By noon the next day, Austin had cut three hundred pounds of spirit iron by hand. His arms hurt, his stamina was down, and the blue spire looked almost untouched.
He leaned on his pick.
“No. We are not doing this for a month.”
Austin pulled up his blueprint screen.
Austin built a tripod from ghost-iron and mounted the piston in its center. He bolted the feet to bedrock and added a clay-water feed to cool the bit and control dust. A heavy cable connected the coils to the cave’s power bank.
Xiaoyao arrived with the morning water sheet before Austin started it.
“Senior Chu, the stream mark moved.”
“Evaporation?”
“Overnight? The mark is two fingers higher, but the flow at the lower fissure looks weaker.”
Austin glanced at the sheet. One number did not prove much. The system scan still showed a stable cave.
“Keep logging it. Same stick, same time, twice a day.”
He started the chisel.
The piston became a blur. Three thousand blows a minute struck the base of the spire. Each hit sent a short burst of star-fire into the crystal. Blue blocks broke away and slid into the hopper.
In ninety seconds, the hopper was full.
Austin grinned. “Three thousand strokes a minute. Zero elbow grease. No stamina drain, no wasted ticks.”
Xiaoyao watched the floor instead. Dust jumped with every strike. The thin stream beside the vein rippled, though the water did not always move in time with the blows.
“Senior, the water gauge is shaking.”
“Vibration. Put it on a stone post away from the rig.”
The machine kept running. Austin built a collection chute and storage racks while Xiaoyao moved the gauge. “Cave acoustics are pure garbage,” he muttered. “That rig breaks every decibel code I know.”
Far below the cave, the ore vein carried each impact into a wider network of rock. The blue deposit was not just metal. It was part of the region’s ley line, and its cracks also guided groundwater. The repeated blows opened some seams and squeezed others shut.
By evening, wells fifty miles east showed rings on their surfaces. In the Royal Capital, the Nine-Dragon Earthquake Scrying Vessel dropped a bronze ball into the western toad.
Grand Royal Astrologer Xuan Chen studied the regular pulses and sent a report to the throne. He did not claim that a dragon had woken. He wrote that someone was driving force into the western ley line and that the water veins might shift.
At Sunset Peak, Xiaoyao returned with two new entries.
“The post gauge says the stream rose again. The lower gauge says the outflow fell.”
Austin checked the hopper count. It was excellent. The system’s green production display showed no fault.
“The rig is within its rated load. Keep recording. If the numbers still disagree tomorrow, we inspect the channel.”
He reached for a broom, then stopped. A cup of water on his bench held tiny rings, but the surface leaned to one side.
Austin frowned at it.
Xiaoyao waited.
“Put that on the sheet too,” Austin said. “Not a conclusion. Just what we saw.”
The chisel hammered on behind them.