POP—SHHHHHHH!
Outside the Night Market’s pink-lantern spa pavilion, nine-year-old Su Nuannuan uncorked the crystal bottle from [Rank 6 Fused Sweet-Honey Hundred-Blossom Fluffy-Fur Shampoo & Conditioner]. Instantly, a gentle, silky-sweet cloud of warm golden-camellia steam, wild clover honey, morning dew, and soothing spiritual lanolin drifted straight up the southern hillside!
For human cultivators, it smelled like the world’s most relaxing spring garden after a warm rain.
For the Nine-Tailed Sky-Fox Clan—whose entire cultivation system, illusion magic, and life-force were stored inside the delicate spiritual hair-follicles of their nine tails—that fragrance was nothing short of an ancient ancestral blessing!
Every winter in the dry, freezing gales of Fox Valley, the Sky-Fox Clan suffered from a painful affliction known as Frost-Static Tail Knot. The sub-zero mountain air dried out the spiritual oils in their fur. Causing their nine tails to tangle together like thorny bramble bushes, crackle with painful static shocks, and drop their spell-casting speed by half.
The young fox kits suffered worst of all—crying themselves to sleep every night because their knotted tails hurt whenever they rolled over.
That was the only reason Sky-Fox Matriarch Bai Rou , at Rank 6 Mid Golden Core, had even listened to the Blood-Sea War-Envoy. The envoy had promised to trade warm blood-stones if the Fox Clan marched to war tonight.
