Spanning the boiling expanse of the magma lake was a mid-air bridge forged from black heavy dark metal links, each chain link thick as an ancient oak trunk.
Da Shi led the way across the bridge, his twenty-three-foot star-black glass frame moving with steady, confident poise. Beneath their boots, blazing bright waves of liquid rock churned and hissed, hurling bursts of golden spray against the bridge’s protective lower aprons. Yet the heat-hardened First Epoch heavy dark metal didn’t soften in the slightest. It shook with a deep, reassuring hum under the cohort’s rhythmic tread.
As they stepped off the far end of the mid-air bridge, the searing heat pressure suddenly relented.
The central island was an astonishing deep-rock strange flaw. Carved entirely from a single, unbroken plateau of immortal white jade over three hundred yards wide, the island radiated a natural, cooling spiritual aura that repelled the surrounding fiery heat. Walking upon the smooth white stone felt like stepping from a scorching summer field into the shaded porch of a mountain pavilion.
And standing at the exact center of this white jade safe hall rose the giant statue itself.
Up close, the Nine-Flame Celestial Smelting Kiln was even more breathtaking than it had appeared from the volcano bowl rim. Sixty feet in height and forty feet in width, the three-story circular bronze structure possessed the imposing mass of a citadel keep.
