At Central Border Station #1 of the Orion-Jade Main Line, the morning commuter crowd was bustling happily around a row of ten shiny red [Galactic Hot-Soup & Pill Vending Machines].
Miners coming off the night shift drank steaming cups of ruby beef soup while chatting with thirty-foot Titan track-layers, and schoolkids popped sweet golden Honey-Stew Pills into their mouths like morning vitamins before hopping onto the flying Sword-Buses.
Up on the second-floor balcony of the station master’s office, Pei Xuan sat at a small bamboo table cracking roasted star-sunflower seeds with Sun Baolu, Old Guo, and Abacus Su.
“There they are, My Lord,” Abacus Su chuckled, pointing down toward the East Gate with his golden abacus. “Fifty grown men shuffling in a tight circle, wearing burlap potato sacks with holes cut out for their arms—yet every single one of them is wearing white silk boots worth ten thousand Spirit Stones and radiating Rank 8 Alchemist Fire-Qi!”
Down at the East Gate, fifty white-bearded old men in patched burlap sacks were trying very hard to look like starving mortal beggars.
Leading them was Grandmaster Huo Yan, a Rank 8 Peak elder and Chief Pill Inspector of the Void-Lotus Alchemy Guild. Two hours ago, Alchemy Sovereign Yao had smashed three jade tables in his palace and ordered Huo Yan to take forty-nine Rank 8 Grandmasters across the border, buy a cup of Pei Xuan’s vending machine soup on a hidden live broadcast, and prove to the whole Spiral Arm that it was…
