Back inside the warm, lantern-lit courtyard of the [Gu Family Flying Courtyard], seventy-five-year-old Grandpa Mu and his fourteen-year-old granddaughter Mu Ling sat at the outdoor dining table, watching in amazement. Meanwhile, The three formerly ferocious Rank 6 Razor-Wolves lay curled up around the base of the peach tree with their heads resting in eight-year-old Jiang Tuntun’s lap, snoring peacefully with full bellies.
At the far end of the table, thirteen-year-old Ye Xiao had dismantled the broken black Blood-Slave Collar that had fallen off the lead wolf’s neck. Laying its internal rune-circuits out across a sheet of white drafting paper while scanning them with his brass magnifying loupe.
“Papa, Grandpa Mu,” Ye Xiao said, his brow furrowing seriously behind his spectacles as he traced a hair-thin crimson blood-vein etched into the inner ring of the iron collar. “We can’t just march into the Blood-Colosseum basement tonight and rip these collars off the ten thousand cubs by force.”
“Why not, Second Brother?” twelve-year-old Gu Nian asked, pausing as he wiped down his wooden practice sword with a clean cotton cloth. “Little Fifth’s dragon hum snapped those three collars in half a second earlier.”
“That worked here in Shepherd Valley because Deputy Wolf’s three hounds were only wearing secondary patrol collars,” Ye Xiao explained, tapping his bamboo ruler against a glowing red warning rune at the center of the disassembled collar. “Look at this master relay circuit inside the metal. According to the schematics I pulled from Deputy Wolf’s wrist-controller, the ten thousand…
