When the golden morning sun rose over the alchemy smoke of Myriad Pill City the next day, twenty thousand injured rogue cultivators, caravan guards. Noble elders who had gathered in Myriad Pill Square rubbed their eyes in utter astonishment.
On the eastern side of the marble avenue stood the dark, oppressive, gold-plated Myriad Pill Grand Medicine Hall. A single charcoal-black, thirty-percent-toxic Rank 5 healing pill cost ten thousand spirit stones or a six-year-old child’s freedom.
Directly across the street on the western side of the avenue, however, stood a gleaming, three-story palace of crystal glass, fragrant camphor wood. Warm golden spirit-light—Flagship Store #1 of the Gu Family Gummy-Bear Pill Supermarket!
Through the floor-to-ceiling crystal display windows, the twenty thousand onlookers could see neat. Sparkling aisles stocked with hundreds of thousands of translucent, resealable foil-and-silk bags filled with glowing ruby-strawberry, golden-lemon, tangy-orange, and sweet-grape Rank 5 Gummy-Bear Pills!
Up on the balcony of the Myriad Pill Grand Medicine Hall across the street, Chief Alchemist Huo. At Rank 5 High, looked down at the crowd gathering outside Gu Changsheng’s glass doors and sneered coldly.
“Send out the twenty town-criers and the blacklist clerks!” Chief Alchemist Huo barked to his disciples. “Make sure every rogue cultivator and noble family in Myriad Pill Square knows the consequences of buying unlicensed sugar-balls!”
