The flaming ring of realm-deeds spun in Director Fang-Nu’s skeletal hands, casting a blood-red glare across the courthouse plaza.
Behind him, Ninth Director Zhi-Xue’s eight spider legs clattered against the black diamond steps. Her venomous fangs dripped green corrosive acid that hissed against the polished stone, eating small smoking pits into the floor.
“You think this is an empty threat, Lin Mo?!” Director Fang-Nu shrieked, his voice cracking with psychotic desperation. “Every one of those one hundred thousand mortal realms was financed through our sub-prime cross-collateral debt pool! Their planetary cores are bound by ancient self-destruct runes! If I press this talisman, the tectonic plates of one hundred thousand worlds will fracture at the exact same second!”
Director Zhi-Xue threw her head back, her web-shrouded hair writhing like silver serpents in the wind.
“And every loom, every forge, and every workshop in sixty galaxies is mortgaged to my sweatshop cartel!” Zhi-Xue hissed, clicking her mandibles. “Forty billion weavers and craftsmen are chained to their stations by debt-inscribed iron collars! Drop this audit right now! Unfreeze our personal vaults, or we will trigger the slave-collars and execute every laborer in sixty sectors!”
In the public gallery, Chen Wen and millions of mortal scholars rose from their seats, shouting in outrage.
