DONG—DONG—DONG!
At exactly six o’clock in the evening, the brass dinner bell atop Kitchen Car #3 rang across the construction site of Section 14.
Along the newly laid steel tracks, Senior Brother Chu Feng and his two hundred and ninety-nine yellow-vested sword disciples immediately set down their twenty-pound spike-hammers, wiped the sweat from their brows, and lined up in a laser-straight single file with tin washbasins in their hands.
Outside the kitchen car, however, in the newly fenced High-Rank Debtor & Streetlight Repair Pen, the mood was far more rebellious.
Sword Ancestor Ling (Rank 8 Peak) sat on a stack of railway ties in a pair of borrowed gray canvas work pants and a bright yellow “DEBTOR #01” vest. His wrists had finally been unclipped from the knife-feeding rack for the thirty-minute evening meal break, though the heavy diamond-grit cuffs still hummed softly on his forearms. Around him sat First Elder Jian Wuchen, Third Elder Bai, and the other eighteen Rank 8 Sword Elders, all rubbing their sore shoulders after spending the afternoon carrying gravel sacks to pay off the first zero on their one-quadrillion Grain-Note debt.
“Hmph! Look at Chu Feng and those three hundred spineless brats,” First Elder Jian Wuchen spat, glaring at the line of inner disciples eagerly waiting in front of Old Guo’s serving window. “They hammered spikes for four hours, and now they are wagging their tails like puppies just because that fat mortal cook lifted a pot lid! Have they forgotten that a true…
