CRASH!
Inside the Grand Golden-Crow Throne Hall of the Great Yan Royal Palace, a priceless white-jade wine goblet flew down from the dragon throne and shattered into a hundred pieces on the polished marble floor!
“Say that again?!”
King Yan-Hong—a fat, sixty-year-old monarch wearing a nine-dragon robe embroidered with gold thread—stood up from his throne, his jowls shaking like jelly and his eyes bulging out of his purple face.
Kneeling at the bottom of the golden steps, the Royal Spymaster was sweating so hard that a dark puddle had formed under his forehead on the red carpet.
“Y-Your Majesty, I had three separate shadow-scouts verify it with brass spyglasses before I dared report it!” the Royal Spymaster cried, holding up a hand-drawn charcoal sketch with both trembling hands. “Six days ago at Clear-Brook Valley, First Immortal Advisor Daoist Rotten-Bone led his five thousand Iron-Bone Zombies and five thousand White-Bone Skeletons to wipe out Pei Xuan’s rebel army...”
“And?!” the Prime Minister stepped forward impatiently from the front row of civil officials. “Did Advisor Rotten-Bone turn Clear-Brook Town into a ghost zone? Where is Pei Xuan’s head?!”
“Advisor Rotten-Bone didn’t even make it across the bridge outside town!” the Spymaster sobbed. “First, Pei Xuan’s men poured a river of black glue-stone across the highway and stuck all ten thousand zombies and skeletons up to their knees! Then they washed them with lemon-scented lime water, dressed all ten thousand corpses and skeletons in bright orange vests, and stamped red county property seals…
