By noon on Tuesday, the Grand Hall of World 40’s Central Exchange Bank was packed shoulder to shoulder.
Not only had the thirty outer-sector billionaire clans deposited their entire fleets and mines, but thousands of smaller merchant caravans from the Black-Water Sector, the Iron-Feather Sector, and the Broken Asteroid Rim were flying through the wormhole highway every ten minutes just to line up at Hong Ling’s teller windows!
“Governor Hong! My caravan brought forty thousand tons of Frost-Iron Ore from the Northern Rim! Please appraise it and put the Jin-Notes into my savings account!”
“Counter Number Twelve! Wait for me! I brought five hundred barrels of Thousand-Year Spirit Honey! I don’t want Spirit Stones—give me green Dry-Well Paper Grain-Notes!”
Even with one hundred bank clerks working alongside Abacus Su and the newly hired janitor Lord Silver-Tongue (who was happily directing lines with his mop while shouting, “Single deposits on the left, corporate checkbooks on the right, please don’t step on the wet floor!”), the line outside the bank stretched for six miles down the main street!
Up in the second-floor observation gallery overlooking the bustling bank floor, Pei Xuan leaned against the carved wooden railing while Hong Ling trotted up the stairs, fanning her flushed cheeks with a stack of deposit slips.
