Deep inside the central solar system of the Ten-Thousand Sword Mountain Sect, the main planet—Supreme Edge World—floated like an emerald jewel surrounded by nine silver moons. Its continents were covered in warm, mist-wrapped forests, crystal waterfalls, and rich black-soil valleys that stretched for millions of miles without a single village, plow, or smokestack.
Instead, right in the middle of the biggest continent stood a ten-thousand-foot peak of white jade where twenty Rank 8 Sword Elders sat on silk cushions inside the Hall of Untainted Blades.
Outside the sky, the giant red boundary lines projected by Pei Xuan’s [Galactic Land-Survey & Tax Compass] were flashing brightly across the clouds, accompanied by the hourly DONG! of the late-fee gong.
“What is that annoying red light in the sky?” First Elder Jian Wuchen (Rank 8 Late) frowned as he dipped a silk cloth into hundred-year spirit wine to wipe the blade of his decorative broadsword—a sword that hadn’t cut anything harder than a peach in four hundred years. “And why does some nasal mortal voice keep yelling about ‘Nine Hundred Trillion Grain-Notes’ every sixty minutes? Did one of the outer-sect stewards forget to renew the Sound-Blocking Cloud Array?”
“I just checked the spirit mirror, First Elder,” Third Elder Bai snorted, stroking his three-foot-long white beard with a jade comb. “It’s some newly risen upstart from the outer Cloud-Sea Sector calling himself the ‘Mayor of Dry-Well Village.’ Apparently, after he cooked those disgusting bugs from the Iron-Mandible Clan, his head swelled so big he…
