The iron backup fire bowl roared as thirty pounds of cured sheep fat melted into a clear, bubbling pool of molten fat.
Blacksmith An Ni dumped two wooden scoops of coarse gray rock salt into the bubbling iron cooking pot.
The salt crystals crackled and dissolved, filling the underground armory with the pungent, heavy aroma of roasted mutton grease and sulfur.
To a mortal warrior, drinking boiling animal fat was suicidal madness that would scorch the throat-pipe to raw blisters.
To Lu Chen, it was chemical fuel.
Pumping a sustained twelve-hundred-degree heat blast through bare palms needed staggering heat thickness and sodium reserves.
Without heavy fats to combust in the Five-Viscera Blood Cauldron, his internal fire would cannibalize his own skeletal muscle, boiling his interstitial fluids and causing cellular collapse.
Without salt, his body electrolytes would turn to steam. That triggered lethal muscular spasms across his thirty-six Asura channels.
