Inside VIP Banquet Room #1 on the ground floor of the Buffet Hall, a tower of empty blue-and-white porcelain washbasins stood stacked all the way to the crystal chandelier.
Each porcelain basin was two feet wide—big enough to bathe a baby Iron-Rhino—and right now, there were three hundred and ninety-nine empty basins stacked in twelve wobbling columns around the giant round table.
Sitting in the master seat was White-Tiger Warlord Hu Ba.
His heavy black-gold breastplate lay unbuckled in the corner. His white tiger fur cloak was tossed over a coat rack, and a large white cotton bib with a cartoon picture of a smiling pig and the words “Dry-Well Big Eater” was tied neatly around his thick neck.
In front of him sat Basin #400, filled to the brim with Boom-Pot Sun’s Rank 6 Furnace-Braised Spirit-Hog—a special VIP dish fused by Pei Xuan from a thousand-pound Rank 5 Flame-Tusk Boar King, ten-year-old Red-Sand Fire Chilies, and three drops of concentrated Furnace-Gold Core Essence.
Beside his elbow sat twenty empty clay jars of fused Rank 6 Tiger-Bone Fire Wine, each jar smelling so richly of aged sorghum and golden spirit-marrow that even the wooden table legs looked slightly tipsy.
“Waiter! Why are you standing there staring?!” Hu Ba roared, though his voice lacked its usual bloodthirsty edge and instead sounded like a blissful old uncle at a wedding banquet. “Did the kitchen run out of the garlic-soy sauce?! Pour another ladle of gravy over my rice before I burn your…
