On Car #8 of the Central Star-Train, twenty thirty-foot-tall Titan artillerymen were wearing thick clothes-pins clamped tightly over their noses as they rolled three thousand heavy iron barrels toward the Long-Range Warp Cannons.
Even through three inches of sealed black star-iron, the barrels gave off a low, ominous GURGLE-BUBBLE sound and a faint whiff of an aroma so strong that it made the paint on the cannon wheels curl up at the edges.
Old Yellow, Pei Xuan’s fearless Golden Dragon-Camel who wasn’t even afraid of Rank 8 space whales, trotted past Car #8, took one tiny sniff of the air, let out a horrified sneeze—ACHOO!—and backed up fifty feet to hide his snout behind Old Wei’s cloak.
“Brother Sun,” General Tie Zhan said, holding his breath until his muscular face turned purple. “I have eaten roasted scorpions, deep-fried space locusts, and thousand-year mud-turtles without blinking. What in the nine heavens did you put inside those three thousand barrels?!”
Sun Baolu stood proudly atop the lead barrel, adjusting his brass goggles without a single clothes-pin on his nose.
“General Tie, don’t look down on these barrels! This is my proudest accidental invention from last month—Three-Explosion Fermented Black-Garlic & Pickled-Turnip Paste Pills!” Sun Baolu declared, patting the warm iron lid. “I was trying to refine a batch of Rank 8 Cold-Curing & Yang-Warming Pills using ten-thousand-year Purple Star-Garlic, pickled turnip roots, and Ghost-Fire Chili. Well, the cauldron blew up four times in a row while the lid was jammed, so the garlic…
