Inside the steaming, sunlit scullery of Iron-Root Central Elementary School Canteen #1 on Branch Planet #36 (Iron-Root Star). Sixty-thousand-year-old First Supreme Grand Elder Gu Cang (Rank 9 Mid Peak, wearing his Frilly Yellow Daisy Dishwashing Apron and matching Lace Shower Cap) stared down at seven-year-old Gu Xiaomei with stiff, trembling suspicion.
Just five minutes earlier, while scrubbing a twenty-foot iron soup cauldron with a steel-wool pad alongside his two brothers Gu Ming-Yuan and Gu Sha-Xing. Gu Cang had still been whispering bitter, vengeful schemes under his breath:
*“Second Brother, Third Brother—don’t give up yet! Even though Gu Changsheng spanked us a hundred times with that terrifying belt and converted our Rank 9 Mid Dark Galaxies into 140-degree lemon dish-sprayers. We still have sixty thousand years of sovereign scheming in our heads!
If we secretly reverse the water pressure on our wrist nozzles at midnight when the canteen closes, maybe we can—” *
“Keep scrubbing your tray, Eldest Brother!” Second Supreme Grand Elder Gu Ming-Yuan had whimpered, his hands moving at a blur in the middle sink basin. “Every time my sponge slows down below a hundred strokes per second, the pink butterfly bow on the back of this apron gives my tailbone a phantom Seven-Wolves sting!”
