Above the red-and-white bamboo bar of Wormhole Toll Booth #1, the starry sky was collapsing inward.
Star-Lord Crag-Devourer hovered two thousand feet in the air, his twenty-foot granite body wrapped in thick coils of black gravity lightning. Behind his shoulders, the three-mile-wide phantom of a Dark Dwarf-Star spun faster and faster, groaning like a million millstones grinding together.
The sheer weight of a true Rank 8 Early Star-Realm powerhouse pressed down on the highway junction. Loose space dust turned into solid lead pellets, and even the thick stone pillars of the wormhole arch began to hum and vibrate under the crushing pull.
“Kneel! Kneel and turn to paste!” Crag-Devourer howled, his yellow eyes bloodshot as he pushed the dark dwarf-star phantom downward with both hands. “You only have a Rank 7 Peak Planetary Nascent Soul! Between Rank 7 and Rank 8 lies the gulf between a mud ball and a blazing star! Even if you have ten thousand tricks, a mortal bug can never block the weight of a star!”
Down on the roof of Toll Booth #1, General Tie Zhan planted his heavy iron boots wide and raised his ten-ton railway sleeper beam, his knees bending slightly as the gravity multiplied by ten thousand times. Beside him, Old Wei rested his hand on his broadsword, while Old Guo hurriedly clamped an iron lid over his soup cauldron so the gravity storm wouldn’t blow dust into his broth.
