Clatter... clink!
The last half of a broken terracotta roof tile slid down the beam of Car #3 (Old Guo’s Main Dining Car) and dropped onto the clean wooden floorboards.
Right in the middle of the kitchen aisle, sitting flat on top of a burlap sack of freshly peeled Meat-Belly Potatoes, was the ruler of four hundred solar systems—the Joyous-Illusion Demon Empress, Empress Huan.
Her gorgeous pink-and-gold phoenix robe was dusted with white potato starch. A curly strip of brown potato peel was dangling from her left hairpin, and her cracked Myriad Heart-Devil Mirror lay beside her boot like a broken dinner plate.
Before the stunned Demon Empress could even rub her bruised tailbone, the sliding iron door of the dining car flew open with a loud BANG!
Abacus Su marched in holding a brass retractable measuring tape in one hand, his golden abacus under his arm, and a thick pad of yellow triplicate fine tickets in the other.
ZIIIIP—CLACK!
Abacus Su measured the three-foot hole in the dining car ceiling, looked down at the squashed sack of potatoes under the Empress’s silk skirt, and began clicking his abacus beads so fast they sparked.
