The grand brass exit gates of the Central Celestial Colosseum creaked open under the gray afternoon sky.
Three thousand sect patriarchs and vault directors stumbled out onto the wide marble plaza. Their silk robes were wrinkled, their hair ornaments were askew, and their pockets were completely empty.
Not a single elder had managed to purchase a longevity fruit today. The entire auction catalogue had been wiped clean by a young man from Jiangcheng carrying a black card and an insatiable appetite for snacks.
“Three hundred trillion,” an ancient abbot muttered, leaning against a lamp post with hollow, glassy eyes. “Three hundred trillion in cash for a farm. The universe has gone mad.”
As the crowd staggered toward the central avenue, a sweet, heavenly fragrance cut through the cold city air.
It did not smell like burnt incense or expensive alchemical smoke. It smelled of freshly sliced peaches, ripe honey-melons, chilled wild mountain berries, and sweet, creamy yogurt.
Every sect master stopped dead in their tracks.
In the middle of Bullion Plaza, directly across from the locked adamantine doors of Vault #1, a massive two-hundred-yard open-air buffet pavilion had appeared.
