The roar from the drilled shaft didn’t rise in stages. It blew up.
KA-BOOM!
A thunderous underground bone-shaking wave struck the soles of five thousand citizens with the force of an earth-dragon breaching the crust. A split-second later, a huge pillar of crystal-clear, ice-cold artesian springwater erupted from the thirty-inch drilled shaft, rocketing eighty feet straight into the boiling hot, sun-scorched sky of Fengsha.
The water didn’t emerge as muddy slow leak or salty sulfur broth. It surged upward with the raw, untamed fury of an ancient underground ocean that had been tightly packed beneath millions of tons of black granite for ten thousand years.
High above the adobe rooftops, the eighty-foot water column blossomed like a huge white lotus of crystal-clear foam against the relentless glare of the twin suns.
A amazing triple rainbow arced across the azure sky, bridging the market square from the eastern grain towers to the western bell pavilion. As the geyser crested, the desert wind caught the spray, transforming the pouring column into a vast, dropping curtain of sparkling, mist-laden rain.
The heat in the Grand Market Square plunged fifteen degrees in three seconds.
The choking, throat-choking stench of hot dust, animal dung, and sun-baked mud was wiped away by the intoxicating fragrance of clean alpine snows, crushed watercress, and cold limestone caves. Droplets of chilled springwater splattered against hot cobblestones. It hissed softly before soaking into the very thirsty earth with greedy thirst.
