The air in the underground tunnel was charged with an electric tension that made every hair on Land-mapper Lu-Lu’s otter pelt stand on end.
Tie Shan walked to the mouth of the aqueduct, his boots thudding against the granite floor with rhythmic, deliberate power. Across his massive shoulders, the bear-titan carried the centerpiece of their clockwork operation. A thirty-foot lever arm forged from solid star-fallen iron-hard metal iron. The beam was eight inches thick, six-sided in cross-section, and weighed over three tons. Deep within the dark metal, silver specks of fallen star-ore caught the amber radiance streaming from Lin Xiao’s core, shimmering like a captured star-pattern.
“Set the pivot point!” Tie Shan barked, his voice booming down the hall like a blacksmith’s bellows.
Back in the forge of the Myriad Spirit Safe hall, Tie Shan had spent forty sleepless days folding and tempering this very beam, beating out dirt under the heavy blow of his water-powered trip-hammer. It was alloyed with ten percent cold-forged dragon-iron and cooled in deep mountain stone salt water to ensure that under huge twisting shear, the metal would flex elastically rather than snap under total stress.
Land-mapper Lu-Lu scurried across the stone doorstep, brandishing a pair of heavy iron chisels and a spirit-level carved from mountain quartz. He scrambled up the bedrock ledge at the base of the massive archway. He tapped the giant stone granite stonework until he found the heavy foundation stone base.
