Grease popped on the hot cast-iron griddle. Gu Changsheng slid his iron spatula under the round scallion pancake, flicked his wrist, and flipped it over in a clean golden circle.
Above the open-air kitchen of the Galactic Flying Courtyard, all ten thousand golden portals across the 1,000-Galaxy Cluster ripped wide open at the exact same second.
Crimson ink poured from the edges of the portals like cheap paint. First came a roar of rehearsed anger that shook the outer asteroid belts of the Inner Spiral Galaxy. Then ten thousand figures in identical black robes dropped straight out of the rifts.
Every single one of them had spiky black hair, a scarred left eyebrow, and a rusted heavy sword strapped to his back. Every single one of them wore a cracked green ring on his right thumb and a bitter, world-hating sneer on his face.
“Thirty years east, thirty years west!” ten thousand voices bellowed across the starry void in unison. “Don’t bully a poor youth—today, this seat will burn your suns to ash!”
Ten thousand black heavy swords came unsheathed with a single metallic ring. Across the 1,000-Galaxy Cluster, each clone raised his blade and aimed a charging beam of Rank 8 Peak or Rank 9 Early sword qi directly at the nearest inhabited sun.
