A sharp, metallic chime rang out as Kaelen twisted his palms against the master node of the central bronze pillar.
His Iron Bone Peak Qi poured into the ancient mechanism, fluid and heavy as molten lead. At four hundred percent Transcendent Dao Intent, the verdigris-crusted runes didn’t resist his will; they flared with radiant crimson light, yielding to his touch like heated wax.
With three quick rotations of his wrists, Kaelen rewrote the foundational flow pattern Grand Refiner Chen had engraved three centuries ago.
He unhooked the master intake valves, bypassed the two calcified junction boxes near the third pillar, and reversed the directional flow of the underground magma flumes. Deep beneath the Central Furnace Hall, thirty tons of pressurized subterranean fire surged into the secondary distribution channels.
Grand Refiner Chen designed this array to scour slag from the smelting floor after big pours, Kaelen thought, leaning comfortably against the warm bronze casting. He never intended it for crowd control, but an industrial furnace exhaust is still an industrial furnace exhaust.
Beneath the floor flagstones, heavy brass counterweights began swinging through greased stone tracks. The deep hydraulic groan of opening subterranean gates vibrated straight up through Kaelen’s slippers, shaking loose flakes of verdigris from the central column.
