At 1:30 PM on Monday afternoon, atop the towering stone arch of the Central Imperial Canal Sluice Bridge—the hydraulic heart. The northern mountain river split into all nine major canals of Sky-Crown City—twenty dark-robed Eastern Palace Poison-Water Cultivators were busily prying open ten heavy lead vats!
Watching from a curtained observation carriage parked fifty yards away on the riverbank, Second Prince Qian Ye [Regressor Halo: 65%. Sitting on three velvet cushions to cushion his bruised tailbone and bandaged kneecaps] stared through the carriage window with cold, bloodshot malice.
“So Gu Changsheng had five million pounds of Azure-Cloud rice hidden up his sleeve and opened a hundred two-copper hotpot clinics...” Qian Ye hissed between clenched teeth. His poison-water cultivators tipped the ten lead vats over the sluice railing.
“Let’s see how he boils soup when all nine canals and every single drinking well in Sky-Crown City are frozen into solid venomous black ice!
Dump all ten breeding vats of Rank 3 Queen Frost-Worms into the main sluice gate right now!”
SPLASH—HISSSSSSS—CRACKLE!!
Out of the ten lead vats tumbled one hundred foot-long, centipede-like, translucent blue [Rank 3 Queen Frost-Worms] that Qian Ye had secretly bred in an underground ice-pit using poisonous yin-corpse water!
