By nine o’clock in the morning, the brand-new Dry-Well Central Railway Station on the southern edge of the capital was packed with a cheering crowd of two hundred thousand people.
Colorful red silk banners hung from the arched steel-and-glass roof of the station canopy, and a brass marching band made up of former Joyous-Gold Sect musicians (all wearing neat blue railway uniforms over their yellow debtor vests) was playing a lively desert folk tune.
Stretching out from Platform #1 in three grand trunk directions—westward toward the Red-Sand Wastes, eastward through the Mount Azure Tunnel toward the Eastern Frontier, and southward toward Iron-Gate Pass on the Southern Demon Lands Border—lay gleaming, silver-gray steel rails bolted onto spirit-concrete sleepers.
Sitting on the tracks of Platform #1 were the raw materials Pei Xuan had ordered Boom-Pot Sun, Tie Zhan, and Mo Xiaoliu to line up for the grand fusion: At the very front sat four colossal, shed iron carapaces from the Armored Scorpion Kings of the Red-Sand Wastes, parked on top of heavy sixteen-wheel steel bogies. Behind them sat a massive high-pressure spirit-furnace boiler pre-charged by Ancestor Pill-Fire’s Rank 6 Samadhi True Fire, followed by one hundred heavy iron passenger and cargo carriages stretching nearly a mile down the platform! And right behind the lead locomotive sat one special open-air flatbed car carpeted with soft green oasis grass, where Old Yellow—Pei Xuan’s lazy, golden-furred Dragon-Camel with his stubby little dragon antlers—was lying on his belly munching on a basket of sweet honey-dates.
