CHOO-CHOOOOOO!
The heavy brass steam whistle on the front of Pei Xuan’s armored locomotive blew two long, cheerful blasts as the South Gate of Golden-Crow Capital swung wide open.
Not a single battering ram had touched the gate doors. Instead, five hundred former Royal South Gate guards—already wearing fresh yellow “Dry-Well Municipal Patrol” armbands and chewing on sesame flatbreads—were busy cranking the drawbridge winches as fast as they could, while another hundred guards ran ahead with bamboo brooms to sweep the gravel off the main avenue!
Behind them, twenty Zombie Pavers and two Ironclad Steamrollers rolled off the front flatcars, laying prefabricated steel railway ties straight down the hundred-foot-wide Imperial Avenue at a walking trot.
Standing on the turret of his Command Spirit-Tank as it rolled smoothly through the South Gate archway, Pei Xuan looked at the floating blue window of his RTS Municipal Building Manager.
Because all five hundred thousand citizens of Golden-Crow Capital had just registered and crossed ninety Loyalty, the entire twelve-square-mile city—including every brick, gutter, and underground formation inside it—was now legally recognized by the System as Pei Xuan’s Level 5 Territory!
And right in the middle of his new city sat an illegal, unpermitted thirty-six-nail Blood-Soul Array that Perfected Nine-Swords had foolishly linked directly to his own dantian and meridians so he could absorb the city’s blood-Qi!
