Across all thirty-six liberated Branch-Family Star Systems—from the green valleys of Old-Root Star (#1) to the newly thawed wheat fields of Iron-Root Star (#36). Five trillion rescued relatives stepped out of their cottages into the fragrant evening air.
In the center of every village plaza, the hundred-foot brass soup kettle atop each [Dad-Box Bloodline Shield & Soup Broadcast Tower] projected a crystal-clear live image of Gu Changsheng. Empress Luo Qingxue sitting hand-in-hand beneath the courtyard peach tree. Meanwhile, their twin inner galaxies reached eighty-five percent ignition.
“Grandpa Zhong! Look at what the children made!”
In the central square of Old-Root Star, seven-year-old Gu Xiaomei ran up to nine-thousand-year-old Elder Gu Zhong, holding up a glowing, three-foot-tall lantern folded from red talisman paper and bamboo splints. With a neat brush-painted wish written across its side:
[MAY UNCLE PATRIARCH AND AUNTIE EMPRESS’S GALAXY ALWAYS BE WARM AND FULL OF DELICIOUS SOUP! — FROM XIAOMEI & BROTHER HU]
Behind little Xiaomei, fifteen-year-old Gu Hu and the three thousand newly healed dragon-marrow teenagers stood holding three thousand warm red paper lanterns of their own. Meanwhile, across all forty continents of Old-Root Star—and across four hundred inhabited planets in the thirty-six branch systems. Billions of mothers, fathers, grandparents, and children lit homemade Red Paper Family Wish Lanterns at the exact same moment!
