TOOOOOOOOOT—CHUGGA-CHUGGA-CHUGGA!
At dawn the next morning, the nine-layer silver barrier around Supreme Edge World and all twenty-nine sister solar systems of the Ten-Thousand Sword Mountain Sect powered down with a peaceful hum.
Riding at the very front of the [Light-Year Sword-Rail Express]—which now rolled across the mirror-bright steel tracks of Section 14 forged from ten thousand ancestral swords—Pei Xuan led three thousand passenger cars packed with excited, wide-eyed mortal homesteaders straight into the heart of the formerly forbidden sect territory.
Behind the locomotive, Sword Ancestor Ling and Ye Guhan stood side by side on the flat cowcatcher platform. Sword Ancestor Ling had traded his red duck underwear for a crisp dark-blue Dry-Well Railway uniform, though he still proudly wore his yellow “DEBTOR #01” vest over his chest because Hong Ling had pinned his laminated VIP Monthly Beef-Noodle Punch Card to the front pocket.
“Look over there, Lord Mayor!” Sword Ancestor Ling pointed enthusiastically toward the surface of Supreme Edge World as the Star-Train glided down through the warm white clouds toward the central continent. “Those ten thousand jagged stone mountains below us are our sect’s famous Ten-Thousand Sword-Testing Peaks! For six thousand years, whenever an elder forged a new sword or wanted to show off in front of junior disciples, he would fly over and slash the top off one of those mountains! Pretty impressive, eh?”
