The Central Transit Concourse looked like an abandoned subway station built for giants.
Steel panels and white ceramic tiles covered the walls. Heavy beams supported the ceiling, along with copper power lines and armored cables. A low electrical hum filled the chamber as the First Epoch equipment woke after ten thousand years.
Rows of fluorescent lights flickered on overhead. The concourse was sixty yards wide, forty feet high, and cold as a grain silo in winter.
Austin stopped on the threshold. He held the First Epoch end-post under one arm and his clipboard in the opposite hand.
BZZZZT-CLANK.
A power line connected beneath the floor grates.
The automated test sent a surge of electricity through Austin’s boots without any warning. Current shot up his legs and through his spirit veins. Blue static crackled over the copper rivets in his jeans. Violet light gathered around the brim of his hard hat.
Austin locked his knees and let the surge pass.
“Damn it. No isolation transformer.” He gritted his teeth. “Who wired this place?”
Cold coolant pipes hissed overhead. Their old insulation had fallen away, leaving frost on bare copper. Condensation dripped into an open cable tray and sparked against the junction boxes below.
It was a miracle the whole mountain had not burned down.
DING.
A clear chime sounded in Austin’s head.
The star-fire pearl in Austin’s dantian flared. Its heat climbed to seven hundred and fifty thousand degrees, and its dense core churned inside the First Epoch containment mesh.
The mesh held almost everything.
The tiny fraction that escaped changed the room.
CRACK-WHAM.
Gravity slammed down at fourteen times its normal strength.
Xiaoyao’s knees buckled. He caught himself on the surveyor’s tripod as his qi rushed to support his ribs and spine. His white robes flattened against his body, and the tiles beneath him began to crack.
“Patriarch!” he wheezed. “Is this the Gravitational Domain of the Ancient Earth Emperor?”
“It’s a containment leak. Tighten your core and breathe through your nose before you give yourself a hernia.”
Pug did not seem troubled. He spread his paws, yawned, and sniffed an abandoned junction box. His right head found the loose tail of a cable tie and began chewing it.
Crunch. Squeak. Crunch.
Austin lifted one boot, then the other. Each step felt as if the soles were stuck in tar. Hairline cracks spread through the tile glaze beneath his heels, though the solid floor underneath held.
“Fourteen point two percent movement drag,” he said. “The engine thinks I’m wading through six-bag concrete.”
Xiaoyao clung to the tripod. “Does this engine govern the wheel of karmic suffering?”
“No. It means my balance is off. The system is putting too much weight on my heels instead of spreading it across my feet. Sloppy rigging.”
Austin opened his hardware pouch and took out four threaded steel couplings. He put two in each cargo pocket.
Clink. Clank.
He bounced on his heels. The debris rings around his boots flashed blue, and his balance settled.
“Better. That should stop me clipping through the floor every time I turn.”
The breakthrough had also expanded his debris field. One hundred and twelve fragments now circled his ankles in four nested rings: gravel, pine needles, iron shavings, and two soap bubbles left over from the wash-down. A speck of dust touched the outer ring and vanished with a tiny snap.
Austin switched on his headlamp and looked down the concourse.
Four blast doors waited at the far end. Each had a First Epoch label and a much grander name from the royal records.
Sector 1: Optical and Neural Sensory Test Chamber. The records called it the Thousand-Year Mirror Maze of Soul-Cleansing.
Sector 2: Structural Load and Tension Hall. The Gravity Bridge of Nine Hells and Shattered Bones.
Sector 3: High-Temperature Exhaust Vent. The Nine-Yang Divine Purgatory of Heavenly Fire.
Sector 4: Logic and Circuit Test Bench. The Ten-Thousand-Move Spirit Chessboard of Infinite Wisdom.
Austin opened the building plans on his clipboard.
“An optical test room. A bridge load tester. An incinerator exhaust vent. And a basic logic bench for apprentice electricians.” He shook his head. “This is a vocational screening station.”
Xiaoyao studied the four labels and added them to his survey notes. “The Royal Academy calls these tests of courage and purity. Are they really only maintenance checks?”
“They were built to keep inexperienced workers from damaging the plant. People lost the manual and made them into legends. We’ll use the equipment as intended where we can.”
Austin opened his new blueprint.
Austin smiled.
“A hundred years in a mirror maze? A ten-thousand-move chess puzzle? Not happening. I’m not running four hours of fetch-quest platforming for a level-two upkeep badge. We find the fault, do the work, and move on.”
Xiaoyao tucked a grease pencil into his notebook. “Then I will keep the route notes.”
“Good. Eyes and measurements, kid. Don’t assume my first answer is right just because I say it loudly.”
He pointed toward Sector 1.
“Pack it up. Pug, drop the cable tie. Let’s see what this place actually needs.”