The grand festival lasted through the third midnight.
As the final wave of remote island tribes, deep-sea merfolk, and northern tundra herders finished stamping their census cards and eating their fill of Furnace-Blood Mutton Hotpot, another four hundred thousand citizens across the four continents broke through their cultivation bottlenecks before dawn.
When the clock struck midnight at the end of the third festival night, a deep, resonant golden chime echoed inside Pei Xuan’s mind, locking in his pre-expedition war chest:
One hundred and four point five billion Loyalty Points sitting in the bank, with another twenty-six billion rolling in every twenty-four hours!
One hour before sunrise, while the billion citizens of the empire were sleeping warmly in their heated brick apartments under thick Mammoth-Wool quilts, the streets around the Old Village Quarter in the center of Dry-Well Capital City were cordoned off by ten thousand elite Rank 4 and Rank 5 Furnace-Blood Guards.
Right in the middle of the gleaming, twenty-mile metropolis of glass department stores, train terminals, and soaring spirit-towers, Pei Xuan had preserved the original thirty-five mud huts (now reinforced into indestructible memorial cottages) and the small central courtyard where he had arrived on Day One.
In the center of that courtyard sat the stone-rimmed Sweet-Spring Spirit Well.
