The next morning, a cloudless sapphire sky shone over the mountains, scented with fresh peach blossoms from the newly sprouted orchards. In the center of the Gu Family Trans-Continental Night Market, the plaza had been transformed into a gleaming, hundred-thousand-seat Intercontinental Elementary School Sports Stadium!
On the western side of the white-chalk running track sat fifty thousand proud Demon Continent parents. Led by White-Tiger Patriarch Hu Lie, Sky-Fox Matriarch Bai Rou, Boar-Chief Tie Ya. Wolf-Chief Cang Ya, they held up colorful cheering banners for their little tiger cubs, fox kits, boar piglets, and wolf pups.
On the eastern side of the running track sat fifty thousand Eastern Human Continent sect elders and parents, led by Sword Ancestor Jian Chen of the Cloud-Sea Sword Sect and Sect Master Lin. Right after breakfast, they had stepped through a fifty-foot Intercontinental Void Portal opened by three-year-old Ao Xing (“Little Fifth”)!
For ten thousand years on Planet Canglan, humans and demons had been taught by old blood-feuds and Blood-Sea Cult propaganda to view each other as terrifying monsters who ate children raw.
When the two groups of parents first took their seats across the track from each other that morning, a nervous, awkward stiffness hung over the stadium.
