By the end of the month, a very strange rumor began spreading from the border trading posts of the Central Continent all the way to the wild Southern Demon Lands beyond the Spine Mountains and the island kingdoms of the Eastern Sea.
In a bustling border teahouse ten miles from the Southern Demon Lands frontier, a scarred caravan scout slammed his teacup down on the wooden table, his face pale as paper as he whispered to a group of foreign merchants.
“Don’t even think about smuggling contraband into the Central Continent anymore!” the scout warned, looking over his shoulder as if Abacus Su might pop out of the floorboards with a fine book. “Last month, the Four Great Immortal Sects woke up their four five-hundred-year-old Rank 6 Golden Core Ancestors to assassinate King Pei Xuan!”
The foreign merchants gasped, leaning in close. “Four Rank 6 Golden Core Ancestors?! Did they burn Dry-Well Capital to ashes?!”
“Burn it to ashes?!” the scout laughed bitterly, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. “I just rode back from Dry-Well Capital on the One-Copper Teleport Bus! Do you know what those four invincible Golden Core Sovereigns are doing right now? Every morning from six to noon, all four of them wear shiny golden vests and pedal stationary iron bicycles in the municipal boiler room to heat the city’s public bathwater! And in the afternoons, one stokes the soup stoves for Minister Sun, one digs railroad ditches with a shovel, one wires telephone poles for a…
