On the highest observation roof of the Central Star-Train Hub, Pei Xuan sat cross-legged in the middle of the starry sky.
Floating in his open palms were two radiant treasures: the pulsing, nine-colored [Rank 9 Galactic Origin Core] condensed from the faith of twenty-two trillion citizens, and the glowing golden [Civic Star-Chart of 2,000 Loyal Solar Systems].
Down on the main station plaza below, every top general, specialist, and newly recruited powerhouse of Dry-Well Territory stood guard in a wide circle.
The thirty-foot-tall Titan Emperor—wearing a giant yellow hard-hat with a dragon-bone heating plaster still stuck to his lower back—leaned on his ancestral war-drum and whispered in a voice hushed with awe.
“Alchemy Sovereign Yao, Sword Ancestor Ling... look at the pressure gathering above Lord Pei’s head! He really is about to shatter his Rank 8 Solar Furnace and ignite an Inner Galaxy to step into the Rank 9 Galaxy Realm!”
Beside him, Alchemy Sovereign Yao—still wearing his yellow Debtor vest and holding two onion-scented kitchen cleavers—nodded solemnly, his eyes wide with reverence and worry.
“Do you know why both you and I have been stuck at Half-Step Rank 9 for thousands of years, Your Majesty?” Sovereign Yao whispered, looking up at the dark spatial ripples forming fifty miles above the station. “Because stepping from Rank 8 into Rank 9 is the greatest life-and-death moat in the cosmos! At Rank 8, a cultivator only holds a single miniature sun in their dantian. To reach Rank 9, you must shatter your…
