Along two thousand miles of the Northern Imperial Highway, fifty thousand cultivators tore up the old road and rebuilt it for high-speed rail.
Workers from three hundred rival sects moved through the easement in organized crews. Every one of them wore an orange vest, yellow hard hat, steel-toed boots, and green safety glasses.
Grand Elder Xuan Xiao led the grading team. His Peak Golden Core senses, once used to study the mysteries of Heaven, now focused on grade stakes and drainage slopes.
“Watch the crown of the roadbed!” he shouted through a megaphone. “Keep the sub-base within tolerance! Three-to-one slopes on the drainage cuts! If spring water pools against this foundation, Master Chu will have every elder sifting gravel with kitchen colanders!”
Beside him, Jiang Taixu checked the next five miles of alignment through a surveyor’s laser.
Behind them came Patriarch Iron Blood and five hundred demonic disciples. Their Blood Claws vibrated against the precast concrete ties, settling them into the crushed-stone bed and driving out air pockets.
BZZZZZT-THUMP! BZZZZZT-THUMP!
Five million concrete ties went down in seventy-two hours.
Above the trees, Meng’s twelve warships served as flying cranes. Their weapons had been removed, and their belly winches carried concrete supports under the direction of Sunset Peak lift supervisors. Meng bellowed from the bridge, “If you crack a tendon, Master Chu will boot our skids until the next dynasty!”
At the flooded Grey Reed crossing, the work stopped. A pier designed for firm ground stood in water after the river broke its bank. Meng’s first crew wanted to set the next span on it and keep the schedule.
Meng looked at the muddy cracks around the base. “Hold the load.”
The lift supervisor pointed to the weight board. “We’re inside the crane limit.”
“The crane isn’t the problem. The ground is.” Meng ordered divers out until a cofferdam drained the inspection pit, then had Xuan Xiao’s crew probe the foundation. The flood had scoured a hollow beneath one footing.
A rushed lift would have dropped six workers and the span into the river. Meng moved the ships upstream, kept every worker outside the marked fall zone, and used the winches to lower steel sheet piles instead. Iron Blood compacted new fill inside the dry enclosure. Only after Austin’s inspector signed the repaired pier did Meng allow the span to move.
It landed without a crack.
The lift supervisor handed Meng the next load sheet. “Your call saved the crossing. You run the crane division.”
Meng folded the sheet once and put it inside his armor where he used to carry imperial commendations. “Then we do the next lift by the same rules.”
Inside Mount Clear Sky, the Floor 2 foundry ran at full capacity. The five hundred tons of treaty silver-steel went into the arc furnaces and came out as seamless guideway sections. Apprentices tested the insulation before the freight hoist carried each bundle to the surface.
Austin led the main rail crew with a rivet gun and welder.
CHUNK-CHUNK-ZZZZZT!
Blue-white flashes lit the mountain cuts as he joined the sections into continuous tracks. The twin guideways crossed gorges on concrete viaducts, passed through bored tunnels, and followed the valleys toward the capital.
Back at Sunset Peak, the Level 55 capstone project waited on its staging blocks.
The Sunset Express.
The three-car train was fifty meters long, with a polished Stellar-Steel body and a narrow, streamlined nose. Magnetic bogies beneath each car would hold it four inches above the guideway.
Inside, the passenger cabin smelled of cedar and clean leather. High-backed seats faced double-paned quartz windows. Soft lights ran along the walls, and the ventilation system held the cabin at a comfortable seventy-two degrees.
Austin walked down the aisle and pulled hard on an overhead luggage rack.
Clack.
“No play in the brackets. Boarding is open. Mind the gap.”
Emperor Yan Ming, the Prime Minister, and Li Xiaoyao came up the ramp with their mouths open.
The Emperor stopped at the threshold and looked at his bare feet.
“Master Chu, should we remove our shoes before entering the sky chariot? Is this an altar?”
“No, and put on the safety clogs Jiang gave you. Bare feet on a train are an accident waiting to happen. If you break a toe during braking, I have to fill out the report.”
Yan Ming quickly put on the orange rubber clogs and lowered himself into a seat as if it might explode. Xiaoyao ran a finger along the automatic door seal. The Emperor stared at the digital speed display above the cab door.
“Does this silver serpent need no thunder rocs to pull it? No forty thousand spirit stones burned in sacrifice?”
“It’s a maglev train,” Austin said from the driver’s seat. “Powered coils in the track push and pull the cars. There are no wheels touching the rail and no axle bearings to seize. When we brake, the system returns power to the grid. No magic birds required.”
Cerberus Pug trotted into the lounge car, jumped onto a wide leather bench, and pressed all three noses against the window.
Austin took the throttle.
“Hold on to your tea. Bringing up the levitation field.”
He moved the control one notch.
CLACK.
HUMMMMMMMMM.
The forty-ton train rose four inches and hung silently above its supports.
The Prime Minister gripped his armrests. “We’re floating! Forty tons of steel, and not one levitation rune!”
Austin moved the throttle forward.
WHOOOOOOOOSH!
The Sunset Express accelerated.
There were no grinding wheels or rattling joints. Only smooth, steady pressure pushed the passengers into their seats. Beyond the windows, the valley blurred into green and gold.
Speed: 150 MPH... 320 MPH... 480 MPH...
Within sixty seconds, the display settled at 650 MPH.
Mountain passes that took royal messengers two weeks vanished behind them in eight minutes. River gorges that once required days by ferry flashed beneath concrete bridges in seconds.
Yan Ming checked his brass water clock, then looked out at the racing clouds.
“Six hundred and fifty miles an hour,” he whispered. “A six-month journey that killed soldiers and starved supply trains, completed before my morning tea cools.”
He turned toward the open cab, already thinking like a ruler with empty northern granaries.
“Three hours for grain that used to spoil on the road for six months. This can feed cities, move seed, and bring tax wagons home before bandits know they have left. I want freight schedules before we add any more ceremony.”
Austin sipped from his travel mug. Beside the throttle, a glass beaker filled to the brim with water stood perfectly still.
“Clean alignment. On old steel rail, the wheels wobble like a shopping cart with a bad caster. Here, zero wobble. Smooth as oiled glass.”
Three hours and ten minutes after leaving Mount Clear Sky, a chime sounded overhead.
DING-DONG.
The train began regenerative braking, returning its momentum to the power grid as electricity.
Wuuuuur-psssssh.
The Sunset Express slowed gently and stopped beside the new platform outside the capital’s Great Spirit Gate.
More than five hundred thousand citizens packed the walls and plaza. They stared at the silver train that had arrived without animals, smoke, or sails. After three silent heartbeats, the crowd erupted in cheers that shook the palace roofs.
Austin checked his watch.
“Three hours and ten minutes, mountain to palace. Commute problem solved. Ahead of schedule.”