The emerald bamboo ruler leveled with the stars.
Standing on the wide cast-iron cowcatcher at the prow of Locomotive #1, thirteen-year-old Ye Xiao adjusted his spectacles. His dark eyes reflected the cascading streams of golden geometric equations projected across the sky by the [Gu Family Flying Courtyard’s] astronomical array.
On his left wrist, a miniature replica of Grandpa Fu’s jade abacus clicked at blinding speed as its beads calculated the gravitational drift, planetary rotation. Ley-line curvature of all eleven worlds in real time.
“Look at the spatial terrain map between World #5 and World #6 on the main monitor,” sixty-year-old General Su Dingfang murmured in tension from the orbital observation deck, pointing at a swirling, three-hundred-thousand-mile maelstrom of purple-black gravel and twisted gravity waves halfway down the corridor. “That’s the Chaotic Asteroid Eddy—the most treacherous navigation hazard in the entire Lower Astral Corridor! The dark-matter currents inside that eddy bend standard spatial light by thirty degrees and tear ordinary wormhole portals into shredded paper within seconds!”
“Even our twelve Rank 7 Astral Void Whales have to slow down and swim around the outer rim of that eddy when carrying fragile merchant skiffs,” Merchant-Guild Master Qian added over the live interplanetary relay screen from World #5, his plump hands clasped tightly over his abacus. “Can thirteen-year-old Young Master Ye Xiao really cut a straight railway tunnel clean through a thirty-degree spatial distortion?!”
