By the tenth day of the Great Currency War, the starry sky of the Broken Star Belt had changed beyond recognition.
For three thousand years, this fifty-planet sector had been a dark, freezing, lawless wasteland where billions of starving miners shivered in mud pits, space pirates robbed passing caravans, and three cruel Star-Lords hoarded all the Spirit Stones inside underground vaults.
Now, if an immortal traveler looked down from high above the starry sector, they would see a sight that took their breath away.
Forty-nine vibrant, glowing planets—stretching all the way from Planet Canglan (World 1) to Iron-Shield World (World 49)—were linked together by a dazzling golden web of Four-Lane Wormhole Highways and Spirit-Furnace Star-Train Tracks!
Every single planet shone like a warm golden lantern in the dark void, lit by millions of Mini-Sun Streetlamps and heated by underground Whirlpool Hydro-Qi Pipes. Across the golden highway bridges between worlds, red-and-gold Express Star-Trains zipped back and forth every thirty seconds like busy fireflies, carrying laughing students to night school, merchants with green Wrist-Pay Jade Bands to market, and millions of tons of fresh mangoes, pearl rice, and roasted lamb to every table in the kingdom.
And right in the center of that glowing, forty-nine-planet golden ring sat one single, dark, lonely blood-red rock:
