Five thousand crimson laser sights locked onto the bow of the Flying Courtyard Star-Cruiser as it hurtled down the five-mile-wide underground magma shaft at Mach 30.
Rising from the boiling solar magma on both walls of the tunnel, the five thousand Rank 8 System Firewall Golems stood shoulder to shoulder like a wall of glowing brass and black iron. Each thirty-foot golem was forged from condensed Heavenly Script Source-Code, its chest cavity housing an Instant-Death System Erasure Laser and a 0.01-Second Mathematical Code-Regeneration Core.
Inside the command chamber at the heart of the Central Mega-Sun, Headmaster Hong watched the tunnel feed on his monitor and sneered.
“Let’s see how your brats get past my five thousand System Firewall Golems, Gu Changsheng!” Headmaster Hong muttered, watching his furnace progress bar climb past ninety-two percent. “Every golem is linked to the underground magma veins by a hexadecimal regeneration equation. Even if a Rank 8 cultivator shatters a golem’s body, it rebuilds itself in ten milliseconds unless its exact variable node is solved and severed at the same instant!”
Back inside the roaring magma tunnel, however, the five Gu siblings were already falling through the air ahead of the ship in a tight diamond formation.
