Two hours later, inside the newly expanded Dry-Well Central Cement & Building Materials Factory just outside Clear-Brook Town, a loud CRACK-THUD echoed across the main workshop floor.
Four factory workers swung rubber mallets to split open the five-ton block of half-cured gray clay-cement that had been hoisted out of Cement-Mixer Truck #3.
Out tumbled the First Immortal Advisor of the Great Yan Kingdom, Daoist Rotten-Bone.
His tattered burial-shroud robe had already been cut off during the extraction and replaced with a clean, durable pair of gray canvas factory trousers and a bright canary-yellow sleeveless vest with bold black letters printed across both the chest and back:
[MUNICIPAL DEBTOR #84,901 — NIGHT-SHIFT FOREMAN]
Around his scrawny neck sat a heavy, smooth ring of black iron inlaid with nine glowing blue runes—a Rank 5 Liquid-Qi Metering & Spirit-Lock Collar freshly fused by Pei Xuan for 1,000,000 LP.
“Untie me! You mortal bandits dare to put a slave collar on a Rank 5 Foundation Establishment Immortal?!”
As soon as his feet touched the concrete floor, Daoist Rotten-Bone jumped up like a scalded cat and tried to call upon the pool of black Liquid Qi in his dantian to blast the factory roof off.
