CHOO-CHOOOO!
The Armored Spirit-Train roared south across the Central Continent at three hundred miles an hour. Inside the locomotive’s furnace, fused spirit-coal burned with a clean blue flame, driving twelve massive iron wheels over the laser-straight steel rails that Ye Guhan’s crew had laid down the week before.
What used to take an Imperial army forty days of marching through mud and hills now took less than two hours.
Inside the first-class dining car, Pei Xuan sat by the wide quartz window drinking hot tea while watching thousands of acres of golden autumn Spirit-Rice flash past outside. Across the aisle, Old Guo and Boom-Pot Sun were already busy chopping mountains of Meat-Belly Giant Potatoes and garlic cloves, while General Tie Zhan guarded the kitchen door—mostly to catch any potato chunks that rolled off the cutting board.
With a long hiss of white steam, the train brakes engaged and the sixty-car iron train glided to a smooth halt at the end of the southern line: Iron-Gate Pass.
As soon as Pei Xuan stepped off the train platform with his team, a freezing gust of wind whistled down from the towering black peaks of the Spine-Mountain Range.
The local garrison commander, a scarred Rank 4 captain named Lin Hu, came running down the steep stone steps of the fortress wall with fifty frostbitten soldiers behind him.
