“Spatial-phase harpoons!” Merchant-Guild Master Qian shrieked on the Cloud-Steamer’s upper promenade, his face turning as white as steamed rice-paper as the thirty jagged black torpedoes screamed across the three-mile gap.
“Master Gu, put up your shields—Wait, no! Those harpoons are smeared with Void-Marrow Phase Oil! They’ll slip right through ordinary defensive arrays and impale that baby whale through the heart!”
Fifty yards off the starboard porch, the fifty-mile juvenile Void Whale calf was still floating upside down on its back, happily wiggling its flippers. Meanwhile, Gu Nian and Little Fifth hovered beside its chin with their ten-foot Spirit-Loofah sponge. Seeing the thirty glowing purple harpoon torpedoes hurtling toward his new friend’s soft white belly, twelve-year-old Gu Nian didn’t retreat an inch.
Instead, he raised his wooden practice sword in front of the calf’s chest, his dark eyes flashing with protective fury.
“Nobody pokes a baby who just finished his bath!” Gu Changsheng’s voice boomed across the courtyard deck, calm and resonant as a bronze temple bell. “Nian’er, keep rubbing his chin so he doesn’t get startled! Grandpa Yao, dump the trash trough from the car wash into the big outdoor wok and turn the stove to high!”
“Right away, Boy!” Grandpa Yao cackled, kicking open the cast-iron damper of his forty-foot Nine-Dragon Alchemy Wok on the forward cooking platform.
