“SCREEEEEEEEECH! WHO DARED TURN OFF THIS KING’S BATHWATER?!”
The sky above Central Peak darkened as Thunder-Hawk King Lei Zhen dove out of the upper stratosphere.
His wingspan stretched three hundred feet from tip to tip, every feather forged like a purple-gold broadsword pulsing with terrifying Rank 7 Late demonic pressure. Behind him, one hundred thousand Thunder-Feather Storm-Hawks darkened the sun like a rolling purple locust cloud, squawking and clacking their iron beaks in fury.
Lei Zhen hovered five thousand feet above Star-Train No. 1, his golden hawk eyes glaring down at the ten-thousand-foot Star-Copper tower that was greedily slurping every last drop of purple lightning out of his beloved storm clouds.
“Two-legged worms!” Lei Zhen’s voice boomed like rolling thunder across the plateau, rattling the gravel under the train tracks. “For three thousand years, this King has soaked in the Nine-Heavens Purple Thunder Pool every morning at nine o’clock! Just now, right when this King was scrubbing under my left wing, the lightning suddenly stopped! My bath-cloud vanished! Even the static electricity on my tail-feathers went flat! Which one of you hairless monkeys pulled the plug on my sky?!”
Down on the platform of Central Peak Station, Pei Xuan stepped forward with a brass megaphone in his hand, wearing his yellow Chief Engineer Hardhat. Beside him, Abacus Su already had his three-foot jade abacus held against his chest and a fresh yellow invoice scrolled out on a clipboard.
