The golden lid of [Dad’s Care-Package Upgrade Box] clicked open on the wooden kitchen counter, releasing a warm glow that smelled like toasted sesame and clean pine wood.
Before Gu Changsheng could drop the first ingredient inside, First Galactic Grand Elder Gu Cang hurried over from the stone sink. He dried his wrinkled hands on his pink floral apron and pulled a glowing purple tortoise-shell talisman out of his sleeve.
“Patriarch, wait!” Gu Cang said earnestly, holding the purple tortoise shell toward the five children.
“If the five Little Sovereigns must enter those five Apocalypse Sectors, please let them take this old servant’s Rank 9 Early [Immortal Astral Tortoise Shield]! It was forged in a pulsar core for ten thousand years and can block a hundred star-shattering strikes!”
“Thank you, Grand Elder, but watch what happens when a normal treasure touches fifth-dimensional script ink,” Gu Changsheng said.
He picked up a pair of wooden kitchen tongs and plucked a single drop of floating crimson mist that had drifted down from the nearest golden portal. Then he flicked it lightly onto the surface of Gu Cang’s purple tortoise shell.
HISS!
The instant the pinprick of crimson ink touched the Rank 9 Early tortoise shell, ugly black rust spread across the ancient runes. A ghostly wail echoed from the shell’s artifact spirit as it hallucinated its own destruction from ten million years ago. Within three breaths, the prized galactic shield cracked down the middle and dulled into a piece of grey stone.
