At one o’clock in the morning, the main warehouse square of Iron-Gate Border Market Town was as bright as noon.
Ten thousand glow-pearl floodlights hung above the stone paving. Below them, Hong Ling and her team of two hundred household clerks had lined up three massive piles of raw materials, while Chief Dispatcher Hu Ba—wearing his peaked bus-terminal cap over his white tiger ears—stood beside a convoy of twenty Double-Decker Armored Spirit-Buses waiting with their rhino teams harnessed and ready to run.
“Lord Pei!” Warlord Hu Ba jogged over, saluting smartly with his signal flag while chewing the last bite of a midnight braised pork sandwich. “Twenty express cargo buses are cleared for the Southern Highway! My rhinos just ate a double ration of fused spirit-alfalfa, so all twenty express cargo buses are parked right outside the Border Market Town depot ready for morning deliveries! Wait... my Lord, did you break through again? Why does standing next to you feel like sitting beside a giant roast-pork oven?”
Pei Xuan smiled. “Just a small step to Rank 6 Mid Golden Core. Hu Ba, did any of your Tiger-Clan guards buy robes from that Mirage Silk Pavilion today?”
Hu Ba’s tiger whiskers twitched with annoyance. “Don’t even mention it, my Lord! Three of my bus-station shift captains spent their whole month’s bonus on those glowing purple robes this afternoon! Now they are strutting up and down Platform Four refusing to carry luggage because they say ‘Immortal Cloud-Silk’ shouldn’t touch dusty suitcases! If…
