Entry hall 431 was an awe-inspiring underground cave eighty arm-lengths wide, one hundred arm-lengths long, and sixty arm-lengths from its flooded floor flags to the dripping dark rock keystones of its vaulting.
Here, the sheer heavy-duty power of the First Epoch operated with the ear-splitting, unbending rhythm of a titan’s forge. The entire floor of the cave was occupied by six massive circular grinding basins carved from single giant pillars of hard black rock. Within each basin rotated a huge granite millstone twelve arm-lengths in width and four arm-lengths thick, weighing over sixty thousand pounds.
The millstones were not driven by animals or human hands. They were powered by the irresistible high-pressure torque of the Syzygy Flood.
Beneath the floor, deep-sea water drawn from Fathom 120 rushed through six massive bronze pelton wheels, spinning upright drive-shafts of cold-rolled iron three feet in width. The iron shafts groaned under the titanic load, turning the massive millstones with a slow, heavy, slow rotation of four turns a minute.
As the stones rotated, they crushed boulders of raw stone halite into a fine, sparkling white slurry that flowed through floor channels toward the lower ballast tanks of the Ark’s central keel.
The air in the chamber was soaked with an intense, stinging mist of aerosolized salt and cold water. Every surface was crusted in a thick, glittering layer of white salt-frost that sparkled like diamonds under the beam of Yan Zhiqiu’s animal fat lantern.
