Tie Kuang attacked with a horizontal hammer blow.
Austin moved the injured workers behind a stone pillar and raised his Stellar-Steel wrench. The weapons met with a crack that shook dust from the lamps. Austin slid two steps. Tie slid six.
The old miner stared at his hands. He had broken fortified gates with that swing.
Austin flexed his wrist. “You have power. Bad footing. And you are dragging gravel across my clean floor. Where are your boot covers?”
Tie roared and struck the floor. Crimson force raced through the stone toward the waterwheel and return pipes. He meant to tear out the workshop’s foundation.
Austin saw the pressure gauges jump.
“Xiaoyao, open the counter-siphon.”
The boy pulled the marked lever on the power board. The waterwheel disconnected from the shop load and drove its reserve current into the dynamo. The intake reversed for three seconds. A surge of water and force shot into the empty drainage trench, taking the vibration with it.
The floor stopped shaking.
Tie stared at the harmless trench. “You drank my earth force?”
“No. I moved a pressure spike into a channel built for a pressure spike.”
“It is the same result.”
“Fine. Yes.”
Tie attacked again. This time Austin did not meet the full weight. He turned the wrench jaw against the hammer’s side and guided it into a clear patch of floor. Stone cracked. Tie stumbled past his target.
Kang watched from the safety line. “He is reading the swing.”
Zhao, wrapped in a blanket, nodded. “He is also writing on his clipboard.”
Austin had noted a damaged floor tile. He would file a repair ticket for it.
Tie spun back with another blow. His strength was real, and his pride was not empty. He had spent two centuries fighting for control of mines. But every wide swing showed where his weight would go, and every missed hit made him angrier.
Austin ducked under the next strike and tapped the back of Tie’s knee with the wrench handle. The huge man dropped to one knee.
“Yield,” Austin said.
Tie forced himself upright.
“I own eighty-two mines.”
“Not this one.”
The miners heard no insult in Austin’s voice. It was just a fact.
Tie’s eyes moved to the workshop’s bright pipes, the orderly water logs, and the injured crew receiving care from people he had called enemies. For an instant, his certainty wavered.
Then shame drove it out.
He gripped his hammer with both hands and began the forbidden breathing pattern of the Asura Body.
Kang’s face changed. “Austin, stop him now. He is going to burn his own life force.”
Austin lowered the clipboard.
“Old man, do not make this worse.”
Tie’s answer was a mouthful of blood and a laugh.