“A three-light-year expressway is a long drive even at light-speed,” Pei Xuan said, looking out across the ten gleaming golden highways stretching through the Dark Rift. “If our train engineers and civilian cargo pilots don’t have a clean place to stretch their legs, wash their faces, and grab a hot bowl of noodles along the way, highway safety will drop. And now that we suddenly have ten thousand agile young workers with quick hands...”
Pei Xuan turned and smiled warmly at the giant magnetic net full of shivering, pink-pajama assassins.
“...it would be a terrible waste of human resources not to open a chain of 24-Hour Highway Rest-Stops!”
Inside the net, Elder Blood-Dagger and Elder Cold-Fang trembled. “Wait—what is a Highway Rest-Stop?! Are you going to chain us to torture racks under the sun?!”
“Torture racks? Don’t be silly. Torture racks don’t bring in a single copper coin of revenue,” Pei Xuan said disapprovingly.
Opening his Fusion Cube interface, Pei Xuan tapped his current balance of 41.7 Trillion Loyalty Points (which had already climbed back up thanks to the five trillion confiscated Spirit Stones and the new income from Systems #52 and #53) and dropped three new items into the fusion slots:
