CLANK—CLANK—CLANK—WHOOOOOOSH!
Across the burning skies of Solar System No. 100, ten thousand giant brass siphon-funnels—each one the size of a continent and stamped with the golden emblem of a water well and two crossed kitchen cleavers—warped out of the Fusion Cube’s light and clamped directly onto the nine ancestral suns!
At the exact same instant, giant curved brass elbows snapped over the mouths of the eight subspace bronze conduits leading to Systems 91 through 99, while the colossal Master Siphon Funnel in front of Dry-Well Express No. 1 opened its throat like a thirsty whale.
GLUG—GLUG—GLUG—SLUUUUUUURP!
Patriarch Jin Taiyang’s Nine-Sun World-Melting Beam—a 100,000-degree tsunami of Primordial Golden-Crow Fire meant to vaporize Pei Xuan’s fleet and boil ninety planets into magma—slammed headfirst into the Master Siphon Funnel.
There was no explosion. There was no shockwave.
Instead, the terrifying pillar of golden-white plasma got sucked straight down the brass funnel like bathwater going down a bathtub drain!
Up on the Nine-Sun Ancestral Altar, Patriarch Jin Taiyang stumbled forward, nearly falling off his own sacrificial platform as the sudden vacuum suction yanked at his sleeves.
