Ten light-minutes deep inside the center of the Cloud-Sea Sector hung two massive moons linked by a bridge of black iron chains.
On the left was the hollowed-out Forbidden Breeding Moon, and on the right was Iron-Jaw Fortress Moon—the ancestral stronghold where the Iron-Mandible Cosmic Clan had hoarded five hundred years of stolen gold, Spirit Stones, and tax grain taken from the fifty starving planets below.
At this very moment, atop the main battlements of Iron-Jaw Fortress Moon, First Grand Elder Chong Wu (Rank 8 Mid) was pouring a cup of spiritual wine for a burly, ten-foot-tall man wearing dark gold beetle-emperor armor and a cloak made of woven star-beast whiskers.
This giant of a man was Chong Bawang, the Rank 8 Peak (Solar Furnace) Patriarch of the Iron-Mandible Cosmic Clan!
“Big Brother, it’s a good thing you came out of closed-door meditation today,” First Grand Elder Chong Wu said with a smug chuckle, pointing his bone staff toward the starry sky in the direction of Orbit Pier #1. “Half an hour ago, some arrogant outsider named Pei Xuan rolled a yellow iron train up to Orbit Pier #1, captured Little Ba, and dared to plant free rice in our sky! So I opened the Abyssal Hatchery and sent all ten billion Star-Devouring Locusts plus the Rank 8 Locust Queen to eat him alive! By now, those ten billion bugs have probably chewed his iron train and all ten billion ungrateful refugees on Pier #1 down to bare white bones—”
