"The Sand-Jackal Gang?! Why are they coming three days early?!"
At Little Mud's shout, the happy chatter in the village square died instantly.
A dozen women dropped their clay bowls on the ground, grabbing their children and pulling them behind their skirts. Even burly young men like Stone turned pale under their sunburned skin, their hands trembling as they reached for their notched iron hoes.
Pei Xuan stepped down from the rim of the white quartz well, walked over to Little Mud, and poured half a ladle of Sweet-Spring Water onto the boy's scraped knee.
Within three seconds, the bleeding stopped and the red dirt washed away cleanly.
"Catch your breath first, Little Mud," Pei Xuan said calmly. "How many riders did you see, and where are they right now?"
"Th-thank you, my Lord!" Little Mud gulped down a mouthful of water, his chest heaving. "I was up on Red-Horn Ridge digging dry thorn-roots when I saw them coming out of the canyon! It's One-Eyed Jack, the third boss of the Sand-Jackal Gang! He's got thirty bandits on tall desert horses with him! They stopped by the crooked boulder three miles away to water their horses from their leather skins, so I rolled down the back of the dune and ran straight here!"
Old Man Liu hurried over, his face gray with fear despite the healthy color he had just gained from the well water.
"My Lord, this is bad—terribly bad!" Old Man Liu lowered his voice Urgently. "The Sand-Jackal Gang rules the fifty miles of desert west of here! Their gang chief is a terrifying Rank 2 Mid Martial killer called Scarface Wolf, and his younger brother is this One-Eyed Jack! One-Eyed Jack has trained his skin and muscles to the very peak of Rank 1 Martial, and he swings a forty-pound iron wolf-tooth club that can smash an ox's skull in one hit!"
"What do they usually take from the village?" Pei Xuan asked.
"Every month on the fifteenth, One-Eyed Jack rides in to collect the 'Sand-Jackal Protection Tax,'" Stone said through gritted teeth, his knuckles white around the handle of his pitchfork. "When we still had copper coins and sheep, he took ten strings of cash and two fat sheep every month. After Steward Ma robbed us three months ago, we had nothing left, so One-Eyed Jack took two of our three daily buckets of muddy water and beat my uncle until his ribs broke! He said if we don't have twenty silver taels ready this month, he'll burn down ten huts and take five of our village girls to sell at the slave market!"
"And that's not even the worst part, my Lord!" Old Man Liu pointed a shaking finger at the sparkling white quartz well in the middle of the square. "In the Red-Sand Wastes, a sweet water spring is worth more than a gold mine! If One-Eyed Jack rides into the village and sees our well overflowing with crystal-clear water, he won't just ask for twenty silver taels—he'll slaughter every man in Dry-Well Village and turn this place into the Sand-Jackal Gang's stronghold!"
"My Lord, hurry!" Stone dropped to one knee in front of Pei Xuan. "Take Old Wei, Little Sister Hong Ling, and Uncle Guo and ride your camel out the east trail! The rest of us will dump dry dirt and straw over the well to hide the water. I'll tell One-Eyed Jack that our well dried up completely!"
"And what happens when he sees that your lips aren't cracked anymore and smells the millet porridge in the square?" Pei Xuan asked.
Stone opened his mouth, unable to answer.
"If he gets angry, he can beat these old bones of mine!" Old Man Liu thumped his chest. "Better an old man dies than Your Lordship falling into the hands of horse bandits!"
Pei Xuan looked around the square. A hundred villagers were staring at him with wide, frightened eyes. Yet not a single one of them talked about betraying him to the bandits. Instead, their floating Loyalty bars were glowing bright green:
[ Citizen: Stone | Loyalty: 86 -> 90 / 100 (Die-Hard Loyal!) ] * Current Thought: "Lord Pei gave us clean water and hot porridge! Even if One-Eyed Jack breaks my legs with his iron club, I won't let him touch a hair on His Lordship's head!"
[ Citizen: Old Man Liu | Loyalty: 82 -> 87 / 100 (Devoted!) ] * Current Thought: "His Lordship is a good boy. We must get him out of the village before the horses arrive!"
Ding!
Right then, a golden notification box flashed in the center of Pei Xuan's vision:
==================================================================== [ TERRITORY MILESTONE BONUS READY TO CLAIM! ] -------------------------------------------------------------------- * Achievement: [Hearts of the Village] — 100% of Territory Citizens have reached 60+ Loyalty and stood ready to defend their Lord! * Instant Milestone Reward: +130 Loyalty Points (1 Full Day's Bonus Settlement Delivered Immediately!) >> [CLAIM NOW?] ====================================================================
Claim!
DING!
[+130 LP Added! Current Balance: 20 LP -> 150 LP!]
A warm grin spread across Pei Xuan's face. With 150 LP sitting in his pocket, why on earth would he run away from thirty petty horse thieves?
"Nobody is running away, and nobody is dumping dirt into my new well," Pei Xuan said loudly, his voice ringing clear across the square. "Did you forget what I said ten minutes ago? Dry-Well Village is my fief! If thirty mangy desert dogs can scare the Lord of Dry-Well Village into hiding in a hole, how am I supposed to lead you to eat meat every day?"
"Eat meat every day?!" Old Guo banged his big iron soup ladle against the wok on his back with a loud CLANG! "The Young Master is right! If those horse bandits dare come near my porridge pot, I'll smack their teeth out with my wok!"
"And I'll chop their horses' tails off!" Hong Ling brandished her two kitchen cleavers, though she quickly glanced back toward the house to make sure the remaining twelve catties of millet were locked up tight.
Old Wei stepped beside Pei Xuan, his single eye narrowing into a cold slit as he loosened his chipped broadsword in its scabbard. "Young Master, tell me how we fight them. The village gate at the west entrance is only thirty feet wide, with steep mud banks on both sides. If I stand in the middle of the gate, I can hold off One-Eyed Jack and five or six riders at once, though if all thirty horses charge together, some of them might slip past me."
"Why should you block thirty horses with your own body when we can let the plants outside the gate do the work?" Pei Xuan chuckled.
In his mind, he pulled up the [RTS Territory Mini-Map (5-Mile Radius)].
A crisp, top-down bird's-eye view of Dry-Well Village and the surrounding red desert popped up in the corner of his vision. The five-mile circle was completely clear of fog.
Three miles to the west, right beside a crooked sandstone boulder in the canyon, thirty-one bright red dots were clustered together. When Pei Xuan focused his eyes on the largest flashing red dot in the center, a detailed unit card popped open:
==================================================================== [ HOSTILE UNIT DETECTED: ONE-EYED JACK ] * Title: Third Boss of the Sand-Jackal Gang * Realm: Rank 1 Peak Martial (Skin & Muscle Perfected — 480 Jin) * Equipment: 40-lb Iron Wolf-Tooth Club, Patchwork Leather Vest * Troop Force: - 5 Rank-1 Early Martial Bandit Veterans - 25 Rank-0 Mounted Cutthroats * Movement Speed: Will resume marching in 4 minutes. Estimated arrival at Dry-Well Village West Gate: 22 Minutes. * Current Action: Drinking stolen sour wine and bragging about how many copper coins he'll squeeze out of the starving mud-farmers. ====================================================================
Twenty-two minutes before they ride up to the west gate!
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Pei Xuan turned around and marched straight toward the western entrance of the village, with Old Wei, Stone, and the other villagers hurrying behind him.
The west gate of Dry-Well Village was the only flat road leading into the settlement; the other three sides of the village were surrounded by steep, jagged clay gullies that horses couldn't climb. However, calling the west entrance a "gate" was being generous—it was just a thirty-foot gap between two crumbled mud walls, with two crooked wooden posts and half a broken fence lying in the sand.
Outside the broken gate, growing wild in the scorching red sand on both sides of the dirt road, were dozens of dry, scraggly [Desert Thorn-Bushes]. Each bush was about waist-high, covered in brittle yellow thorns an inch long.
Pei Xuan walked up to one of the thorn-bushes and touched it with his finger.
[ Wild Plant: Desert Thorn-Bush (Rank 0 Desert Scrub) ] * Features: Deep taproot, survives extreme heat, covered in brittle wooden thorns that snap off against thick leather. * [FUSION CUBE DETECTED]: Can be fused with metal sharps and Spirit Water to evolve into a Defensive Fortification Plant!
"Stone!" Pei Xuan called out, pointing at the scrub bushes outside the gate. "Take twenty strong men with spades and hoes! Dig up the ten biggest, fattest thorn-bushes out there—keep their roots whole—and replant them in two neat rows of five right here on the left and right sides of the gate road!"
Stone blinked in confusion. "My Lord... we're replanting thorn-bushes? Those dry wooden thorns can't even scratch a bandit's leather boots! Even Old Yellow chews them up like dry hay!"
As if to prove Stone's point, Old Yellow strolled past the gate, stretched his long bald neck out, and bit the top off a thorn-bush with a loud crunch-crunch, swallowing it without even blinking.
"Just dig them up and plant them where I pointed," Pei Xuan laughed. "You have ten minutes! Move!"
"Yes, my Lord! Brothers, grab your spades and dig!"
Even though Stone and the villagers had no idea why their Lord wanted to decorate the front gate with weeds before a bandit raid, their Loyalty was over 80. Plus, their bellies were full of hot porridge and Spirit Water! Twenty young men spat on their palms, grabbed their iron spades, and dug into the sand like madmen.
Pei Xuan turned to Old Man Liu and Hong Ling.
"Elder Liu, Hong Ling! Take the women and older folks back through the village," Pei Xuan ordered. "Pull every single rusted iron nail, bent horseshoe, broken door hinge, and scrap of sharp iron out of the abandoned huts and broken carts! I want a full wooden bucket of rusty iron nails here at the gate in ten minutes!"
"Rusty nails?!" Hong Ling's eyes lit up. "That I know where to find! When I was sweeping the north shed yesterday, I saw three rotten wooden doors full of big square nails! Grandma Zhang, Auntie Li, come with me—bring hammers and rocks!"
Hong Ling sprinted back into the village waving her cleaver like a little general, with thirty village women and children running right behind her.
For the next ten minutes, Dry-Well Village looked like a stirred-up anthill.
Clang! Bang! Screech!
Across the huts, women and kids pried long, rusty square nails out of rotten beams, while out at the west gate, Stone and his crew hauled ten huge, four-foot-wide desert thorn-bushes out of the dunes and planted them in two tight rows—five on the left side of the road and five on the right—creating a twenty-foot-long green funnel leading right up to the village gate.
"My Lord! All ten thorn-bushes are planted!" Stone wiped the sweat from his forehead, panting hard.
"My Lord! Here are the nails!" Hong Ling came running up with Stone's younger brother, the two of them carrying a heavy wooden water bucket filled to the brim with crooked, rusty iron nails, broken arrowheads, and sharp iron tacks. "I counted them on the way over! Three hundred and forty-two rusty iron nails and fourteen broken horseshoes!"
Old Man Liu looked at the bucket of rusty nails, then looked at the ten dry thorn-bushes, and suddenly slapped his thigh. "Aha! I understand Your Lordship's brilliant strategy! We're going to bury the rusty nails upright in the sand between the bushes so the bandits' horses step on them!"
"Horse bandits wrap their horses' hooves in tough rawhide shoes, Elder Liu," Old Wei shook his head, glancing worriedly toward the western sand ridge where a thin plume of red dust was already rising into the sky. "Nails in the sand won't stop thirty galloping horses. Young Master, they are less than a mile and a half away now! Should we get the villagers behind the mud wall?"
"Everyone step back behind the gate posts," Pei Xuan said, picking up the heavy bucket of rusty nails in one hand and a full bucket of Sweet-Spring Spirit Water in the other. "Stone, take the villagers behind the mud wall and hold your hoes and clubs ready. Nobody comes out until I say so!"
Stone and the villagers hurried back behind the crumbling mud wall beside the gate, peeking over the top with wide, nervous eyes.
Pei Xuan walked into the middle of the ten dry thorn-bushes. He poured a ladle of Sweet-Spring Water over the roots of each bush, tossed a big handful of rusty iron nails into the branches of all ten bushes, and placed both palms forward.
In his mind, the [Supreme Fusion Cube] spun rapidly and locked onto the five pairs of bushes on both sides of the road!
==================================================================== [ SUPREME FUSION CUBE — BATCH DEFENSE RECIPE ] -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Slot 1]: 10 Desert Thorn-Bushes (5 Twin-Root Clusters) [Slot 2]: 342 Rusted Iron Nails & Scrap Iron Shards [Slot 3]: 1 Bucket of Sweet-Spring Spirit Water -------------------------------------------------------------------- >> Total Fusion Cost: 50 LP (10 LP per Guard Cactus Unit x 5) >> Remaining Balance After Fusion: 100 LP >> Result: Removes brittle wood weakness and tetanus rust flaws! Merges iron sharpness with high-pressure water-sac roots to create 5 Twin [Lv.1 Needle-Spitting Guard Cactuses]! >> [CONFIRM BATCH FUSION? YES / NO] ====================================================================
Confirm Fusion!
HUMMMMM—!
Fifty Loyalty Points vanished from Pei Xuan's screen. A blinding flash of emerald-green and dark-silver light burst from Pei Xuan's palms, wrapping around the ten dry thorn-bushes and the rusty iron nails!
Behind the mud wall, Stone, Old Man Liu, and Hong Ling gasped so hard they nearly swallowed their tongues.
Glug-glug-glug! POP! POP! POP!
Right before their eyes, the rusty iron nails melted into liquid black iron and soaked straight into the dry branches of the thorn-bushes! At the same time, the scrawny yellow bushes sucked up the Sweet-Spring Water like starving sponges and began to swell!
In less than ten seconds, the brittle yellow twigs fused together and puffed up into ten enormous, barrel-chested green cactuses standing six feet tall!
Their skin was as thick and tough as green crocodile hide, shining with a metallic sheen in the sunlight. Even more terrifying, covering every ridge of the ten fat cactuses were thousands of three-inch-long, gleaming black-iron needles as thick as knitting needles!
At the very center of each fat cactus, a round, hollow tube—shaped just like a puckered mouth—opened and closed with a soft huff-huff sound, aiming straight across the dirt road!
==================================================================== [ DEFENSIVE BUILDING: NEEDLE-SPITTING GUARD CACTUS (Lv. 1) ] ==================================================================== * Quantity: 5 Twin-Clusters (10 Barrels Total — Left & Right Gate) * Armor Rating: Rank 1 Tough Iron-Hide (Fireproof & Blade-Resistant) * Attack Range: 35 Feet (Covers Entire West Gate Entrance) * Firepower: Each barrel blasts a pressurized volley of 60 Three-Inch Black-Iron Needles at 300 feet per second! * Reload Time: Absorbs underground moisture and iron sand to regrow a full volley of needles every 3 minutes. * Special Trait — [Non-Lethal Pin-Cushion Mode]: Automatically aims for unarmored fleshy spots (thighs, shoulders, and backsides). Coated in natural cactus sap that numbs muscles for 30 minutes! * [FRIENDLY FIRE PROTECTION]: Lord Pei Xuan and all Citizens/Pets of Dry-Well Village are automatically whitelisted! ====================================================================
"M-Mother of Heaven..." Stone grabbed the top of the mud wall so hard his fingernails chipped the dry clay. "The dry thorn-bushes ate the rusty nails and turned into six-foot iron-needle monsters?!"
"Look at the needles on those things!" Hong Ling whispered, her eyes as big as saucers. "They're three inches long and shining like newly forged sewing needles! Wait—Old Yellow! Don't bite that!"
Before anyone could stop him, Old Yellow—who was still feeling snackish—shuffled over to the nearest six-foot cactus, opened his mouth, and tried to take a bite out of its side.
The fat green cactus quivered, recognized Old Yellow as [Friendly Pet: Whitelisted], and quickly flattened all its three-inch iron needles against its skin so the camel wouldn't poke his gums! Even better, a little pink cactus flower popped out on top of its head and gently tickled Old Yellow's nose.
Old Yellow sneezed, chewed the little pink flower happily, and trotted back behind the gate.
"They don't even poke our camel!" Old Guo clapped his fat hands together in delight. "Young Master, you really are a living Immortal!"
Before Pei Xuan could reply, the ground beneath their feet began to tremble.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
A thick cloud of red sand rolled over the crest of the western ridge less than four hundred yards away.
Out of the dust charged thirty-one tall, fierce desert horses! Every rider wore dirty leather vests and wolf-skin caps, waving curved iron sabers and yelling like wild jackals to scare the villagers.
At the very front rode a massive, bare-chested man with thick black chest hair, a black leather eyepatch over his left eye, and a hideous forty-pound iron wolf-tooth club resting on his shoulder.
It was One-Eyed Jack, the third boss of the Sand-Jackal Gang!
As One-Eyed Jack rode down the slope toward the west gate, a breeze blew from the village square, carrying the cool, sweet scent of the Spirit Well and the lingering aroma of boiled yellow millet right into his nose.
One-Eyed Jack pulled hard on his reins, his single bloodshot eye bulging wide as he sniffed the air.
"Hold up!" One-Eyed Jack roared, raising his iron club. Behind him, thirty horse bandits reined in their mounts in a cloud of dust just sixty feet outside the village gate.
One-Eyed Jack licked his dry lips, staring past the gate toward the center of the village where the white stone well was gleaming in the sun.
"Well, I'll be damned!" One-Eyed Jack threw his head back and laughed like a hyena. "Boys, do you smell that?! These starving mud-rats were hiding a sweet-water spring and a sack of fine millet from Grandpa Jack! No wonder they didn't want us coming early this month!"