The dark crimson blood inside the black-crystal reliquary pulsed like a wounded heart.
First Executive Director Mo-Suan stood alone on the highest terrace of the Supreme Vault. His long black robes whipped violently in the cold wind, but his thin lips curved into a cold, arrogant smirk.
“You think your little victory here was clever, Lin Mo?” Mo-Suan chuckled softly, his voice sliding across the plaza like grease over ice. “You bought back mortal worlds. You spent quadrillions of coins to play the savior. But you still don’t understand how the game was rigged before you were even born.”
Beside Lin Mo, Grandma Chen’s hands tightened around the wooden handle of her soup ladle.
Little Guo’er stepped closer to Lin Mo, clutching the hem of his dark jacket. Her silver bell hair-ribbon chimed once in the eerie stillness.
“What is in that jar, old monster?” Tie Niu demanded, brandishing his Chaos-Gold Security Baton. “Speak plain words before I crack your teeth!”
Mo-Suan tilted his head back and laughed, a shrill, grating sound that made the surrounding stone pillars vibrate.
“Three cosmic epochs ago, Old Master Taichu cast the seed of the pure-heart refund system across time and space,” Mo-Suan sneered. “Our tracking algorithms caught its trajectory immediately. We traced it down to a tiny, insignificant blue dust-mote called Earth. We knew the system required a pure-hearted host to awaken. So our board executed a preemptive risk-hedging protocol.”
