In the center of System #85—the former central military headquarters of the Star-Swallowing Army—ten colossal bronze vaults floated in low orbit around the newly wrapped sun.
For the past three thousand years, Great General Jin Xiao’s legions had taxed, mined, and siphoned the purest solar marrow out of Systems #81 through #90, locking all of it inside these ten Military Sun-Marrow Depots as war reserves for the Golden-Crow Clan.
Right now, the heavy bronze vault doors stood wide open.
Abacus Su stood on a floating brass platform outside Vault #10, his spectacles flashing like searchlights as a line of Civic Patrol Cargo Barges hooked up giant brass siphon hoses to the glowing golden tanks inside.
“Vault #1 through Vault #10 inventory complete, My Lord!” Abacus Su called out joyfully, waving a thick ledger toward the sky. “Great General Jin Xiao was hoarding eight hundred million tons of Thousand-Year Liquid Sun-Marrow, fifty million crates of Refined Solar-Crystal Ingots, and nine intact Ancient Star-Core Seeds! He even gave us the vault combinations himself in exchange for making him Shift Leader of the System #85 Lunch Rush!”
High above the military vaults, floating calmly in the middle of open space, swam the two-hundred-mile Ancient Void Whale King.
