On New Year’s Morning, the winter sun rose bright and golden over the newly renamed Civic Unity Plaza in the heart of Golden-Crow Capital.
There was no biting winter chill anywhere in the city. Deep beneath the wide stone avenues, the hot water pipes warmed by Ao Ming and the thirty-six recycled copper conduits kept the entire twelve-square-mile capital at a pleasant sixty-eight degrees, while sweet-spring mist from the four Golden Boundary Pillars made cherry-blossom trees bloom right in the middle of January!
Half a million citizens filled the grand avenue in front of the Meridian Gate, wearing clean new cotton jackets bought with paper Dry-Well Grain-Notes. And across all thirty-six cities and two hundred towns—from the original Red-Sand Oasis City in the western desert to the coastal ports in the east—another 4,700,000 citizens gathered in front of giant sky-screens to watch the New Year Founding Ceremony live!
At the front of the parade route stood a very special VIP platform lined with red carpets and bowls of candied desert dates.
Standing there in the place of honor was Old Yellow—the lazy, formerly bald pack-camel that had walked with Pei Xuan into Dry-Well Village on Day 1!
After a full year of eating every high-grade fusion scrap, spirit-herb stem, and pill crust from Boom-Pot Sun’s kitchen, Old Yellow was now twelve feet tall, covered in shimmering Rank 4 Peak Golden Dragon-Scales, with two small golden dragon-antlers sprouting from his head and a pair of fluffy golden cloud-wings folded lazily on…
