WHOOOOOSH—CLANG!
Twenty minutes after Ye Guhan sent the signal back through the orbital Star-Gate, the golden sky-rail above Warm-Spring Star lit up like a second sun.
Freight Train No. 12—a massive three-hundred-car heavy cargo beast pulled by two coupled Spirit-Furnace locomotives—roared out of the space portal and braked smoothly alongside Pei Xuan’s train.
Every single flatcar on Freight Train No. 12 was stacked fifty feet high with gigantic, rough-barked Hundred-Year Iron-Wood Logs freshly cut from the jungle clearings of Green-Sprout Star. Behind the timber cars sat fifty hoppers of smooth white Warm-Jade Tiles quarried from the mines of Canglan, along with ten thousand padded leather chairs that Abacus Su had bought on clearance from bankrupt noble mansions.
Down in the warm blue ocean, General Tie Zhan was still floating on his back like a big happy cork, squirting fountains of herbal water out of his mouth while Chief Shi Gang practiced underwater iron-palm strikes beside him.
“Look out below!” Hong Ling shouted through a brass megaphone from the freight deck. “Timber coming down!”
“Wait, don’t drop a tree on my shaved head!” Tie Zhan yelped, kicking his thick legs like a frog to paddle out of the way.
SPLASH! SPLASH! BOOM!
