Out along the outer starry border of Sector 6, the ten-thousand-foot Sector 6 Astral Gate. Whose cursed black frost-locks had been shattered three days earlier by Gu Changsheng’s [Planetary Dinner-Bell Megaphone]—stood wide open to the cosmic trade lanes.
Yet for the entire morning after Warden Tianfa’s defeat, passing inter-sector merchant convoys and cargo star-galleons from neighboring Sector 5 and Sector 4 were still taking three-light-year detours around the border!
Because to the rest of the Middle and Upper Astral Realms, Sector 6 was still the infamous, terrifying “Frozen Astral Prison.” A minus-three-hundred-degree black hole of despair where the Heavenly Script Pavilion exiled anyone who offended a Chosen One. Where any merchant ship that drifted too close had its cargo confiscated as “Judicial Tribute.”
Aboard the command bridge of the Five-Star Spice & Silk Merchant Guild’s lead flagship. A five-thousand-meter treasure galleon carrying fifty thousand tons of perishable spirit-silk and southern spices. Guildmaster Captain Hu nervously wiped the sweat from his forehead as his convoy skirted the outer buoy line of Sector 6.
“Helmsman, keep us at least five hundred thousand miles outside the Sector 6 border!” Captain Hu barked, his hand trembling on the brass compass. “Warden Tianfa’s patrol dreadnoughts are notorious for charging ‘Frozen Airspace Tolls’! If his frost-cannons lock onto our hulls—”
