CRUNCH! SQUELCH!
Outside the white marble fence of the 10,000x Gravity Public Hot-Spring & Gym, a twenty-yard-long rectangular flowerbed bordered by painted white bricks had been carefully planted by Old Wei and Hong Ling that very morning.
Inside the flowerbed grew thirty plump, purple-flowered Red-Sand Desert Thistles—transplanted all the way from Dry-Well Village’s original desert oasis on Planet Canglan and watered daily with Sweet-Spring spirit water.
Those thirty purple desert thistles were the private snack reserve of Old Yellow, the village’s founding pack-camel who had eaten fusion scraps for eight volumes until he mutated into a Rank 8 Golden Dragon-Camel with two shiny dragon horns, golden scales under his camel wool, and two massive humps pulsing with draconic fire.
For the past two hours, Old Yellow had been lying beside the flowerbed with his eyes half-closed, waiting for the noon sun-lamps to warm the purple thistle flowers to peak crispiness before eating them.
Then, Royal Guard Marshal Hu and the front rank of one million thirty-five-foot Titan Royal Guards charged toward the wrestling ring!
STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!
Marshal Hu didn’t even look down at the “Keep Off the Grass” wooden sign. His ten-ton spiked iron boot slammed straight down into the center of the flowerbed, crushing twenty-nine of the thirty purple desert thistles into green mud and snapping the white border bricks into powder!
