BOOM! CRACKLE! POP!
Ten million stringers of red celebration firecrackers—each one the size of an oil barrel and stuffed with Boom-Pot Sun’s special sweet-cinnamon gunpowder—went off at the exact same time across the central plaza of Galaxy Number One.
Instead of leaving behind choking gray smoke, the firecrackers burst into warm, fragrant clouds of roasted-chestnut mist that drifted over the cheering crowds. Down on the newly paved black-hole brick square, fifty thousand dragon-dance teams were tossing glowing white-dwarf pearl balls into the air, while Old Guo stood on top of a three-story iron soup wagon, banging a giant bronze gong with his soup ladle.
“Step right up! Keep your bowls level and don’t push the aunties in the front row!” Old Guo roared through a loudspeaker array, his round face shining with sweat and grease. “To celebrate the Young Master breaking through to the Late-Galactic Realm, every citizen across all three hundred and fifty galaxies gets two extra scoops of braised dragon-marrow beef and a free sugar-glazed meat-potato!”
“Long live Lord Pei!”
“Long live the Dry-Well Cluster!”
Sitting in the front row of the wooden bleachers, wearing a clean yellow Debtor Vest with a shiny red “Model Road Worker” paper flower pinned to his chest, the former Emperor of the Nine-Suns Dynasty—Zhao Wuji (Rank 9 Late)—held up a porcelain basin as big as a washbowl.
