The eastern avenue of the central trading district did not sleep that night.
While Grandmaster Dan Chen and his elders toasted wine in the high pavilions of the Alchemy Pill Tower, laughing at the audacity of the borderland upstarts, the ground across the street shook with volcanic industrial power.
Five thousand dwarven spirit-masons, two thousand newly freed workers from Cloud-Peak Mountain, and three legendary master craftsmen mobilized under the starry night sky.
Master Lu Jian stood atop a three-story mobile crane, waving his runic measuring staff. “Pylon team seven, sink the fifth dragon-bone anchor! Pour the quick-setting liquid star-iron! Keep the plumb-lines true to half a millimeter!”
CLANG! CLANG! BOOOM!
Master Ou Yezi swung his giant dwarven forge hammer, his braided gray beard glowing with forge-embers. Each thundering blow of his hammer drove ten-ton interlocking spirit-steel girders into the bedrock with absolute precision.
Beside him, Master Bram, the dwarven earth-shaper, pressed both calloused palms into the soil. Deep underground, the bedrock shifted and fused, locking the foundation into the geological ley lines of the entire continent.
The two thousand former Cloud-Peak servants, who had been treated as useless dirt by the Jade-Clear Sect only yesterday, worked with roaring enthusiasm.
