SHING—BOOM!
Five hundred miles deep inside the Southern Demon Lands, a dazzling three-hundred-foot arc of silver-white Sword Qi flashed across the frozen horizon, slicing a jagged granite ridge as flat and smooth as a polished mirror.
Floating in mid-air above the newly cut pass, Ye Guhan let out a long breath of white mist and slowly slid his silver longsword back into its scabbard.
Around his feet, a faint golden halo of Rank 6 Early Golden Core power pulsed in rhythm with the straight white lines of the highway below.
“Master Ye! That cut was zero-point-zero-zero-one inches straighter than yesterday’s!”
Down on the freshly leveled stone roadbed, Black-Bear King Xiong Ba—wearing a bright yellow “Dry-Well Debtor #88,889” vest and a heavy iron hard-hat over his bear ears—gave a thumbs-up while carrying two fifty-ton slabs of Heated Black-Stone Pavement under his armpits like two blocks of tofu!
Behind Xiong Ba, Green-Wolf Chieftain Lang Que (Debtor #88,890) was leading fifty thousand captured Hyena Bandits and Bear-Riders, using heated spirit-rollers to fuse the black-stone slabs together and connect the underground steam pipes.
“Quit flattering Sword Master Ye and drop that slab down, Bear-Head!” Lang Que barked, checking a spirit-level ruler with one eye closed. “Chief Dispatcher Hu Ba said on the voice-conch that the 12:00 Noon Express Fleet from Dry-Well City is only twenty minutes behind us! If we finish paving Southern Highway Line #5 before noon, Bookkeeper Su says our whole crew gets double braised-pork rations AND a hot-spring bath voucher tonight!”
