After the forty-eight thousand newly recruited soldiers marched into the barracks to put on their crisp dark-blue Dry-Well Highway Patrol Uniforms and eat a victory lunch of braised pork and purple spirit-rice, Pei Xuan walked over to inspect Eunuch Cao’s stranded gilded palanquin.
The palanquin was truly enormous—forty feet long, twelve feet wide, and two stories tall, framed with hundred-year ironwood and covered in solid gold leaf, carved wooden dragons, and plush velvet cushions.
“What a waste of good timber and gold leaf,” General Tie Zhan muttered, kicking one of the thick carrying poles. “This thing took thirty-two horses just to drag it down the road so one skinny old eunuch could drink tea inside. My Lord, should I have the blacksmiths chop it up for firewood and scrape the gold off?”
“Chop it up? No way,” Pei Xuan shook his head with a grin. “Silver-Fork Port is growing so fast that the main avenue from the river docks to the Central Market and the Residential District is now five miles long. Think about how tired Granny Zhao and the dockworkers get walking five miles carrying heavy bags of potatoes and salt!”
Pei Xuan patted the gilded side of the giant palanquin and opened his Fusion Cube.
