On the evening of the fifth day, after the final coat of reflective white line-paint dried on Bridge #106, the construction crew returned to the main camp for dinner and their nightly soak in the fused [Neutron-Star Hot Spring].
Wrapped in a fluffy white Dry-Well bath towel with a cold bottle of sweet-spring plum soda in one hand and a plate of Old Guo’s crispy deep-fried scorpion snacks in the other, Sword Emperor Bai Xinghe leaned back against the warm jade wall of the outdoor hot spring pool and let out a long, contented sigh.
“Ahhh... that hits the spot...”
Across the steaming pool from him, Sect Master Zhao Lie and Elder He were massaging their shoulders while watching the evening news on a floating water-proof 5G screen.
After five days of living in Dry-Well’s heated worker dormitories—sleeping on soft spirit-cotton mattresses, soaking in hot mineral water every night, and eating three hot meals a day cooked by Old Guo and Boom-Pot Sun—Bai Xinghe turned his head and looked out across the starry void toward his old home: the Galactic Core Sword-Tomb.
The jagged black continent floated three miles away in the cold vacuum of space.
Dark, freezing silver mist drifted around the broken stone coffin at its center. Ten million rusty iron swords stuck crookedly out of the bare rock like untrimmed weeds. There were no hot water pipes, no floor heating, no 5G spirit-towers, no soup vending machines, and not a single flat paved road on the entire…
