CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-DING!
Inside the newly erected Dry-Well Mobile Municipal Courtroom floating above the peeled central star of the Seventh Dark Galaxy, Abacus Su slid the last golden bead across his bronze abacus with a crisp ring that made three hundred captured Grand Elders flinch at once.
Down on the floor of the courtroom, Patriarch Shi Gu (Rank 9 Mid) and his three hundred elders of the Cold-Bone Corpse Sect were sitting in a neat row on small wooden kindergarten stools, wrapped up like dumplings inside a heavy golden tax-collection net. Because Old Wei’s broadsword had sliced their spooky black outer robes in half, Hong Ling’s guards had already tossed three hundred bright neon-yellow Debtor Vests and warm gray cotton sweatpants over their heads so they wouldn’t catch a cold.
“Patriarch Shi Gu of the Cold-Bone Corpse Sect!” Abacus Su pushed up his gold-rimmed spectacles, stood at the podium, and unrolled an itemized fine scroll so long that two Titan soldiers had to carry the bottom end down the hallway on a forklift.
“After a thorough audit of your seven dark galaxies by the Dry-Well Ministry of Finance and Public Sanitation,” Abacus Su read aloud in his sharp, cheerful accountant voice, “here is your final municipal invoice: 1. 84 Counts of Illegal Star-Extinguishing & Utility Tampering (driving frost-curse nails into public suns without a permit): 30 Trillion Grain-Notes. 2. 1,200 Years of Unpermitted Bone-Littering in Public Space Lanes (leaving whale skulls, ribcages, and zombie teeth floating around where cargo ships can pop…
