Across all thirty solar systems—from the warm greenhouses of the Frost-Rim Sector and the sparkling space-highways of the Junkyard Nebula to the bustling plazas of the Pill-Fire Sector—every single person stopped what they were doing and looked up at the sky.
Floating ten thousand miles above every planet was the colossal blood-gold hologram of Supreme Grandmaster Dan Yang (Rank 8 Mid), the undisputed ruler of the Nine-Sun Alchemy Alliance!
Inside the projection, Grandmaster Dan Yang stood on a floating obsidian altar suspended right above the roaring purple corona of System #30’s Central Alchemy Sun.
He was a tall, gaunt old man with hollow cheeks, sunken eyes that burned like two balls of green phosphorus, and a crown of nine miniature golden flames hovering above his white hair. His left sleeve hung strangely stiff and withered at his side—the result of an ancient Rank 8 pill-furnace backlash three thousand years ago—while his right hand gripped a crooked staff carved from the spine of a Fire Dragon.
Behind him knelt the terrified branch directors of Systems 26 through 29, sweating buckets as the five profit-crystals representing Systems 21 through 25 shattered one after another on the Alliance’s grand scoreboard!
“Look at his tooltip, Young Master,” Abacus Su whispered beside Pei Xuan on the observation deck of the System #23 Star-Train Station, pushing up his brass spectacles with a sly grin. “He acts like a high-and-mighty Immortal Grandmaster, but he’s actually terrified that the remaining five solar systems are about to abandon him…
