CHOO-CHOO—!
A brilliant ribbon of golden sword-light pierced straight through the pitch-black void between galaxies as Engine #1 of the Spirit-Furnace Star-Train roared forward at warp speed.
Behind the massive black-iron locomotive, five hundred heated cargo cars rattled along the temporary sword-beam tracks laid down by Ye Guhan and the Milky Way Sword Emperor. Inside the cars were ten thousand tons of mutton fat, three million iron coal-shovels, crates of Sweet-Spring hot water pipes, and a full battalion of General Tie Zhan’s thirty-foot Titan soldiers wearing thick red winter scarves.
Inside the warm front cab of the locomotive, Pei Xuan stood beside the panoramic glass windshield, sipping a mug of hot soy milk while watching the Frost-Ash Spiral Galaxy loom larger and larger ahead.
The closer they got, the uglier the galaxy looked.
Normally, a healthy galaxy spun like a bright silver pinwheel full of golden, blue, and red stars. But the Frost-Ash Galaxy looked like a pile of wet gray campfire ashes that had been left out in the rain all winter. Not a single bright star shone in its central core. Instead, twenty dim, sickly white spheres the size of planets sat silently in the dark, covered in a crust of gray star-slag and surrounded by hundreds of frozen, lifeless worlds wrapped in miles of blue ice.
