Three hundred miles south of Supreme Sword Mountain lay Myriad Pill City—the alchemy capital of the Nine Continents. The air was permanently stained a hazy yellowish-gray by ten thousand coal-fired pill furnaces burning day and night on the slopes of Myriad Pill Mountain.
Normally, the central avenue outside the towering, gold-plated Myriad Pill Grand Medicine Hall was packed with wealthy merchant caravans trading spirit herbs for healing elixirs.
This morning, however, the wide marble avenue was choked with over ten thousand weeping, bleeding rogue cultivators, injured herb-gatherers, and desperate mortal parents kneeling on the cold flagstones!
Above the thirty-foot gilded doors of the Grand Medicine Hall hung a newly nailed crimson iron plaque written in cruel, slashing characters:.
[BY ORDER OF MYRIAD PILL SECT MASTER DAN XUAN. CONTINENTAL MEDICINE EMBARGO IN EFFECT! ALL RANK 4 & RANK 5 HEALING PILLS: 10,000 SPIRIT STONES PER PILL!
NO CREDIT! NO. CHARITY!
FAMILIES UNABLE TO PAY CASH MAY SIGN OVER ONE CHILD UNDER AGE TEN AS AN INDENTURED FURNACE-SLAVE BOY OR GIRL!]
At the top of the white-marble steps stood a fat. Sneering old man in robes embroidered with nine golden cauldrons—Chief Alchemist Huo , at Rank 5 High Foundation Establishment. The head manager of the Myriad Pill Sect’s city operations—flanked by twenty burly, bare-chested Rank 4 Peak Furnace-Guard Enforcers holding iron branding-tongs and stacks of blood-indenture contracts.
