Sulfur-tinged heat shimmered in thick, mirage-like waves above the Central Dragon-Vein Plaza at noon on Day 42.
Twenty-four hours of non-stop refinement had turned the vast arena into a roaring blast furnace.
Across the three hundred stone platforms, fires blazed in every elemental shade: crimson, emerald, gold, and violet.
Furnace tenders were drenched in black soot and stinging sweat. Their eyes were bloodshot from toxic smoke, and their arms trembled as they shoveled glowing coals and pumped heavy leather bellows.
On Platform Eighty-Three, Senior Refiner Kang was in a state of frantic panic.
His six-foot Star-Iron Cauldron was trembling violently, belching thick plumes of acrid orange sulfur smoke into the air.
“More air!” Kang shrieked at his muscular furnace apprentice. “The third heat-ring is dropping! Pump the bellows or I’ll throw you into the slag pit!”
The poor apprentice pumped the iron-banded bellows with desperate strength, his chest heaving, his eyebrows already singed to white ash.
