Inside the shadowy, empty lobby of the Mirage Silk Pavilion, five hundred Nine-Tailed Fox salesgirls sat in rows on their upturned wooden packing crates, hugging their tails and weeping as if the sky had fallen.
To a human cultivator, losing a fight over a sword technique was a blow to their pride.
To a disciple of the Nine-Tailed Fox Clan, being mocked by rough Wolf-Guards and muddy Boar-Foremen for having “greasy, flat, second-rate tails” was worse than getting struck by nine heavenly lightning bolts!
Since the day they were born in Ten-Thousand-Flower Valley, Matriarch Su Meiniang had taught them one sacred rule: Our Fox Clan is the pinnacle of beauty, grace, and soft fur in the Demon Lands. All other beast tribes are dirty mud-rollers who exist to worship our tails and hand over their Spirit Stones.
Yet outside the window right now, every single “dirty mud-roller” walking down Main Street had a tail that looked like a celestial cloud spun from pure silver and gold!
Meanwhile, because Abacus Su had confiscated all the Fox Clan’s fraudulent revenue to pay back the cheated buyers, Hu Xiaohong and her five hundred girls only had a few dozen copper coins of personal pocket money left in their sleeves. Worse still, the cheap Fox-Fart Illusion Mist they had been breathing inside their own shop for two days had soaked into their hair, leaving a faint, sour skunk-oil smell on their own collars!
