Chapter 1: The Madwoman's Arrival: Fire and Whiskey
The rainforests of Cairns were a green so deep they bordered on black. To Lin Zhiwan, this primal oppression felt like a long-overdue surge of adrenaline.
She sat in the vintage wooden carriage of the Kuranda Scenic Railway, her finger tracing the rim of a crystal glass containing a single ice sphere and half a measure of peat whiskey. As a top-tier Project Manager, her vacations were usually just a change of scenery to clean up a different kind of mess.
"Ms. Lin, just give the nod and we can drop this 300-million-dollar project," her partner's voice buzzed from her phone, frantic and desperate.
"In my dictionary, there is only 'Profit' and 'Bankruptcy.' There is no 'Drop'." Lin Zhiwan darkened the screen. The amber liquid reflected her cold, indifferent eyes.
The train slowly rumbled into the long tunnel piercing the mountain range.
Suddenly, a roar hit her ears like a tidal wave.
It wasn't ordinary pressure. It was a violent tugging at her marrow, as if a powerful magnetic field were trying to unravel her DNA. The modern LED lights flickered and died like snuffed candles, replaced by arcs of blue electricity spiraling counter-clockwise.
BOOM!
A titanic metallic crash echoed. Two trains, separated by a century, had performed a brutal docking in the void. The inertia threw Lin Zhiwan against the sidewall. Her glass shattered; whiskey splashed into her eyes, stinging like liquid fire.
She pushed herself up. The world had tilted on its axis.
The climate-controlled air was gone, replaced by suffocating coal smoke and the stench of scorching engine oil. Beneath her feet was no longer smooth flooring, but splintered, moldy planks of ancient hardwood.
At the carriage door stood three men who looked like they had crawled out of a grimy 19th-century oil painting. They wore filthy canvas overalls and leveled old-fashioned lever-action rifles at her.
"Blimey, where'd this wench spring from?" The leader, a man with a scarred eye and rotting teeth, leered at Lin Zhiwan's long legs and her finely tailored silk shirt. "Look at those threads. A lost little aristocratic lamb, ain't she?"
Lin Zhiwan wiped the whiskey from her eye with an elegant, lingering motion. She didn't scream. Her breathing didn't even falter.
She glanced at her wrist—the modern quartz watch was spinning like a possessed top, the casing burning hot enough to brand her skin.
"Gentlemen, this immersive theater rehearsal is quite convincing," Lin Zhiwan stood up straight, her gaze chilling into that of a predator assessing prey.
"Shut it! Hands up!" One-Eye stepped forward, the cold iron of the barrel pressing against the center of her brow. "Hand over everything shiny, or I'll put a hole in that pretty face!"
Lin Zhiwan let out a soft chuckle. This threat was less stressful than a morning call from her stakeholders.
"Since the rules are broken, let's talk physics."
The moment the barrel touched her skin, she moved. She didn't retreat. Her left hand struck like a viper, gripping the barrel and jerking it upward. Simultaneously, her right hand dove into her tactical travel bag, pulling out a high-pressure jet lighter.
A tool meant for wilderness survival, its pale blue flame reached temperatures that could melt lead.
Hiss—!
She slammed the ignition. With her left hand, she crushed a portable pressurized alcohol spray bottle directly into the flame's path.
A two-meter-long pillar of fire roared through the narrow carriage.
"AAAAAUGH!"
One-Eye didn't even have time to pull the trigger before half his face was engulfed. His scream tore through the deathly silence of the tunnel. Lin Zhiwan followed through with a brutal knee to his solar plexus, snatched the heavy rifle from his hands, and pivoted. The movement was as clinical as deconstructing a faulty piece of hardware.
The other two bandits collapsed to their knees, howling incoherently. "Witchcraft! Divine retribution!"
Lin Zhiwan held the rifle, the weight of the stock comforting in her palm. She stepped coldly over One-Eye's charred hand and ripped a heavy deer-hide coin purse from his belt.
"Lesson one, Mr. Parsons." She looked toward the shadows where a silent gentleman in a suit stood, his monocle trembling in shock. "In my projects, there are no bandits. There are only 'outstanding costs' to be liquidated."
Parsons—the Deputy Supervisor of the Railway Bureau—swallowed hard. He had come to scavenge the remains of the "Ghost Train," but he hadn't expected to find a demon.
"Who... who on earth are you?"
Lin Zhiwan slung the rifle over her shoulder and looked out at the station of Silver Ridge. The sunset bled a violent crimson over the iron gears and damp rainforest.
"Me? I'm here for my shop." She stepped off the train, her high heels clicking a crisp, lethal rhythm against the rotting wooden platform. "And to become the new House in this little game of yours."
Chapter 2: Violent Takeover: The Queen of Silver Ridge
Twilight at Silver Ridge was never gentle.
Lin Zhiwan walked toward the town center, rifle in hand. Parsons followed like a frightened quail, his eyes darting between the gun and his own expensive leather shoes.
Before they reached the corner, the acrid scent of ash drifted into her nostrils.
"Fire! It's the Lin shop!" A shout of malicious glee erupted from the local vagrants.
Lin Zhiwan rounded the corner, her pupils contracting. A prime two-story wooden building was belching thick smoke from the upper windows. Below, half a dozen thugs stood watching. At their head was Old Man De, an empty oil can in his hand, laughing as the flames rose.
"That brat Lin must've kicked the bucket in the tunnel! This turf is mine now. Burn it clean, boys! I'm building a smokehouse here tomorrow!"
Parsons hissed from the shadows, "Ms. Lin, Old Man De is powerful. He has friends in the Governor's office... maybe we should head to the Bureau first?"
"The Bureau?" Lin Zhiwan scoffed, tossing the rifle to Parsons. "That's a lifeboat for the weak."
She started running—not toward the burning shop, but toward the massive, rusted steam water tower used for refilling locomotives. Its cast-iron pipes gleamed coldly in the dying light.
She leapt onto the platform with the grace of a black shadow.
"What are you doing? That's Railway Property!" Old Man De roared as he finally spotted her.
Lin Zhiwan ignored him. Her eyes scanned the complex valves. Modern fluid mechanics modeled themselves in her mind instantly. She found the lever for the high-pressure main valve.
"Old man, since you like playing with fire, let me teach you about 'Thermal Equilibrium'."
She ripped a hairpin from her bun, jammed it into the gap of the pressure relief valve, and threw her entire weight onto the main lever.
Crank!
The heavy gears shrieked. Then, the foot-wide pipe let out a beastly roar as high-pressure water blasted through the corroded nozzle.
BOOM—!
A violent white column of water erupted like a crashing dragon. It bridged twenty meters in a heartbeat, slamming into Old Man De's chest.
"Pfft!"
Old Man De didn't even scream. He was sent flying five meters back as if hit by a locomotive, crashing into the mud.
Lin Zhiwan adjusted the nozzle with a mask of indifference. The high-pressure stream acted like a giant scythe, dousing the flames on the second floor and sweeping the arsonists off their feet. In an era without fire hydrants, this level of PSI was a miracle.
Two minutes later, she shut the valve. Silence returned, save for the hiss of dying embers.
She stepped down into the mud, walking toward the half-dead Old Man De. She pulled out a blackened deed to the shop and slapped it against his wet face.
"First: You started the fire. You pay for the repairs."
"Second: From now on, I take seventy percent of the freight commissions in this district."
Old Man De spat out bloody mud, trembling. "You're mad... the Bureau won't let you get away with this..."
"Mr. Parsons," Lin Zhiwan called out without looking back.
Parsons scurried forward, clutching the rifle. "Ms. Lin, at your service!"
"Tell him. What is my status here?"
Parsons straightened his vest and glared at Old Man De. "Look closely! This is Ms. Lin, the savior of Locomotive No. 19. She is the newly appointed 'Senior Consultant' to the Bureau. To cross her is to cross the Great British Railway!"
Old Man De collapsed entirely.
Lin Zhiwan stepped over his body and pushed open the charred doors of her shop. She looked at the wreckage and smiled.
"Ludwig, stop hiding at the back door," she said to the shadows. "Come out. Calculate how much steel I need to turn this place into the largest logistics hub Silver Ridge has ever seen."
In the shadows, a grease-stained technician stood frozen, his wrench clattering to the floor.
Lin Zhiwan turned her gaze to the iron tracks stretching into the unknown.
"This era might be broken," she whispered, "but its rules are so easy to rewrite."
Chapter 3: The Madwoman's Ledger: The Joy of Dimensional Suppression
Lin Zhiwan spent half a day stripping the shop to its bones. She didn't buy fancy decor. Instead, she spread a three-meter-long sheet of drafting paper across the main counter.
"Ms. Lin, here are the logs for the last three years... and the private ledgers of the dispatchers," Ludwig said, carrying a stack of files heavy enough to kill a man.
As a technician, he had never seen anything like this. This woman didn't care about the gold coins on the surface. She only cared about one thing: Efficiency.
"Ludwig, do you know why you'll always be just a boiler mechanic?" Lin Zhiwan didn't look up. She held a modern Parker pen—one of her few remaining relics—and traced a parabolic coordinate on the paper. "Because you look at machines. You don't look at desire."
"Silver Ridge has four freight trains a day. Each stops for forty minutes. But in the logs, they stay for sixty. Those extra twenty minutes are the 'Golden Hour' for the dispatchers and Old Man De to siphon off the cargo."
Ludwig looked at her chart. He felt his scalp go numb. She had used a coordinate system he had never seen to visualize years of corruption into a single, undeniable curve.
"Are you going to report them?" Ludwig asked.
"Reporting is for schoolboys." Lin Zhiwan capped her pen. "I'm going to hijack the dispatch desk."
That afternoon, she stormed the Dispatch Center. It smelled of cheap tobacco and stale gin. Five men were playing cards.
"Who let you in? Get out!" Spike, the lead dispatcher, reached for his baton.
Lin Zhiwan slammed the three-meter chart onto their card table. "Spike. In the last three months, you've pocketed 462 gold pounds through ghost-shifts and coal-skimming. 120 went to Parsons, the rest was split between you lot. Correct?"
The room turned ice-cold. Spike pulled his revolver. "You're asking for a grave!"
"Fire then." Lin Zhiwan stepped forward until the barrel pressed against her forehead. "Kill me, and Parsons will have you all swinging from the telegraph poles by morning to cover his own tracks. Dead men tell no tales to the auditors."
Spike's hand shook.
"But I have a plan to triple your income, legally." Her finger traced the chart. "Shorten the turnaround to fifteen minutes. The excess capacity belongs to my private freight. Parsons is already on board. Now, I want the desk."
Within fifteen minutes, the station was transformed. Under her precise, barking orders, the chaotic laborers became a lubricated machine.
"Fifteen minutes. Unloading complete."
Spike looked at her with a gaze bordering on worship. "Ms. Consultant... what now?"
Lin Zhiwan straightened her hair, a smirk playing on her lips. "Now, we take the last bite of food out of Old Man De's mouth."
By evening, the town was in an uproar. Merchants found that goods which took weeks to arrive were being cleared in days. Freight costs dropped by 30%.
"Ms. Lin, Old Man De is putting out word. He's hired the 'Black Crow' bandits to hit your line," Ludwig whispered, terrified.
Lin Zhiwan didn't look up from her ledger. "Let him. I was looking for an excuse to ask Parsons for 'Armed Escort Rights.' If he wants to play big, I'll turn this entire railway into my fortress."
Chapter 4: The Detonator Negotiation: Gambling with Life
The air grew thick with the coming monsoon. At the K-109 tunnel entrance, Lin Zhiwan sat on a folding chair in the middle of the tracks.
She wasn't holding a gun. She held a porcelain teacup. And at her feet, twenty-four high-grade railway detonators were lined up like copper soldiers.
The 'Black Crow' bandits—thirty armed men on horseback—thundered out of the forest. The leader, a scarred deserter named Crow, leveled his carbine at her. "Move, you crazy wench, or I'll paint the tracks with your brains!"
Lin Zhiwan took a sip of tea and gestured to the crumbling cliffs above the tunnel. "Mr. Crow, as a deserter, you know what happens if these detonators go off at this specific angle."
"That's 'Multi-point Directional Blasting.' If I press this trigger, the mountainside collapses in three seconds. You, your men, and your horses will become the foundation for my new bridge."
Crow sneered. "You're three meters away! You'd be red mist!"
"A smart person talks business. A madwoman talks life." Lin Zhiwan stood up, her thumb hovering over a red pressure switch. "I have modern logic; you have old-world violence. But physics is impartial."
"I'll count to three. If you aren't gone, I press it. I'm betting my life to erase your future. What are you betting?"
"Three." Her voice was terrifyingly calm. "Two."
Crow's horses reared in terror. He saw it in her eyes—she wasn't bluffing. She truly didn't care if she died as long as she won.
"ONE—"
"STOP!" Crow roared, veering his horse away. "RETREAT! BACK TO THE WOODS!"
As the dust settled, Parsons crawled out from behind a rock. "Ms. Lin... were you really going to do it?"
Lin Zhiwan picked up a detonator and tossed it to him. "The fuses aren't even in. They're empty shells Ludwig made for me. Only the copper powder is real."
Parsons nearly fainted. "You... you cheated!"
"It's called 'Bluffing' in project management." Lin Zhiwan looked at the tunnel, where blue sparks were beginning to flicker again. "The game is just getting started."
Chapter 5: The Railway's Eye: The Calculated Prey
The "Detonator Gamble" made her a legend, but it also caught the eye of the "Railway Committee." They sent a "Meat Grinder"—a man named Victor.
Victor was cold and precise. He didn't want to kill her; he wanted to dismantle her. He offered a "Mission": Transport 10,000 tons of ballast stone to the Southern Mines before the monsoon, or be sent to a labor camp for "Endangering Railway Security."
Then, he locked all the locomotives.
"He's left us with nothing!" Ludwig cried. "We can't move a single pound of stone!"
Lin Zhiwan looked at the map. Between Silver Ridge and the mines, there was a 200-meter drop in elevation.
"If we don't have horsepower, we use gravity." She pointed to a cliff. "We're going to turn those rusted, scrap-yard carriages into 'Suicide Sliders.' We aren't using steam. We're using the Earth's mass."
Chapter 6: Rule Break: The Gravity Slingshot
For a week, the town watched in horror as hundreds of laborers hauled stone to the cliffside.
Lin Zhiwan built a giant slingshot system using steel cables and pulleys. On the day of the deadline, Victor stood on the opposite side of the canyon, gloating behind the ruins of a bridge he had sabotaged.
"Time's up, Ms. Lin. Where is my stone?"
Lin Zhiwan raised a red signal flag. "Victor, witness modern logistics."
She dropped the flag. "Release the weights!"
Huge counterweights fell. The first scrap carriage, loaded with ten tons of stone, roared down the steep track. It hit the ramp at the cliff's edge at terminal velocity.
BOOM—!
The carriage took flight, soaring across the 100-meter chasm like a steel meteor. It smashed into the mine's receiving pit with the force of an earthquake.
"One car delivered," Lin Zhiwan called out. "Next!"
For an hour, steel rained from the sky. Victor's guards were too terrified to move. Parsons, now fully on Lin Zhiwan's payroll, leveled a gun at Victor's ribs. "Sign the delivery receipt, Victor. Or the next car might 'accidentally' land on your carriage."
Lin Zhiwan slid down the cable herself, landing in front of Victor like a black nightingale. She snapped his cane in half. "Your era is over. My rules begin."
Chapter 7: Shredding the Cycle: Hijacking the System
The "Ghost Train" finally arrived, shimmering like liquid mercury. A phantom of a man named Zhao Cheng—a previous "fixer" who had become part of the machine—stepped out.
"Mission complete, Lin Zhiwan. Return to the Filter. Your existence will be erased."
"Return?" Lin Zhiwan stood her ground. "I didn't spend three years building an empire just to be a 'patch' in your system."
She had rigged the station with an inverse power grid, powered by the kinetic energy of the 10,000-ton stone drop. As the train tried to pull her in, she slammed a stack of "Debt Confirmations" into the train's core.
"In my projects, there is no 'Exit Strategy.' Only 'Hostile Takeovers'!"
The Ghost Train shrieked. The logic of the modern world clashed with the supernatural system. Lin Zhiwan's body began to fade, but she held on, forcing the "Filter" to acknowledge her as the supreme creditor of the timeline.
With a thunderous crack, the cycle broke. The train didn't vanish—it solidified. The blue energy was sucked into the town's new power grid.
"I didn't kill it, Ludwig," she whispered, her body solidifying again. "I just made it my private locomotive."
Chapter 8: Her Empire: The Project Manager Who Stayed
Three years later.
Silver Ridge was the steel heart of the Southern Hemisphere. It had the world's first internal combustion engines and a telegraph network that spanned the continent.
Lin Zhiwan sat in a glass-walled office overlooking the bustling hub. She swirled a glass of local fermented wine—wilder than whiskey, but honest.
"Boss, the Governor sent another peace treaty," Ludwig said, now a sharp-dressed Chief Engineer. "They'll give us five provinces if we stop manipulating gold prices."
Lin Zhiwan didn't look at the paper. "How is the expansion of Line 9?"
"It's reached the tunnel. We're... trying to reopen the path."
Lin Zhiwan stood up. She looked at the swirling vortex in the engine room—her last chance to go back to 2025. She thought of the boring PPTs, the endless meetings, and the whiskey she never finished.
She smiled and tossed her broken quartz watch into the vortex.
"A place you can't return to is a hometown. A place you can stay is an Empire."
She pulled the lever, collapsing the vortex forever. The energy surged, lighting up the Silver Ridge lamps like a man-made sun in the middle of the jungle.
At the entrance of Tunnel K-109, a black iron spike was driven into the ground. It bore no epitaph, only a single line in modern Chinese:
"Project Name: Civilization. Lead PM: Lin Zhiwan. Status: Operational. Never to be Closed."
The train roared into the depths of the forest, the rhythm of steel powerful and steady—the heartbeat of a never-ending ambition.
(THE END)