At the bottom of the fifty-foot-deep Star-Steel Debtors’ Pit in the center of Dry-Well City Plaza, a thin puff of gray smoke rose from Enforcer Xue Sha’s scorched hair.
The mighty Half-Step Rank 8 Soul-Formation Enforcer of the Upper-Realm Blood-Moon Immortal Sect lay flat on his back in a neat, human-shaped indentation in the star-steel floor. His crimson-and-silver immortal armor was cracked into forty pieces like a stepped-on crab shell. His prized blood-jade crown had been flattened into a pancake around his ears, and right across the bridge of his nose and forehead glowed a bright golden imprint of the backward letters [ T A X ].
“Ughhh... how many bricks hit me...?” Xue Sha groaned weakly, his eyes spinning in opposite directions as tiny golden abacuses danced around his head. “Mother... tell the sect kitchen I don’t want to eat bricks anymore...”
Up around the rim of the Star-Steel Pit, five million citizens packed the plaza stands while two billion more watched closely on the planetary live-broadcast screens.
Pei Xuan stood calmly at the head of the pit, hands tucked into his blue town-mayor sleeves, while his core specialists lined up beside him like a welcoming committee at a county courthouse.
