The lightning banks would not last through a long dry season. Austin wanted steady power, and the river behind Floor 1’s western wall offered it.
His scan showed an underground flow of 450 liters a second with an eighteen-meter drop. A bucket wheel and dynamo could supply about sixty-five kilowatts.
Austin cut an intake through the rock and lined it with smooth glass. He built a fifteen-foot wheel with split wooden buckets, mounted it on a spirit-iron shaft, and connected it to copper coils. A drain carried the used water into a deep fissure.
Xiaoyao watched him mark the return route.
“Does the fissure lead back to the same river?”
“It leads down. The scan shows room for the flow.”
“Down is not the same as back.”
Austin paused with the pry bar in his hands. “Log the return level after startup.”
He broke the retaining wall. Cold water struck the buckets, and the wheel turned. After a small balance adjustment, the dynamo settled into a steady hum.
Austin smiled for the first time that day. “No weather. No fuel. Good base power.”
The new current also washed through a side chamber that his scan had missed. A rotten coffin broke apart and dropped a dried corpse into the tailrace. It bounced off the splash guard and landed in the scrap hopper.
Austin pulled off its bronze skull medallion and checked the remains.
The corpse had once been Patriarch Blood-Thirst, a monster feared across the southern provinces. Austin only saw useful calcium.
“Twelve percent copper,” Austin said. “Every ounce counts. Melts down into pipe fittings.”
He carried the body to the grain mill and turned the crank. Dry bone became white powder.
“Ten pounds for the carrot beds.”
Xiaoyao arrived with his water sheet and recognized the skull emblem in the copper bucket. He slowly lowered himself onto a stool.
“The Master has returned even an ancient demon to the soil,” he whispered.
“Compost is a closed loop,” Austin said.
Xiaoyao did not ask what compost was. He had a more urgent question.
“The return fissure is backing up. Water is rising in the wheel pit, but the surface east well is still falling.”
Austin walked over and looked. The gauge had risen four marks in less than an hour. The automated panel showed normal drainage because its float sensor sat above the new backwater.
His smile disappeared.
“Open the bypass gate. Reduce flow to the wheel.”
They lowered the water level before it reached the dynamo. The system still called the generator healthy.
Austin wiped his hands and looked at Xiaoyao’s columns of plain numbers.
“Keep the bypass open. And bring Gu Qing tomorrow. We are doing that controlled test before the chisel runs again.”
Behind them, the medallion gave one spiteful red flicker. Austin dropped a copper washer on it.
“Scrap stays in the bin.”