CHOO-CHOO! HISSSSS!
Across the ten-mile wooden boardwalks of Floating Islands #1 through #10, the afternoon sky was packed with descending Star-Trains.
Word that Warm-Spring Star had forty-two-degree healing ocean water, iced spirit-melon juice, and ten-year Dragon-Breath Longevity Tea Eggs had spread through every city, sect town, and demon market on Planet Canglan faster than a wildfire.
Not only were hard-working miners and farmers clocking out for their free post-shift baths, but tens of millions of weekend vacationers—along with three thousand ancient Golden Core and Nascent Soul retired elders who normally sat like dry mummies inside dark mountain caves—had bought the 50-Spirit-Stone Deluxe Weekend Spa Package!
Out on Platform #3 of Island #1, a hunched, white-bearded old cultivator in a patched gray Daoist robe stepped off the First-Class carriage, leaning on a gnarled dragon-head cane and scowling at everything in sight.
It was Elder Ku Mu (“Withered-Wood” Ku), a four-hundred-year-old Rank 6 Peak Golden Core grandmaster who had formerly belonged to the Central Continent’s Pill-Cloud Pavilion before Pei Xuan turned the sects into public colleges.
“Bah! Too noisy! Way too noisy!” Elder Ku Mu grumbled, rubbing his stiff, hunched left shoulder as he shuffled down the cedar ramp. “If my granddaughter hadn’t bought me this non-refundable fifty-Spirit-Stone bath ticket for my four-hundredth birthday, this old man would never have left my meditation cave! Sitting on a cold stone bed for three hundred years gave me such thick Qi-knots in my back that even a Rank 6 spirit sword can’t poke through…
