One week later, the volcanic planetoid in System #70 that had once been the dreaded Golden-Crow Branch Fortress was completely unrecognizable.
Every jagged black lava spire had been carved by General Tie Zhan’s engineering golems into gleaming marble dining pavilions. Across the outer orbital ring, a hundred-mile-long neon sign powered by solar-crystal eyeballs flashed across the starry void in bright red and gold characters:
> [ DRY-WELL INTERSTELLAR HOT-POT FLAGSHIP PALACE ] > — Boiled Over 100% Genuine Royal Three-Legged Golden-Crow Fire! — > — Lunch Special: All-You-Can-Eat Meat-Potatoes & Lamb Tripe for 3 Grain-Notes! —
Every evening at five o’clock sharp, when the factory whistles and farm bells rang across all 70 Solar Systems, hundreds of Light-Speed Express Star-Trains glided down the Black-Gold Asphalt space highways and pulled into the thirty-six platforms of System #70’s Grand Central Station.
Ice-miners from the Frost-Rim Sector (Systems 1–10), Void-Whale sanitation crews from the Junkyard Nebula (Systems 11–20), reformed Shadow-Web assassins in their blue toll-collector uniforms from the Dark Rift (Systems 51–60), and newly freed farmers from the Blazing-Feather Sector (Systems 61–70) stepped off the trains side by side, laughing and chatting as they rode the golden escalators up to the 100-Mile Royal Hot-Pot Cauldron!
