That evening, across the border on Worlds 46, 47, 48, 49, and Planet 50 (Crimson-Moon Capital).
After barely managing to unload a third of their cargo as “forklift service fees” to Abacus Su so their flattened landing gear could lift off the ground, the one thousand outer-sector cargo ships limped back into Blood-Moon Monarch’s territory carrying 100 Million Tons of Dry-Well Meat-Potatoes.
In the grand noble districts of World 47 and Planet 50, the thirty billionaire merchant clans and Blood-Moon Monarch’s greedy royal dukes were in a total panic.
“Hurry! Lock every single one of these five-pound Meat-Potatoes inside our deep underground Spirit Vaults!”
Inside the sprawling fortress estate of the Thousand-Ship Consortium on World 47, Patriarch Qian waved his cane at five hundred family guards as they dumped mountain after mountain of golden tubers down the iron chutes of his subterranean treasure vault.
Because Blood-Moon Monarch had just emptied the royal vaults of 100 million tons of High-Grade Spirit Stones earlier that day, all the deep underground treasure vaults on Worlds 46 through 50 were sitting wide open and empty—still thick with three thousand years of leftover, stagnant subterranean Yin-Qi and residual Spirit-Stone dust!
“Patriarch Qian, why don’t we sell these potatoes to the starving peasants outside our gates?” a young steward asked, wiping sweat from his neck as he watched a crowd of skinny, hollow-cheeked citizens pressing their faces against the iron fence of the estate, sniffing the air hungrily. “The commoners on Worlds 46 to 49 haven’t…
