Suspended within the purple twilight of the Throat of Heaven, the sixty-foot bronze master wheel hung in silent, motionless defiance.
Its white-jade chains lay slack and its ancient runic firewalls were fully repolarized to a calm sapphire hue. Even so, the physical gearwork remained unbending. Ten thousand years of nonstop, one-way upward flow had deposited a thick, hardened crust of stone-hardened jade scale across the internal turbine gears. Behind that crust pressed the terrifying water-pressure heavy rush of four hundred and twenty mountain-crushing pressure of hoarded sky essence. It locked the bronze blades in place like an unbending dam.
Gu Qingfeng floated three paces back. He crossed his arms within his wide sleeves as he eyed the massive brass spokes.
“You know, kid,” Gu Qingfeng mused, taking a small sniff of the cold cosmic ether, “I’ve cut down mountain fortresses, sliced flying galleons in half, and cut ancient blood wards with a willow branch. But turning a rusted, sixty-foot bronze wheel against the weight of an entire realm? That’s not a matter of sword intent. That’s pure, vulgar, backbreaking labor.”
“There’s nothing vulgar about honest clockwork leverage, Gu Qingfeng,” Lin Xiao replied, his blue jelly-like body wobbling with cheerful pride. “Swords are wonderful for dramatic entrances. But when a machine is stuck, you don’t wave poetry at it. You fetch the proper tool.”
