Beneath the outer rim of the 500-mile floating golden hotpot plaza, twenty wavering distortions of light. The Galactic Main Hall’s secret Shadow-Venom Assassin Squad (twenty Rank 8 Early poison specialists raised in Second Uncle Gu Yin’s underground dungeon)—glided silently along the underside of the twenty auxiliary Broth Refill Reservoirs.
Wrapped in high-grade [Void-Chameleon Stealth Cloaks] that masked their breathing, heartbeat, and spiritual qi, each assassin held a crystal vial filled with two ounces of colorless, odorless, tasteless [Rank-8 Nine-Nether Corpse & Soul-Rotting Powder].
Down in the shadows behind the flattened statue on Moon #1, Second Uncle Gu Yin held a huge, tripod-mounted Capital Master Broadcast Camera aimed directly at the front row of hotpot tables. His fingers trembling with malicious excitement as he whispered to Golden Heir Gu Wuji:
“Watch closely, Young Master! Nine-Nether Soul-Rotting Powder is refined from ten thousand venomous star-toads and cursed grave-soil—completely undetectable by normal alchemical silver needles! In five seconds, all twenty vials will enter the outer soup reservoirs; in ten seconds, ten million guests will collapse with purple faces and rotting souls.
And in fifteen seconds, I will broadcast the live footage to the entire Inner Spiral Galaxy proving that Gu Changsheng’s ‘free hotpot’ was a demonic blood-sacrifice trap!”
