Before dawn broke over the Southern Suburb Industrial Park, twenty thousand Spirit-Steel furnaces roared to life in a single blinding wave of crimson fire.
“Watch what happens when you pay twenty thousand honest blacksmiths ten times overtime,” Master Lu Jian boomed over the thunder of the hydraulic hammers.
Lin Mo stood before a massive drafting table in the newly christened central hall of the Taichu Planetary Spirit-Grid Research Institute.
Outside the high glass windows, the snow fell quietly over the converted Tinkers’ Slum.
Where half-collapsed wooden shacks had stood three hours ago, Master Lu Jian’s construction talismans had already erected clean, two-story stone laboratories, reinforced smithing bays, and warm brick dormitories. Golden spirit-lamps lit the alleyway with daylight brilliance.
On the drafting table lay the completed master schematic for the Nine-Province Public-Welfare Spirit Wi-Fi Grid.
Tang Xiaomi and Tang Feng stood on either side of Lin Mo, pointing to thirty-six glowing anchor points representing the thirty-six Planetary Spirit-Vein Nodes acquired at the auction.
“Chairman Lin,” Tang Feng explained, his voice vibrant and steady as he stood without crutches. “To blanket the continent in an unbroken, lossless atmospheric web, we need three thousand six hundred Star-Gold Relay Pylons. Each pylon must stand one hundred feet tall, equipped with twelve harmonic resonance fins and a pure magnetic core.”
