, HEAVE!"
Grandma Zhang—sixty-two years old with silver hair tied up in a red cloth—grabbed the handles of a heavy wooden wheelbarrow piled with five hundred pounds of wet, grey oasis clay. Without even breathing hard, she trotted briskly up the dirt ramp at the speed of a trotting donkey and dumped the entire load into the perimeter trench with a loud SPLOTCH!
"Out of the way, young folks! Don't block Grandma's lane!" Grandma Zhang shouted cheerfully, spinning her empty wheelbarrow around on one wheel and sprinting back toward the clay pit.
Behind her, two former Sand-Jackal bandits who were struggling to push a three-hundred-pound cart stared at the old lady's dust cloud with their jaws hanging open.
"Brother Scarface..." one of the former bandits whispered to Scarface Wolf, who was swinging a heavy iron pickaxe in the clay pit. "Did Grandma Zhang just outrun our cart while carrying five hundred catties of wet mud?"
Scarface Wolf wiped the sweat from his scarred forehead and glared at the slacking bandit. "Shut your trap and push! Grandma Zhang ate twelve fried scorpions at breakfast and did three hundred Iron-Anvil squats before sunrise! If you let a sixty-year-old grandma beat our Crew Three brick record today, Boss Jack will make us sleep next to Old Yellow the Camel tonight!"
Above Scarface Wolf's head, his status bar flashed brightly:
[Citizen: Scarface Wolf (Crew #3 Foreman) | Rank 2 Mid Martial | Loyalty: 81/100][Current Thought: My bone marrow feels warmer every time I swing this pickaxe! This Iron-Anvil breathing method Lord Pei gave us is ten times better than the trash manual I stole in Black-Rock City!]
Pei Xuan stood on a wooden watchtower platform near the eastern gate, watching the three resource piles grow higher and higher along the marked boundary line of the village.
To upgrade the village's flimsy five-foot fence into a true Level 2 Fortress Wall that enclosed all sixty Cool-Breeze Stone Houses, the Martial Yard, the Brick Kiln, the Sweet-Spring Well, and the ten acres of Meat-Potato fields, the perimeter needed to stretch nearly a mile around.
In a normal mortal town, building a twenty-foot-high wall a mile long out of rammed earth and stone would take a thousand laborers at least three months—and Boss Qian's Black-Arrow Mercenaries would arrive in less than forty-eight hours.
Fortunately, Pei Xuan was not building a normal wall. Since upgrading Dry-Well Village to Level 2 yesterday, his Fusion Cube had unlocked a special [Territory Construction Fusion] mode: as long as his citizens piled the raw materials along the foundation trench, the Cube could fuse and mold the entire structure in one go!
Let's see how the three ingredients were coming along:
Ingredient 1: [10,000 Cartloads of Wet Oasis Clay] Dug straight from the underground run-off basin beneath the Sweet-Spring Well. Because this clay had been soaked in diluted spirit-well water for three weeks, it was dark grey, sticky as rice cake, and held a trace of earth energy.
Ingredient 2: [500 Bundles of Wild Desert Rubber-Vine Sap] Out in the rocky gullies three miles north grew tough, twisted bushes called Ghost-Tendon Rubber Vines. Desert nomads usually hated them because if you chopped them with an axe, the milky white sap would glue your axe blade stuck and bounce it back at your shin. Batu and his four hundred nomads had spent the whole afternoon chopping down every rubber-vine bush within five miles and boiling the sap in twenty big iron cauldrons until it smelled like hot rubber tires.
Ingredient 3: [30,000 Catties of Black-Iron Kiln Slag] Over the past ten days of baking Cool-Breeze Bricks and melting down rusty bandit weapons, a small mountain of heavy, porous black-iron slag had piled up behind the kiln. It was too brittle to forge into swords, but mixed into mud, it was harder than granite.
"Young Master!"
One-Eyed Jack climbed up the ladder of the watchtower, his clothes splattered from head to toe with grey mud and white rubber sap, grinning from ear to ear.
"The foundation trench is dug six feet deep all the way around the village!" One-Eyed Jack reported loudly. "Ten thousand cartloads of wet clay are packed inside the wooden molds, the thirty thousand catties of iron slag are mixed in, and Batu's men just poured the last cauldron of boiled rubber-vine sap over the top! What do we do next? Light fires around the wall to bake it?"
"No need to waste firewood," Pei Xuan said, checking the sky.
The red desert sun was just sinking below the western horizon, painting the sand dunes in deep purple shadows. A cool night wind swept across the oasis.
"Have everyone step back thirty paces from the foundation trench," Pei Xuan ordered. "Tell Old Guo to serve dinner in the central square—double rations of lamb-potato stew and salted flatbread for every worker. While they eat, I will finish curing the wall."
One-Eyed Jack didn't even question how one young lord could "cure" a mile-long wall in the dark. In the eyes of every person in Dry-Well Village, Pei Xuan was already half an Immortal who had summoned sweet water from dry sand and turned bitter roots into lamb meat!
"You heard the Young Lord!" One-Eyed Jack cupped his hands and bellowed down to the workers. "Drop your shovels, wash your hands at the ditch, and line up at Old Guo's pots! Double lamb stew tonight!"
"HOORAY! Long live Lord Pei!"
A thousand cheers rang out across the twilight desert. Laughing and chattering, the muddy villagers trooped toward the brightly lit central square, where ten giant iron cauldrons were already bubbling with fragrant, golden-brown Meat-Potato and Mutton Stew.
Only Old Wei, Batu, One-Eyed Jack, and Hong Ling stayed behind by the eastern gate, watching Pei Xuan with wide, curious eyes.
Pei Xuan walked down from the watchtower and placed his right palm flat against the wooden mold holding the wet, sticky mixture of clay, iron slag, and rubber sap.
Inside his mind, the golden Fusion Cube spun rapidly above the RTS Territory Screen.
==================================================================== [ TERRITORY CONSTRUCTION FUSION READY ] -------------------------------------------------------------------- * Slot 1: [10,000 Cartloads of Spirit-Soaked Oasis Clay] * Slot 2: [500 Cauldrons of Concentrated Ghost-Tendon Rubber Sap] * Slot 3: [30,000 Catties of Black-Iron Kiln Slag] -------------------------------------------------------------------- * Estimated Cost: 1,000 Loyalty Points (LP) * Flaw Removal: Deletes [Brittle Mud Cracking], [Sun-Dry Shrinkage], and [Sticky Surface Odor]. * Result Preview: [Lv.2 Elastic Iron-Mud City Wall (Rank 2 Peak Defense)] >> CONFIRM FUSION? [ YES / NO ] ====================================================================
Confirm! Pei Xuan thought.
[ Balance: 2,620 LP -> 1,620 LP ]
HUMMMMMM—!
A low, deep vibration ran through the ground beneath their boots, like a giant beast purring under the sand.
Right before the stunned eyes of Old Wei, Batu, One-Eyed Jack, and Hong Ling, a wave of faint golden-brown light shot out from Pei Xuan's palm and raced along the entire mile-long foundation trench at the speed of a galloping horse!
Wherever the golden light passed, the wet clay, black iron slag, and milky rubber sap began to churn, bubble, and rise upward!
Five feet... ten feet... fifteen feet... twenty feet high!
Within ten seconds, the bubbling mud rose to a uniform height of twenty feet and a thickness of eight feet at the base, complete with neat crenellated battlements along the top, stone staircases on the inside every hundred yards, and a massive arched gatehouse over the eastern and western entrances!
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Then, with a soft WHOOSH of warm steam, the golden light faded.
The wooden molds fell away on their own, leaving behind a seamless, twenty-foot-high fortress wall that wrapped all the way around Dry-Well Village like a giant sleeping dragon.
"By the ancestors..." Batu dropped to his knees, his voice trembling in awe as he stared up at the towering ramparts that had risen out of the earth in ten breaths. "In the northern steppes, even the Khan's royal city took ten thousand slaves five years to build! Lord Pei built a fortress with a single touch of his hand!"
[Citizen: Batu (Nomad Chief) | Rank 2 Early Martial | Loyalty: 86 -> 95/100!][Citizen: One-Eyed Jack (Chief Foreman) | Rank 1 Peak Martial | Loyalty: 88 -> 96/100!]
One-Eyed Jack ran forward and pressed his face against the new wall, sniffing it and tapping it with his knuckles.
Wait a second.
One-Eyed Jack blinked his single eye and frowned slightly.
From the outside, the [Lv.2 Elastic Iron-Mud City Wall] didn't look like shiny iron or polished granite at all. The Fusion Cube had disguised its outer surface so well that it looked just like ordinary, sun-baked yellow desert mud! There were even fake little straw marks and dry cracks on the surface, making it look like a cheap peasant mud wall that would crumble if a strong donkey kicked it.
"Young Master..." One-Eyed Jack scratched his head hesitantly. "The wall is huge and tall, no doubt about it! Only... why does the outside still look like dry yellow mud? And when I press my thumb against it..."
One-Eyed Jack pushed hard with his thumb. The surface of the mud wall actually gave way slightly—maybe half an inch—like pressing on a very thick, stiff piece of cured ox-hide or a hard rubber ball!
"Is the mud not dry inside yet?" Hong Ling asked worriedly, poking the wall with the handle of her kitchen cleaver. "Young Master, if Captain Hu's mercenaries hit soft mud with iron axes and thousand-pound battering rams, won't they dig right through it?"
Pei Xuan looked at the floating system stats of the wall and smiled mysteriously.
==================================================================== [ BUILDING: ELASTIC IRON-MUD CITY WALL (Lv.2) ] * Defense Rating: Rank 2 Peak (Immune to all attacks below Rank 3!) * Special Trait 1 [Deceptive Mud Skin]: Looks like a fragile mud wall to trick enemies into using maximum physical force. * Special Trait 2 [200% Kinetic Rebound]: Absorbs any physical impact, arrow, or siege ram below Rank 3 and rebounds it backward at DOUBLE the incoming speed! ====================================================================
"Whether it is dry or not, testing it once is better than guessing a hundred times," Pei Xuan said, stepping back five paces and gesturing toward the wall. "Old Wei, bring that forty-pound iron sledgehammer from the mason cart."
"Yes, Young Master!"
Old Wei walked over to the tool cart and picked up a massive, long-handled iron sledgehammer that ordinary villagers needed two men just to lift. With his Rank 2 Early Martial cultivation and his Rank 2 Blood-Iron Mechanical Arm, Old Wei spun the forty-pound sledgehammer in one hand as easily as a wooden rattle.
"Young Master, how hard should I hit it?" Old Wei asked carefully, worried that if he used his full Rank 2 strength, he might knock a big hole in the Young Lord's new wall and embarrass him. "Should I use thirty percent of my strength?"
"Use eighty percent," Pei Xuan said, before adding quickly: "Wait—actually, don't swing it with your hands holding the handle. Stand thirty feet back and throw the sledgehammer at the wall like a javelin. And Batu, One-Eyed Jack, Hong Ling—all of you stand behind me, off to the side!"
"Throw it?" Old Wei was puzzled, but he always obeyed Pei Xuan's orders to the letter.
He walked back thirty feet from the inner face of the wall, took a deep breath, and circulated his Rank 2 blood-Qi into both arms. The bronze muscles on his right arm and the iron gears on his left mechanical arm hummed in unison.
"HAAAH!"
Old Wei stomped a two-inch footprint into the hard dirt and hurled the forty-pound iron sledgehammer straight at the yellow mud wall!
WHOOSH!
The heavy iron hammerhead screamed through the air like a black cannonball and slammed squarely into the wall!
One-Eyed Jack winced and closed his eye, expecting to hear a loud CRACK and see chunks of mud flying everywhere.
Instead—
BOOOOOOING—!
There was no crack. No dust fell.
As the forty-pound iron sledgehammer struck the wall, the yellow mud surface stretched inward by six inches like a giant, tight leather drumhead! Black-iron fibers beneath the mud skin flashed with a dull metallic sheen, absorbing every ounce of Old Wei's Rank 2 throwing force—and then snapped back outward like a monstrous catapult!
Old Wei's eyes went wide as saucers.
The forty-pound sledgehammer shot back out from the wall at twice the speed Old Wei had thrown it!
"Watch out!" Batu roared.
Old Wei barely had time to duck his head!
WHIZZZZZ—BOOM!
The rebounding sledgehammer screamed past Old Wei's left ear—the wind of its passage blowing his hair straight back—flew a hundred and fifty feet across the village square, and smashed straight through the thick wooden roof of the empty bandit tool-shed on the far side of the street!
Splinters of wood flew into the night air, while back at the eastern gate, the yellow mud wall wobbled once like a bowl of firm jelly and returned to looking completely flat, harmless, and untouched! Not even a scratch mark was left on the fake mud surface!
Dead silence fell over the eastern gate.
One-Eyed Jack's jaw dropped so low it nearly hit his chest.
Batu stared at the intact mud wall, then turned his head stiffly to stare at the smashed tool-shed a hundred and fifty feet away, and swallowed hard.
Hong Ling covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes shining like little stars. "It... it bounced back?! And it flew back twice as fast as Uncle Wei threw it?!"
Old Wei slowly straightened up from his crouch, touching the top of his head where a few strands of grey hair had been neatly clipped off by the flying hammer handle. A cold chill ran down the old veteran's spine—followed immediately by a surge of wild excitement!
"If I had been standing there holding that hammer when it hit the wall..." Old Wei breathed, his voice shaking, "...both of my arms would have been shattered, and I would have been launched over the rooftops!"
"And what if fifty archers shoot iron arrows at this wall?" Pei Xuan asked with a light chuckle, tapping the smooth yellow mud with his folding fan.
"The arrows won't pierce an inch," Batu gasped, his eyes lighting up with fierce joy as he pictured the scene. "They'll bounce right back into the archers' own chests at double speed!"
"And what if twenty burly mercenaries run up to our gate holding a thousand-pound iron battering ram and slam it into our wall with all their strength?" One-Eyed Jack whispered, shivering just thinking about the physics of it.
The four of them looked at each other and burst out laughing at the exact same time.
"Hahaha! Let Boss Qian's Black-Arrow Mercenaries come!" One-Eyed Jack slapped his thigh in delight. "I was worried they wouldn't hit our wall hard enough! Tomorrow morning, I'm going to paint a big red target right on the wall next to the gate and write 'THINNEST SPOT — DO NOT HIT' on it so those idiots aim all their rams right there!"
"Good idea," Pei Xuan praised, nodding approvingly. "Paint it in crooked letters so it looks like a panicked villager wrote it by mistake. Also, have the carpenters reinforce the gatehouse roof and set up a shaded pavilion on top with a table, four chairs, and a tub of ice-cold Sweet-Spring water to chill some desert watermelons."
"Watermelons?" Batu blinked. "Lord Pei, are we going to fight a siege or watch a street opera?"
"With a Rank 2 Peak rebound wall doing all the work, why should we sweat under the noon sun?" Pei Xuan yawned and stretched his arms. "Wait—let's check the midnight settlement before we go to sleep."
Just then, the midnight bell rang softly inside Pei Xuan's head.
==================================================================== [ MIDNIGHT LOYALTY SETTLEMENT COMPLETE! ] * Loyal Citizens (60+ Loyalty): 1,050 / 1,050 (100% Loyal Village!) * Die-Hard Citizens (95+ Loyalty): 180 (2x Point Bonus Active!) * Daily Income Added: +2,850 LP! >> NEW BALANCE: 4,470 LP ====================================================================
Pei Xuan smiled as a warm stream of pure vitality—the feedback bonus from a 100% loyal Level 2 territory—flowed into his dantian and meridians, washing over his Rank 1 Peak muscles and making his bones itch with a faint metallic tingle. He was now only half a step away from breaking through into Rank 2 Early Martial (Iron-Bone Stage).
At that exact moment, twenty miles east in the brightly lit courtyard of Salt-Pool Town's largest manor, a shrill scream of fury shattered the quiet night.
"WHAT DID YOU SAY?!"
Boss Qian—a man so fat he looked like three flour sacks sewed together, wearing five gold rings on each stubby hand—slammed his porcelain teacup onto the stone table, shattering it into pieces.
Kneeling on the cold flagstones in front of him were Steward Liu and his six guards. All seven of them were still wearing only their torn, dusty underpants. Their bare feet were swollen like pig trotters from running twenty miles across hot sand and gravel, and Steward Liu's goatee was still crusted with dried yellow camel spit.
"M-Master Qian, it's the truth!" Steward Liu wept, lisping through the gap in his two missing front teeth. "That little bastard Pei Xuan didn't just refuse to hand over the well—he charged us ninety-five silver for horse poop, stole your seven best horses, stripped our clothes, and said you still owe him fifty-four silver with compound interest!"
Boss Qian's triple chin shook like jellied pork fat as his face turned purple with rage.
"Fifty-four silver?! He stole MY horses and says I owe HIM money?!" Boss Qian turned toward a tall, muscular man sitting in a tiger-skin chair on the left side of the hall.
The man wore heavy black scale-armor and had a jagged knife scar running from his eyebrow down to his jaw. He was scraping his fingernails with a hunting dagger while a massive, six-foot iron longbow rested against his knee.
This was Captain Hu (Hu Biao), commander of the notorious Black-Arrow Mercenary Company—a ruthless Rank 2 Peak Martial warrior whose hands were stained with the blood of a dozen desert caravans.
"Captain Hu!" Boss Qian panted, holding up a heavy wooden tray filled with five hundred gleaming silver taels. "You heard my steward! That exiled brat in Dry-Well Village has a magical spring that never runs dry, ten acres of strange red potatoes, and now my seven war horses! Take all two hundred of your Black-Arrow brothers, your fifty heavy archers, and my four iron-headed siege rams tomorrow morning!"
Captain Hu flicked his dagger shut with a metallic clink and picked up a piece of silver from the tray, weighing it in his rough palm.
"Five hundred silver to flatten a mud village of peasant refugees?" Captain Hu sneered, his voice like grinding gravel. "Boss Qian, taking two hundred armored mercenaries and four siege rams to fight a bunch of dirt farmers is like using a butcher's cleaver to kill a chicken."
"Don't be careless, Captain Hu!" Steward Liu cried out from the floor. "He has a one-armed old guard who ripped my whip out of my hand! And they just piled up a big mud wall around their huts today!"
"A fresh mud wall?" Captain Hu burst into a harsh, mocking laugh. Around the courtyard, twenty mercenary lieutenants drinking wine laughed along with him. "Fresh mud takes a month to bake hard in the sun! Tomorrow at noon, one volley from my fifty Black-Arrow archers and one smash from our thousand-pound iron ram will turn his wet mud wall into a flat grave! Boss Qian, get your water barrels and slave chains ready—by tomorrow afternoon, Dry-Well Village and a thousand free laborers will belong to you!"