At 6:30 AM, the massive bronze roof doors of the Golden-Finger & Artifact Maintenance Plant blasted open. A gleaming emerald-and-gold river of 10,000 Rank 8 Jade-Turtle Mech-Grandpas marched out into the morning sunlight!
Down in the outer courtyard, the five hundred Combat Division freshmen—who were still on Squat #480 while sobbing the nine-times-nine multiplication table. Stopped mid-squat in sheer, slack-jawed terror as twenty thousand two-ton star-iron boots shook the pavement!
“Wait—aren’t those the ancient Ring-Grandpas from the basement?!” freshman bully Ba-Wang Xiao gasped, staring up at Mech #002, which had a big golden sign reading [FORMER OCCUPANT OF RING #8,402 — NOW RETIRED WITH FULL PENSION] hung around its neck!
“Why is my Ring-Grandpa eight feet tall, wearing emerald battle-armor, and carrying twin gatling cannons?!”
“Your Ring-Grandpa?!”
Pill-Saint Yao Gu paused beside Ba-Wang Xiao, reached down with one giant star-iron finger to flick the nineteen-year-old bully lightly on the forehead (PING!). Snorted: “Do another five hundred squats, you lazy brat! Come back when you can pass Teaching Assistant Ye Xiao’s algebra exam!”
Rising three hundred feet above the roof of the maintenance plant stood the department’s crowning technological achievement: [The Sub-Space Golden-Finger Firmware Update & Soul-Broadcast Tower]!
Originally, Chief Warden Gui Suo had built this sub-space tower to beam monthly “obedience patches” and pain-signals directly into the 8,000 active Mentor Rings worn by Academy sophomores, juniors, and alumni currently out plundering 400 surrounding solar systems of Sector 7.
