Across fifty trillion live-stream screens spanning the Inner Spiral Galaxy and the Eastern Quadrant, tense whispers and heated debates filled every teahouse, sect plaza, and family living room.
“Young Patriarch Gu Nian actually accepted the 1-on-1 arena challenge without asking Patriarch Gu Changsheng or Empress Luo Qingxue to step in!” an old sword master. An outer star-cluster gasped, stroking his beard as he stared at the sky-screen. “I admire the fourteen-year-old boy’s courage and his kindness toward his ten crippled branch cousins—but can a fourteen-year-old at Rank 8 Peak really defeat twenty-two-year-old Golden Heir Gu Wuji in a death duel?”
“Don’t forget,” another conservative sect elder murmured nervously, “even though Gu Wuji lost his canned bone vault and ate a pickled radish last night. His cultivation is still at the genuine Rank 9 Early (Galactic Sovereign Realm)! And he still has Ten Stolen Supreme Bloodlines fused inside his marrow!
In the cultivation world, the chasm between Rank 8 Peak (Star Realm) and Rank 9 Early (Galactic Realm) is wider than the gulf between a single star and an entire galaxy! How can a fourteen-year-old boy cross a full major realm against ten supreme bloodlines?!”
Down on the black basalt stage of the [Ten-Thousand-Star Galactic Arena], twenty-two-year-old Gu Wuji heard the doubts of the conservative sect elders over the broadcast and let out a hoarse, manic laugh:
