The three-hundred-mile Star-Iron Debt Anchor screamed through the upper atmosphere like a falling black mountain.
Inscribed across its jagged, spiked hull were one hundred thousand years of predatory dining taxes, salt monopolies, and grain-forfeiture curses forged by Vault #4.
High atop the fractured control bridge of the Supreme Abacus, Ancestor Hei Lv gripped the sixth firing lever with both trembling hands. His bloodshot eyes locked onto the golden glass dome of Taichu’s Galactic Central Cafeteria on the third terrace of Bullion Tower.
[Ancestor Hei Lv. Former Master of Vault #4. Goodness Score: -92 / 100.]
“If I cannot have your crystals, nobody gets to eat lunch!” Hei Lv shrieked into the spatial broadcast array, spittle flying from his cracked lips. “Smash their soup pots! Flatten their dining tables! Crush their steaming baskets into scrap iron! For forty thousand years, mortals ate tree bark when they missed a mortgage payment—how dare these refugees eat fresh shrimp wontons for free?!”
Beside him on the bridge, Ancestor Tian Li’s crimson eyes burned with savage approval.
“Crush the kitchens, Hei Lv!” Tian Li roared through the howling cosmic wind. “Break their morale! Let them starve beneath the weight of three hundred miles of neutron star-iron!”
