The sky above Mount Clear Sky split open.
From the black center of the storm came the Nine-Headed Ancient Violet Lightning Dragon.
Its body stretched thirty leagues from snout to tail. Ninety miles of white-violet fire coiled through the upper sky. Its scales looked like cracks in space, and lightning spines ran down its back. The air filled with the sharp smell of ozone.
Each of its nine heads had branching horns and hollow eyes. There was no anger or mercy in them. The dragon was Heaven’s executioner, sent to erase something that did not belong.
The royal records called this the Ninth-Stage Extinction Heavenly Tribulation.
Six thousand years earlier, the founding ancestor of the Ancient Azure Cloud Sect had tried to force his way into the Immortal Realm. This same dragon answered. One sweep of its tail split seven mountain ranges and turned an eight-hundred-mile lake into a field of glass. Thirty-two Divine Transformation elders vanished before they understood what had happened.
Now all nine heads opened their mouths.
SKRRRRRR-BOOOOOOM!
The roar hit the southern ranges like a hammer. Windows shattered fifty leagues away. Granite ledges cracked, and rockslides thundered down the forested slopes.
On Mount Clear Sky, fifty thousand cultivators dropped to the ground.
“The Extinction Dragon!”
“Heaven has rejected the second sun! We’re all going to die!”
“Ancestors, I only signed up for a safety vest and a grain ration!”
At the freight hoist, Tie Kuang and Jiang Taixu clung to the steel rails.
Tie Kuang’s teeth rattled. “Master Chu, no armor can stop that! Even a mountain of spirit iron would melt!”
“Grand Senior, get to Floor 5!” Jiang shouted. His beard whipped sideways in the wind. “The deep bedrock might shield part of your soul!”
Austin stayed on the porch.
Four hundred pounds of lead ballast steadied him against the pull of his new core, but his lower back still ached from carrying it. He would need a better answer than heavier pockets before the next increase. His Sovereign Hard Hat sat square on his head, and Shade-14 goggles protected his eyes. His five-foot Stellar-Steel pipe wrench rested on one shoulder. Under his other arm, he carried a clipboard of inspection forms.
He looked up at the dragon as new readings appeared.
Austin chuckled.
The hundred-foot copper-alloy rod above Tower 1 was already giving off a violet streamer. It reached sixty feet into the sky, inviting the strike toward the conductor.
“Textbook protection zone,” he said. “Every inch of my cedar roof is inside it.”
Jiang stared at him. “Master, how can you worry about the roof now?”
“Because lightning isn’t angry at us, Jiang. It doesn’t care about your ancestors, your vows, or your Dao heart. It wants the easiest path down. We gave it a thick copper path with almost no resistance. It’s going to take the copper.”
Austin rested his wrench against a porch post and pointed his pencil at the dragon.
“Come on, big boy. Five hundred MCM of braided copper is waiting for you.”
The dragon dove.
KAAAAAA-BOOOOOOM!
A fifty-foot-wide column of violet fire plunged toward the lodge at two hundred miles a second. Its light turned the whole mountain white.
Fifty thousand workers buried their faces and waited to die.
Three thousand feet.
One thousand.
Five hundred.
The strike aimed straight at Austin’s hard hat.
Sixty feet above the roof, it changed direction.
The lightning ignored the cedar shingles and copper gutters. It snapped sideways toward the sharp rod above Tower 1.
SKRRRRR-SNAP!
The point of the rod met the heart of the strike.
CRACK-BOOM!
Violet-white light filled the sky.
The mountain did not break. No timber split. No stone exploded.
Instead, the summit heard a long, impossible slurp.
SHLLLLLLUUUUURP!
The entire ninety-mile dragon poured into the four-inch copper rod. Its heads, horns, claws, and long body stretched into a single stream of charge and vanished down the conductor.
The rod glowed red, then orange, then white. Rain turned to steam thirty feet away. High above, the dragon’s heads twisted and screamed as the last of their power was stripped away.
The current reached the welded terminal at the tower’s base with a heavy thump. From there, it raced into the three-thousand-foot copper loop buried around the plaza.
FWHOOOOOOOOSH!
A deep electrical hum shook the mountain. Every ampere followed the route Austin had laid out.
At the power yard, the surge passed through the arresters and breakers. Heavy switches slammed open, directing the captured energy into the 2.5-Gigawatt-Hour Solar-Crystal Capacitor Grid.