By noon the next day, the fifty-mile stone highway connecting Dry-Well Walled City, Black-Rock Border City, and the Eastern Refugee Welcome Camps looked like a clogged ant trail.
Over seventy thousand new drought refugees, five thousand surrendered Red-River soldiers, three hundred salt-merchant caravans, and fifty potato-supply wagons were all trying to move along the road at the same time.
Even though Sword Genius Ye Guhan had sliced the highway six lanes wide and flat as a mirror, wooden wheelbarrows and slow ox-carts could only travel three miles an hour!
At the West Gate plaza of Black-Rock City, Abacus Su wiped sweat off his forehead with a silk handkerchief as he ran up to Pei Xuan.
“My Lord, our logistics are hitting a huge wall!” Abacus Su reported, flipping open his thick ledger. “Right now, Dry-Well City in the west produces ninety percent of our Meat-Potatoes, Spirit Well water, and salt, while over a hundred and fifty thousand citizens and refugees are crowded around Black-Rock City in the east! An ox-cart takes two whole days to walk fifty miles across the desert, and the oxen eat half the grain they carry along the way!”
Beside him, Old Guo sighed and rubbed his round belly. “Even worse, Young Master, by the time our kitchen wagons haul the braised pork and fried locusts fifty miles down the road, the soup gets cold and the crispy locusts get soggy!”
Pei Xuan stood on the stone platform outside the West Gate, looking out across the straight fifty-mile desert corridor that stretched all the way back to Dry-Well City.
“Two days by ox-cart?” Pei Xuan shook his head. “Wait until next month when we have a million people. If we rely on wooden carts and mules, our whole prefecture will choke on its own traffic!”
What was the best way to move tens of thousands of people and hundreds of tons of cargo across flat desert land?
A Railway!
Pei Xuan looked at the massive pile of materials he had ordered his Debtor Labor Teams to stack beside the West Gate plaza that morning:
1. Five Hundred Tons of Confiscated Scrap Iron (including three thousand Blood-Blade Mercenary broadswords, five thousand Red-River County spearheads, broken iron gates, and rusty armor). 2. Fifty Miles of Crushed Desert Quartz-Gravel & Hardwood Ties laid out along the side of Ye Guhan’s flat stone highway. 3. Twenty Tamed Giant Scorpion Kings (each the size of a heavy war-elephant, currently munching on salted mutton bones in the corral) plus Forty Heavy Eight-Wheeled Iron Wagons.
“Everyone stand back ten paces from the highway shoulder!” Pei Xuan called out.
As thousands of curious citizens, merchants, and refugees watched from the plaza, Pei Xuan opened the Fusion Cube inside his mind!
Into Slot 1, he placed the [500 Tons of Confiscated Scrap Bandit & Army Iron].
Into Slot 2, he placed the [50 Miles of Straight Desert Gravel Roadbed + 40 Iron Wagons].
Into Slot 3, he placed the [20 Tamed Giant Scorpion Kings + Fire-Qi Steam Boilers].
“Three hundred thousand points for a fifty-mile twin-track railway and four complete trains? That’s cheaper than paving dirt!”
Pei Xuan hit [YES]!
HUMMMMM—CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
His LP balance dropped from 1,100,000 to 800,000.
What happened next made eighty thousand onlookers rub their eyes and pinch their own thighs to make sure they weren’t dreaming!
A brilliant ribbon of golden light shot out from the five-hundred-ton mountain of scrap swords and spears.
The mountain of rusty metal melted in midair into two endless rivers of liquid black steel, shooting westward along the highway at the speed of lightning!
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!
Like giant dominoes falling into place, hardwood railway ties embedded themselves into the crushed quartz gravel, and two gleaming, parallel Black-Iron Rails—actually four rails, forming an Eastbound Track and a Westbound Track—snapped down across all fifty miles of desert in less than a minute!
At the same time, the forty heavy iron wagons sitting in the plaza stretched, fused, and linked together with heavy iron couplers into four sleek, ten-car Red-Sand Iron Trains painted in glossy dark red and gold!
Each train had five wide passenger carriages with cushioned wooden benches and glass windows, four heavy freight boxcars for grain and salt, and an open iron cage-car at the very back.
And at the front of each train stood five linked Armor-Plated Scorpion Kings wearing gleaming brass Fire-Qi Booster Harnesses! Their sixteen legs were fitted with curved steel rail-shoes that gripped the smooth iron tracks like greased skates, and right in front of the lead Scorpion King hung an automatic Mutton-Broth Feeder Trough!
Dead silence hung over the West Gate plaza for five full seconds.
Then, a wealthy silk merchant from Yellow-Earth County—who had traveled across half the Great Yan Kingdom—dropped his folding fan onto the ground and grabbed Abacus Su’s sleeve with trembling hands.
“S-Sir Accountant!” the silk merchant stammered, pointing at the gleaming black-iron rails stretching into the western horizon and the hundred-yard-long red iron train sitting at the platform. “What in the name of the Three Emperors is that?! Did Lord Pei just melt five thousand swords into two iron snakes that run for fifty miles?!”
“Those are not iron snakes,” Abacus Su pushed his spectacles up his nose with a proud smile. “That is the Red-Sand Municipal Iron Railway! Instead of bumping along in an ox-cart for two days and getting your bones shaken loose, this train covers all fifty miles from Black-Rock City to Dry-Well City in fifty minutes! Ticket price for citizens: two copper coins! Ticket price for registered refugees: FREE!”
“Fifty miles in fifty minutes?! For two copper coins?!”
The crowd went completely wild!
“A swift warhorse galloping at full speed until it spits blood can barely run fifty miles in two hours—and this iron house carries two thousand people at once?!”
“Look inside the windows! There are smooth wooden benches, tea tables, and even a hot water boiler in the corner of every car!”
Pei Xuan walked up to the wooden boarding platform of Train #1 (The Dry-Well Express) and turned toward the back of the train.
Right behind Car #9 was the open-air Rear Maintenance & Caboose Cage-Car, which contained the coal bin for the train’s heating boiler, the giant barrel of spicy mutton broth that pumped forward to feed the Scorpion Kings, and two warning signal posts.
Locked inside that back cage-car—wearing their bright yellow Debtor Vests—stood Count Wang Ba (#1,001), Eldest Brother Pei Heng (#889), Second Brother Pei Bao (#890), and Commander Scar-Face (#600)!
“Listen up, Caboose Crew!” Hong Ling stood outside the iron bars of the cage-car, tapping her kitchen cleaver against the railing. “During the fifty-mile run, Prisoner #1,001 (Count Wang) is in charge of shoveling coal into the hot-water boiler! Prisoner #889 (Pei Heng) is in charge of pumping the mutton-broth pedal so the Scorpion Kings stay fed! And Prisoner #890 (Pei Bao)—here are two little red cloth flags!”
Hong Ling shoved two small triangular red flags into Second Brother Pei Bao’s hands.
“What am I supposed to do with these two little flags?!” Pei Bao asked blankly.
“Stand at the back railing, wave both flags over your head, and shout ‘Choo-Choo! Don’t stand on the tracks!’ every ten seconds so desert camels don’t wander onto the rails!” Hong Ling said seriously. “If you stop waving or your voice gets too quiet, your shock-collar will give you a friendly reminder!”
Pei Bao burst into tears. “I am the Second Young Master of the Iron-Wolf Marquisate! Why do I have to be a human train whistle?!”
Beside him, fat Count Wang gripped a heavy iron coal shovel, his face dripping with sweat. “Stop crying, you idiot! At least you only have to wave two little flags! I have to shovel two hundred pounds of coal!”
Up at the front of the train, two thousand excited refugees—carrying their children and cloth bundles—climbed aboard the five passenger cars, while two hundred tons of confiscated grain and salt were loaded into the freight cars.
Blacksmith Zhao Dahu sat proudly in the front engineer’s cab, wearing his blue engineering cap and goggles.
“All passengers seated! Doors closed!” Old Wei shouted from the platform, waving a green flag.
Inside the cab, Zhao Dahu pulled the brass whistle cord twice:
TOOOOOOOT—TOOOOOOOT!
Then he opened the valve on the Mutton-Broth Feeder Pipe!
Right in front of the five Armor-Plated Scorpion Kings, a spray of hot, fragrant, spicy mutton broth misted into their feeding troughs, while the Fire-Qi booster saddles on their backs hissed with warm red steam!
The five giant Scorpion Kings smelled the spicy mutton broth, clicked their pincers in pure excitement, and started running down the smooth black-iron rails!
CLACK-CLACK... CLACK-CLACK... WHOOOOOOOOOSH!
Because the fused black-iron rails and steel rail-shoes had near-zero friction, the five Scorpion Kings barely felt the weight of the ten-car iron train behind them!
Within ten seconds, the train accelerated from a slow walk to a gallop—twenty miles an hour... forty miles an hour... sixty miles an hour!
Inside Passenger Car #1, the refugees who had been gripping their bench armrests in fear suddenly blinked in amazement.
Wait—even though the sandy hills and cactus bushes outside the glass windows were flying past like blurry green streaks, inside the train car there was zero bumping or shaking!
On the small wooden table in the middle of the car, a porcelain cup filled to the brim with hot tea didn’t spill a single drop!
“Mother! Look out the window!” Zhao Dahu’s six-year-old daughter pressed her nose against the glass, her eyes sparkling. “We’re flying faster than the birds! Look at those ox-carts on the highway beside us—they look like they’re standing still!”
Out on the highway alongside the tracks, several merchant ox-cart drivers stared in stunned disbelief as the hundred-yard-long red iron train whooshed past them at sixty miles an hour!
And at the very back of the train, inside the open cage-car, the sixty-mile-an-hour wind blew Count Wang’s hair straight back like a broom while Second Brother Pei Bao waved his two little red flags furiously and screamed at the top of his lungs:
“CHOO-CHOO! DON’T STAND ON THE TRACKS! CHOO-CHOO! MY ARMS ARE GOING TO FALL OFF!”
In just forty-eight minutes, Train #1 glided smoothly across the entire fifty miles of desert and pulled into the brand-new Dry-Well Central Train Station with a gentle hiss of brakes!
When the two thousand refugees stepped off the train onto the clean stone platform of Dry-Well City—seeing the towering battlements, the gushing Sweet-Spring fountains, the bustling markets, and the endless green fields of Meat-Potatoes—they felt as if they had ridden an Immortal’s flying chariot straight into heaven!
Pei Xuan stepped off the first-class car in Dry-Well City, greeted by the cheers of ten thousand townspeople waiting at the station.
With the four trains running back and forth every hour, moving fifty thousand refugees and hundreds of tons of food between the two cities was now as easy as walking across the street!
“Abacus Su,” Pei Xuan said, looking at the crowds of newly arrived families stepping off the train with their bundles. “Now that the railway has brought forty thousand new refugees straight to Dry-Well City and Black-Rock City today, where are they sleeping tonight?”
Abacus Su adjusted his spectacles. “My Lord, our temporary canvas tents are completely full! If we want all two hundred thousand citizens to settle down permanently with 90+ Loyalty, we need twenty thousand real houses before the summer heat hits!”
Pei Xuan grinned and rolled up his sleeves. “Twenty thousand houses with running water pipes? Give me five days and a pile of mud!”