Fifty miles across the rust-red badlands of Skull-Cleaver Plains, the three-mile-wide impact crater hissed with boiling blood-steam and crimson lightning.
Around the rim of the smoking crater knelt thirty thousand local Blood-Sea Cultists and three terrified Blood-Sea Demon Generals. Pressing their foreheads into the scorched dirt, they chanted in fanatical unison:.
“Welcome the Immortal Envoy of the Upper Realm! May Lord Xue Sha bathe the Nine Continents in blood and ascend to the Nascent Soul!”
On the high basalt ridge fifty miles to the east, Gu Changsheng leaned comfortably against the front hood of the [Rank 6 Gu Family Earth-Core Camper Van].
He had just handed out six pairs of [Fused High-Definition Long-Range Binoculars]—along with a warm bag of buttered popcorn—to Gu Nian, Ye Xiao, Su Nuannuan, Jiang Tuntun, Grandpa Fu, and Grandpa Yao. Even three-year-old Ao Xing had a miniature pair of toy binoculars held up backward against his big silver-gold eyes as he sat on the camper’s hood eating a cheese cracker.
“Look at the smoke effects on that landing pod,” Gu Changsheng said, taking a sip of hot tea and peering through his binoculars at the three-mile crater. “Three miles of red dry-ice fog and artificial thunderbolts just to step out of a metal egg. How much do you think the Upper-Realm Script Pavilion spent on his entrance budget?”
