At high noon on the seventh day since the Star-Train first landed on Green-Sprout Star, a grand planetary assembly was held on the central plaza in front of the three-thousand-foot Ancient Banyan Tree-King.
Over one hundred thousand newly arrived human farmers, Ox-Demon plowmen, Moon-Rabbit station attendants, and Spirit-Tractor sword pilots stood in neat squares across the gray-brick plaza, while live spirit-screens broadcast the ceremony to all two billion citizens back on Planet Canglan and Dust-Rock Moon.
Up in the sky, Director Ao Ming leaned over the rail of his floating weather pavilion wearing his polished gold medallion, holding a giant silk banner in his claws that read:
[ PROTECT GREEN-SPROUT SOIL — NO SMOKESTACKS ALLOWED! ]
Down in the front row, Locust Demon King Huang Tianba sat politely on a wooden stool wearing his oversized black sunglasses, straw hat, and a freshly ironed yellow vest, cheering loudest of all because he was terrified that factory smoke would ruin the taste of his beloved Honey-Bran Cakes.
Pei Xuan stepped up to the white-jade podium at the base of the Ancient Banyan Tree-King, holding a glowing golden scroll fused from Moon-Spider Silk and Planetary Law Runes.
“Citizens of Dry-Well Interplanetary County!” Pei Xuan’s clear voice echoed across the continents through the planetary wind-arrays. “Back when our county was just a single desert village of thirty-five mud huts, we had to count every bucket of water and every potato. Today, we stand on a world with five hundred million acres of primeval black…
