Up in the sunny sky above Dry-Well Capital, the air was so packed with flying swords, bronze war-chariots, giant feathered cranes, and two-wheeled dragon-carts that nobody could move an inch forward or backward.
HONK! HONK! SQUAWK!
“Hey! Move your giant spirit-turtle out of the left lane!” a merchant in a silk robe yelled, standing on a three-foot bronze flying sword while waving his fist at a twenty-foot green turtle floating ahead of him. “The left sky-lane is for fast flying swords only! You’re flying at three miles an hour!”
“Where am I supposed to move?!” the turtle rider yelled back, pointing down at the packed streets around the ten-mile Star-Gate crater. “There are four hundred Flood-Dragon Carts parked double-row outside the North Gate, and three million people standing shoulder to shoulder around the old village square! Everybody wants to buy a ticket on Star-Train Number One!”
Down on the ground, right where Dry-Well Village’s original crooked mud fence had stood five years ago, the crowd was even crazier.
Mortal bricklayers in red Space-Overalls, rich spice merchants waving bags of Spirit Stones, demon warriors carrying giant iron trunks, and robed Immortal Sect elders were all pushing toward the train platform at once. Fifty traffic guards from General Tie Zhan’s army were blowing brass whistles until their cheeks turned purple, trying to keep the crowd from accidentally stepping onto the steel tracks.
