Thirty miles outside the sparkling-clean border of System #15, a cloud of foul-smelling crimson fog rolled across the starry highway like a bloodstain on white silk.
Inside the fog sailed two hundred bronze beast-controlling warships, their hulls covered in iron spikes, hanging cages, and the dried skulls of slaughtered star-beasts.
Standing on the elevated bone altar at the bow of the lead flagship was Elder Wan Shou, the Third Grand Elder of the notorious Star-Beast Tamer Sect. He was a skinny, hook-nosed old man at the Rank 8 Mid (Star Realm) stage, wearing a dark red cloak stitched from the hides of a hundred baby star-dragons and cradling a curved, three-foot Blood-Soul Bone Horn in his crooked arms.
As the fleet sailed out of the dirty scrap clouds of System #16 and entered System #15, Elder Wan Shou squinted his yellow eyes at the scenery ahead—and burst into a fit of shrill, cackling laughter.
“Hahaha! Look at this place, disciples!” Elder Wan Shou pointed a bony finger at the gleaming Star-Iron apartment blocks on Planet #15-A, the crystal-clear glass potato greenhouses orbiting the moon, and the massive, bustling hub of Dry-Well Station #15 ahead. “My nephew in the Nine-Sun Alchemy Alliance sent me a letter yesterday saying that some fat country bumpkin named Pei Xuan moved into the Frost-Rim and Junkyard Sectors and started building free public houses for the trash-rats! Look how shiny those glass domes and train tracks are! They look mighty expensive to repair!”
