The hydraulic conveyors of Assembly Line Seven hummed with smooth, oiled precision.
Lin Mo walked along the elevated catwalk, accompanied by Tie Niu and Old Granite. Below them, thousands of automated brass arms polished delicate white-jade mechanical fingers, setting glowing emerald conduits into flexible joint sockets.
Tie Niu leaned over the handrail, his brow furrowing as he watched the parts roll past.
“Big Brother Lin,” Tie Niu muttered, his deep voice heavy with sympathy. “Yesterday, Old Granite and I visited the veterans’ shelter in the lower district of Pavilion Six. It broke my heart.”
Old Granite nodded slowly, his stone skin scraping like grinding pebbles.
“Over thirty thousand retired soldiers and rescue workers are crammed into those barracks, Chairman Lin,” Old Granite said. “Men who lost arms fighting void pirates. Firefighters who lost both legs pulling children out of burning refinery towers. Deep-vein miners whose spinal meridians were crushed by falling boulders.”
Tie Niu clenched his thick fists. “Back in my old mountain village, winter was brutal. If a woodcutter lost fingers to frostbite, the local landlord charged three years of harvest grain for a wooden splint. But what the Blood-Tax cartels do out here is pure evil.”
Old Granite tapped the handrail with a heavy stone claw.
