The air above the central intake canal was heavy with dry, choking stillness.
Before the expedition lay the thirty-foot plug of stone-hard dark rock melted rock waste. An iron-hard barrier of cooled magma, metal waste scum, and fused stone silicates that had cut the Nine-Flame Kiln from the world-size dragon vein for three hundred thousand years.
Da Shi and his eleven titan brothers took their positions along the canal outer edge. Moving with disciplined care, the twelve twenty-foot black glass giant statues knelt along the scarlet fire-jade retaining walls. They placed their massive stone palms flat against the stonework, their sapphire eyes flaring as their internal Earth-Core Stones pulsed all at once.
A low, ringing hum rolled through the bedrock.
Through the power of the Obsidian Geo-Lattice, the atom-deep bonds of the fire-jade retaining walls unlocked and wove together with the surrounding granite foundation. The canal was no longer merely a trench carved into stone. It was transformed into a single, seamless, self-reinforcing massive stone structure capable of absorbing millions of pounds of high-pressure moving backing-up pressure without yielding a tiny fraction of an inch.
“Canal retaining walls locked and harmonized, Sovereign,” Da Shi reported in his deep, rolling deep. “The foundation won’t crack, even if the dragon vein surges with full fury.”
