Thirty-two-year-old Gu Changsheng tapped the toe of his cloth slipper lightly against the floorboards, flipping the glowing blue-jade transmission cylinder up into his palm.
Wedged butt-first inside the five-hundred-gallon oak barrel of Auntie Qin’s fermented sour cabbage, [Half-Step Rank 8 Star-Lord Admiral Black-Skull] spat out another mouthful of sour brine, shook a pickled cabbage leaf off his nose, and tried his best to put on a ferocious outer-rim warlord glare with his one remaining good eye.
“D-Don’t think you can read that jade slip, Gu Changsheng!” Admiral Black-Skull hissed, though his voice squeaked slightly every time his swollen left cheek—still branded with the red rectangular outline of the wok spatula—touched the rim of the barrel. “That cylinder is locked with Grand Warden Tianfa’s personal Rank 8 Blood-Cipher!
And you’d better let me and my fleet go right now! I am a sworn blood-brother of the Outer-Rim Pirate Council—if you execute me, my nine hundred and ninety-nine captains will detonate their ships’ self-destruct cores and drag your farmhouse down to hell!”
“Detonate their ships’ self-destruct cores?” thirteen-year-old Ye Xiao raised an eyebrow behind his spectacles from the porch table, turning his portable projection screen around so the pirate admiral could see inside Hangar Bay #1 of his own flagship. “Admiral Black-Skull, all five hundred thousand of your crew members surrendered twelve minutes ago. Right now, your Vice-Admiral Shark is raising his fin to ask my brother Nian’er for a spare pencil eraser so he can get extra credit on the essay…
