Late afternoon cast long. Then, amber shadows across the Eastern Crag, the wild mountain wind carried a loud mix of scents that made Lin Xiao’s core vibrate with pure contentment.
It was the rich, intoxicating blend of freshly planed storm-cedar, sweet wild mint, and warm fiery stone, mingled with the clean, stone-rich steam rising from the singing red-bronze chimney pipes. Below the cliff edge, the sea of clouds began to shift from brilliant white to a breathtaking slope of apricot, rose, and twilight lavender.
The heavy stonework was finished. The black fiery dark rock basins rested firmly upon the bedrock, locked together by Da Shi’s dry-linked joints. The underground earth-heat channel roared eighteen hundred meters below. It sent clean, odorless stone water surging through Tie Shan’s open bronze channels.
Now came the crowning framework: the great open-air cedar verandas and timber walkways.
“Roll out the outer edge logs!” Tie Shan bellowed, his voice echoing over the two-thousand-meter drop.
The Divine Titan Smith had wiped down his star-iron arm and traded his heavy forging tongs for an assortment of wooden joinery mallets, bronze scribing awls, and massive drawknives forged from high-carbon river iron. Around him, thirty beastfolk carpenters and young human woodworkers moved with practiced coordination. It rolled several of the huge storm-cedar logs onto heavy timber horses.
