CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
A sound like a hundred blacksmiths hammering on an iron roof echoed outside the thick glass windows of the Spirit-Furnace Star-Train.
Inside the first-class dining car, Pei Xuan didn’t even look up from his bowl of hot beef noodle soup. He picked up a slice of braised beef with his bamboo chopsticks, dipped it in red chili oil, and popped it into his mouth.
Right beside his elbow, right outside the three-inch-thick reinforced quartz window, a hideous bug the size of a yellow farm dog slammed face-first into the glass.
The bug had six hairy green legs, a swollen belly full of dark purple blood, and a foot-long black iron beak shaped like a meat skewer. It pressed its ugly compound eyes against the window, staring straight at Old Guo’s steaming soup pot, and jabbed its iron beak at the glass with all its strength.
TINK!
Sparks flew off the windowpane. Instead of cracking the fused glass, the mosquito’s foot-long iron beak bent into a crooked corkscrew with a loud metallic screech!
“Bzzzt?!”
