The fifty-foot golden broadsword of divine judgment struck the center of Floor 9 with the cataclysmic, apocalyptic fury of a falling star.
To Patriarch Guang Ming and the one hundred holy champions of the Central Continent, the physical outcome of this strike was mathematically predetermined by eight hundred years of martial scripture. Nothing in the mortal realm, the spirit realm, or the demonic underworld could withstand forty trillion petajoules of concentrated celestial sword light. In their minds, the scenario had already played out: the mountain’s subterranean foundation would be cleaved clean through to the molten core; the blasphemous machinery would melt into slag; and the insolent contractor would be vaporized into subatomic stardust before he could blink.
"Perish, demon!" Guang Ming roared from his fiery pedestal, his eyes burning with ecstatic righteousness as the blade reached terminal velocity.
Yet, as the blinding, needle-sharp tip of the descending divine blade was exactly three inches from the crown of Austin’s midnight-blue Sovereign Hard Hat, Austin did not dodge.
He did not deploy an immortal jade defensive talisman. He did not erect a blood-sacrifice barrier. He did not attempt a high-speed footwork evasion technique, nor did he chant an ancient ancestral counter-curse.
Instead, Austin simply planted his steel-toed boots shoulder-width apart, loosened his elbows to properly absorb dynamic recoil, opened the heavy, serrated jaws of his five-foot Stellar-Steel pipe wrench, and executed a crisp, textbook **Ninety-Degree Pipe Clamp Maneuver**.
*CLANG-CRUNCH!*
The hardened titanium-alloy jaws of the monstrous wrench snapped shut directly around the central optical feed-conduit of the descending light sword.
The sound that detonated through the subterranean arena was not an explosion of sundered flesh or pulverized bone. It was the sharp, deafening, concussive metallic report of a four-inch heavy-wall schedule-80 steel pipe being seized in the unyielding steel vice of an industrial pipe-threading machine.
"What?!" Patriarch Guang Ming choked out, his eyeballs bulging so hard they threatened to burst from their sockets. "He... he caught the Heaven-Cleaving Scythe?! With an unrefined iron wrench?!"
"Look at the teeth of the tool!" Sword Matron Ling Yue screamed in sheer, unadulterated terror, her voice cracking over the deafening hum of the room. "The divine light of the ancestors... it is not cutting through the metal! The metal is... biting into the light!"
In the hands of an ordinary tradesman, a five-foot pipe wrench clamped onto forty trillion petajoules of celestial energy would have vaporized into molten copper and slag within a microsecond. But this was no ordinary tool. Forged from high-tensile Stellar-Steel alloy, its handle was engineered for zero elastic deflection under four hundred tons of dynamic torque.
Furthermore, standing directly beneath the roaring celestial blade, Austin’s Level 62 Sol-Class core ignited with instantaneous, automated precision. He engaged his newly mastered capability: **Coronal Mass Ejection Directional Deflection**.
*HUMMMMMMMMMMM!*
From the knurled adjustment ring and serrated upper jaw of the pipe wrench, a localized, twelve-and-a-half-million-Kelvin magnetic pinch flared into existence. The invisible magnetic field lines twisted into an impenetrable containment torus, wrapping tightly around the raw spiritual plasma. The immense magnetic pressure squeezed the high-energy photonic stream into a tightly collimated, laminar flow, preventing a single stray photon from scattering into the room or flashing into Austin’s face.
Through his Shade-14 welding goggles, Austin glanced calmly down at the polished concrete floor beneath his steel-toed boots.
Three paces to his right lay the central **Emergency Grounding Sump Pit**—a six-pace-wide circular pit lined with four-inch-thick solid copper bus-plates, bolted directly into the subterranean 500-MCM perimeter grounding grid that routed all the way up to the surface 2.5-gigawatt-hour capacitor banks.
"Zero equipment grounding," Austin muttered through clenched teeth, his forearms and shoulder muscles bulging against the 38G localized gravitational field. "Operating an unshielded high-voltage circuit in an enclosed industrial space. Allow me to introduce you gentlemen to National Electrical Code Article Two-Fifty."
Austin planted his rear right steel-toed boot into the concrete slab, engaged his core, glutes, and hips, and pivoted sixty degrees on his heel.
You never lift with your back. You never pull with your wrists. True torque comes from the legs and the hips.
Using the four-hundred-pound mass of the wrench as a mechanical lever, Austin swung the five-foot handle downward with the violent, unstoppable leverage of a master pipefitter wrestling a seized six-inch steam flange.
*WHIIIIIIP-SLAM!*
The fifty-foot divine light sword, despite possessing the kinetic momentum of a falling mountain peak, was dragged violently out of the air like a thrashing, captured electrical python. Austin drove the tip of the clamped energy conduit straight into the copper grounding pit!
*BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!*
The moment the uninsulated, multi-trillion-volt spiritual light made direct physical contact with the four-inch solid copper bus-plate, the fundamental physical laws of electrical conductivity asserted absolute, indisputable dominion over the metaphysical arts.
Energy, being inherently pragmatic, lazy, and path-dependent, always seeks the path of least resistance.
Instead of fighting through Austin’s 38G localized gravitational core, and instead of wasting energy attempting to ionize the resistive ambient air of the room, forty trillion petajoules of concentrated holy energy took the massive, zero-resistance solid copper superhighway.
A deafening, blinding blue-white arc of pure electrical discharge roared down the sump pit:
*KRA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!*
High above on the surface of Sunset Peak, the four massive 100-foot copper lightning spires began to hum like a swarm of furious hornets. Out on the observation deck, Xiaoyao and Tie Kuang watched through protective goggles as the 2.5-gigawatt-hour capacitor banks absorbed the incoming surge in zero-point-two seconds. The massive analog gauge needles on the control consoles spun wildly across the dials:
*GRID STORAGE: 91%... 94%... 97.2%... 99.8%!* *SURGE SUPPRESSION TRIPPED! OVERFLOW SHUNTED TO RADIATOR CHILLERS!*
Huge plumes of clean, white water vapor hissed from the surface cooling towers into the night air, illuminated by the distant golden glow of the Second Sun.
"Look at that voltage spike!" Xiaoyao cheered, hopping up and down in her steel-toed boots while clapping her work gloves together. "The auxiliary storage racks are completely topped off! We won't have to burn a single coal briquette for the district heating grid all winter!"
"Master Austin did it again," Tie Kuang laughed, taking a swig of cold tea from his canteen. "Free electricity delivered straight into our bus-bars, and we didn't even have to pay for the transmission wire!"
Meanwhile, four hundred and fifty meters below in Floor 9, the sudden, instantaneous short-circuit to ground produced a devastating, reverse inductive kickback through the crusaders’ ungrounded array lines.
Because the Ten-Sect formation had no isolation transformers, no fuse blocks, and zero reverse-current diodes, the near-zero electrical resistance in the copper grounding pit caused an unprecedented back-EMF voltage spike. Forty trillion petajoules of collapsed inductive field whipped backward through the golden array lines at the speed of light, slamming straight into the dantians of the one hundred linked cultivators!
*SNAP! POP! CRACKLE!*
It was the spiritual equivalent of every single miniature circuit breaker in a one-hundred-unit high-rise apartment complex tripping simultaneously under a direct lightning strike.
"AARRRRRRGH!"
One hundred peak martial masters let out a collective, perfectly synchronized shriek of profound, full-body electrical shock.
Their meridians went completely numb with a sensation like ten million stinging nettles; their cultivation bases were violently discharged down the feeder loops into the ground; their eyes rolled upward into their skulls, and all one hundred holy champions collapsed flat on their backs across the polished concrete floor like a freshly harvested field of wheat:
*THUD-CLATTER-CLANG-CRASH!*
Flying swords clattered against the stone; jade talismans shattered into harmless powder; bronze staves rolled across the floor.
Patriarch Guang Ming lay sprawled flat at the center, his white hair standing out in a wild, static-charged afro, his Solar Godblade clattering across the floor to gently bump against Austin’s left boot. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly, like a carp stranded on a riverbank.
Grand Abbot Wu Nian was curled into a tight fetal position, his bronze skin having faded to a dull, sunburnt tan, his limbs twitching in rhythmic half-second spasms as harmless static sparklets danced across his earlobes.
Sword Matron Ling Yue lay flat on her back, staring blankly up at the ceiling dome with her tongue sticking out slightly. She weakly twitched her fingers, attempting to summon her nine frost swords, but the ancient weapons lay dead and room-temperature around her waist, completely drained of frost intent.
The vast chamber fell into dead, peaceful, echoing silence.
Only the steady, gentle drip of condensation from the overhead HVAC line broke the quiet.
Zero drops of blood had touched the concrete. Broken bones: zero. Every single cultivator was entirely intact, breathing steadily, and completely, beautifully devoid of spiritual energy—their dantians fully drained, safely discharged, and converted into municipal grid storage.
Austin let out a long, slow breath of pure relief.
He lowered the five-foot pipe wrench, resting the heavy steel head on the concrete slab with a soft *clink*. He reached up with his gloved hand and pushed his Shade-14 welding goggles up onto the brim of his midnight-blue Sovereign Hard Hat.
He walked over to his polyethylene chemical drum, picked up his aluminum clipboard, and retrieved his yellow grease pencil from his vest pocket.
He carefully inspected the floor around the grounding pit. He knelt down, tapped the copper bus-plate with the eraser of his pencil, and verified that the metal had absorbed the thermal dissipation without warping. He walked over to Wu Nian, knelt down, and pressed two gloved fingers against the monk's carotid artery.
"Pulse is strong and regular," Austin muttered, jotting down a note. "Pupils reactive. Just basic low-voltage secondary shock symptoms. You guys are going to experience meridian cramping and extreme muscle stiffness for the next twenty-four hours. Make sure you hydrate and replenish your electrolytes. Don't go trying to channel sword qi until your spiritual breaker panels reset."
He stood up and made three crisp checkmarks down the daily inspection log:
"Boss encounter successfully resolved. Facility structural damage: zero. Concrete spalling: none. Capacitor bank status: fully charged to ninety-nine point eight percent. Lost-time workplace injuries: zero."
Austin unscrewed the cap of his dented stainless-steel thermos, took a slow, refreshing sip of lukewarm mountain tea, and looked down at the groaning Patriarch Guang Ming:
"I told you guys before you started chanting. Always install an equipment grounding conductor and a bonded neutral. You never listen to the contractor, and this is what happens."