The night sky above the Royal Plains burned with two completely different colors.
On the western side, outside the outer walls of Golden-Crow Capital, two hundred high-beam spirit searchlights sat on top of Pei Xuan’s four-track Iron Trains. Their bright white beams swept across the flat asphalt highway and lit up rows of clean white hospital tents, steaming noodle stalls, and green-painted Grain-Note Exchange Booths. Thousands of suburban farmers and runaway city guards stood in neat lines holding fresh red Citizen ID cards, chewing on hot mutton buns while listening to soothing flute music playing from brass horn speakers.
On the eastern side, inside the towering black-stone walls of Golden-Crow Capital, a thick, ugly red glow suddenly boiled up from the street gutters.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Twelve deep, heavy drumbeats shook the earth beneath the capital. They did not come from war drums on the battlements. They came from deep underground, right where the ancient stone sewers met the foundation pillars of the Imperial Palace.
Lines of sticky, dark-red runes burst through the paving stones of the main avenues. Like glowing bloodworms, the runes crawled up the outer city walls and met in the sky three hundred feet above the rooftops. In less than ten breaths, a massive, upside-down bowl of crimson light locked down over the entire capital!
