CRACK—ROOOOOAAAR!
Out in Lane #250 of the Nine-World Space Highway, the vacuum of space began to twist and groan like thin glass under a heavy hammer.
Pirate Queen Hong Ye floated three hundred feet above the deck of her booted flagship, her long black hair whipping wildly around her crimson dragon-scale armor. Inside her dantian, her Nascent Soul had already half-transformed into a miniature blood-colored star—the unmistakable sign of a Rank 7 Peak / Half-Step Star Realm supreme expert!
In the outer star belt, a normal Rank 7 Planetary Lord could move mountain ranges or shift ocean tides on a single planet.
Put a Half-Step Star Realm powerhouse had already touched the destructive power of a burning sun! With a full-force strike, she could crack the crust of a small moon or slice an entire continent in half from outer space!
Right now, Hong Ye’s pride had been shattered into a million pieces.
She had spent ten years building the thousand-ship Blood-Skull Armada, turning her name into a legend that made merchants and planetary kings tremble across twenty star systems. Yet today, within half an hour of entering Dry-Well County:
Her fierce Vanguard Captain Mad-Dog Kui had tried to recruit her for Pork-Rib Friday! Her thousand warships had been photographed by traffic cameras and stuck in space-tar! Six hundred of her ships had surrendered for mint nose plugs and fizzy berry water! Her remaining elite ships had their cannons tied into pretzels by men in cotton long johns! Her three…
