On the white-jade plaza of the Central Solar Colosseum, the blood-red System loading bar hovering above the distant Central Mega-Sun ticked past eighty-two percent. Below that ominous glow, the most fearsome alchemical kitchen operation in the history of the 1,000-Sun Star Field roared to life.
Ten colossal, hundred-foot-tall Rank 8 Star-Iron Soup Cauldrons—confiscated from Chief Elder Dan’s corrupt pill foundry earlier in the week—stood lined up in a wide semicircle around Dad’s Care-Package Upgrade Box.
Atop a raised cedar kitchen platform in front of the ten cauldrons stood the Gu family’s supreme culinary and medical team.
At the center stood Gu Changsheng in his yellow bunny apron, holding his gleaming black Cast-Iron Wok Spatula. With a steady pulse of his Rank 8 Late Peak cultivation, he fueled all ten cauldrons simultaneously with golden Nine-Sun Solar-Furnace Fire.
To his left stood Auntie Qin, Chief Physician of the Peace Pharmacy. She wore her crisp white medical coat over a heavy kitchen apron and wielded a twenty-foot Jade-Marrow Soup Ladle like a field marshal’s baton.
To his right hovered Grandpa Yao and his senior brother Pill-Saint Yao Gu. From inside their towering Rank 8 Jade-Turtle Battle-Mechs, the two ancient Pill-Saints operated ninety-six high-speed alchemical stirring arms with millimeter precision.
