On the wide silver stone platform in front of the fifty-mile Moon Star-Gate, the azure spatial portal hummed like a calm ocean under the steady power of Enforcer Xue Sha’s 240-RPM bicycle pedaling.
Pei Xuan stood at the head of Platform #1, looking through the shimmering blue portal into the vast, dark starry sea of the Broken Star Belt.
Through the portal, he could see the silver craters of Dust-Rock Moon, the emerald jungle canopy of Green-Sprout Star, the red volcanic glow of Black-Iron Moon, and the steaming green seas of Warm-Spring Star.
“Young Master,” General Tie Zhan said, walking up beside Pei Xuan while chewing on his eighth pork bun of the afternoon. “Our Golden Orbital Shuttle is fast, but it only holds two hundred people at a time. And those clumsy wooden flying ships that the old Immortal Sects used to build burn ten thousand Spirit Stones a mile and get blown off course by the smallest solar wind. If we want to send millions of farmers, miners, Frost-Giants, and hotpot stalls to ten planets at once, what kind of ship are we going to build?”
“We aren’t building a ship, General Tie,” Pei Xuan smiled, tapping the side of his nose. “Ships drift in the void, get lost in space storms, and can’t pull heavy cargo cars in a straight line. Ever since we built the Undersea Glass Train Tunnel and the Northern Heated Rail back on Canglan, I’ve known there’s only one proper way for Dry-Well…
