Up on the top landing of Staircase Ramp #1, Warden Iron-Whip (Rank 7 Peak) stood with his hair standing on end, his eyes bloodshot, and dark red Blood-Moon Qi flaring around his spiked iron armor.
Behind him, his five-thousand-mile No-Escape Star Wall was completely gone—turned into a neat row of one thousand wide stone staircases with shiny brass handrails!
And right in front of him, his very last unit—the 500 Elite Iron-Hound Personal Bodyguards, led by his four strongest Rank 7 Early sergeants—were standing around a pile of twenty leftover Black Star-Iron Bricks, tying yellow ropes around the bricks so they could carry them down the stairs to Old Guo’s roast-pork tables!
“You ungrateful curs!” Warden Iron-Whip shrieked, raising his thirty-foot spiked iron whip high above his head. “I gave you all the moldy bread crusts from my own kitchen! I only whipped you twice a week! And now you dare tear down the Blood-Moon Monarch’s border wall for a plate of pork ribs and twenty paper notes?! Drop those bricks right now and attack Pei Xuan’s kitchen trains, or I’ll skin all five hundred of you alive!”
His four bodyguard sergeants—headed by a massive, scar-faced veteran named Chief Sergeant Iron-Thumb—stopped tying their brick ropes and slowly stood up.
