Thirty feet above the bustling toll plaza of Heated Wormhole Express Tunnel #1, four wisps of invisible, odorless black smoke clung to the white-jade concrete ceiling like four greasy cobwebs.
Down below on the twelve-lane highway, fifty thousand newly recruited ghost pirates in bright yellow Debtor vests were happily sweeping the warm asphalt with bamboo brooms, while Ghost-Admiral Yin Kui stood under Lane #1’s purple bug-zapper lamp, tilting his giant frizzy afro so the warm static could massage his stiff neck.
Up on the ceiling, however, the atmosphere inside the four wisps of invisible smoke was murderous.
They were the Four Bone-Kings of the Nine-Nether Ghost Immortal Sect—Bone-King Ku, Bone-King Mian, Bone-King Sha, and Bone-King Gui. Every single one of them was a Rank 8 Peak (Solar Furnace / Star-Soul Peak) old terror who had ruled the dark rifts of the middle Spiral Arm for eight thousand years!
“Traitor! Look at Yin Kui down there!” Bone-King Ku—the eldest of the four brothers—hissed through a secret soul-voice transmission, his invisible smoke trembling with fury. “We sent him out with three hundred warships to rob a grain train, and within five minutes he’s wearing a yellow vest and begging a bug lamp to zap his bald spot! He has thrown away ten thousand years of our Nine-Nether Sect’s face!”
