Inside the right half of the [Nine-Lock Mithril Bloodline Vault], ten-year-old Little Fifth Ao Xing stood on tiptoe in his little navy-blue school uniform. His big silver-blue dragon eyes reflecting the dazzling light of Five Hundred Quadrillion (500,000,000,000,000,000) High-Grade Spirit Stones!
Piled fifty feet high across a two-mile underground chamber, those five hundred quadrillion spirit stones weren’t Golden Heir Gu Wuji’s hard-earned savings.
As sixteen-year-old Ye Xiao confirmed by scanning the vault’s tax ledger with [Dad’s Plot-Spoiler Notebook], every single spirit stone in that mountain. Along with the ten thousand jade treasure chests of Rank-8 and Rank-9 spiritual herbs, star-core ores. Alchemy cauldrons stacked around the walls—had been extorted at spear-point from the Thirty-Six Outer-Rim Branch Star Systems over the past ten thousand years under the guise of “Ancestral Tribute Fees”!
“Look at the shipping labels still stuck to the bottom of those jade chests,” Ye Xiao pointed out, pushing his round spectacles up his nose.
“Chest #1 through #400 are stamped ‘Old-Root Star Annual Blood-Tax’. Chest #401 through #900 are stamped ‘Iron-Root Star Orphanage & Mine Tribute’. Gu Wuji didn’t even bother to peel off the branch families’ address stickers before piling their life savings in his basement to use as a battery for his [Destiny-Plundering System]!”
