Zhu Heling walked behind the two tunnel diggers like a demon driving two chained beasts into the mouth of a fire.
His shattered wrists hung limp against his hips, dripping blood onto the hard speckled rock pavers with every staggering step, but the spiritual aura that radiated from his chest was a blinding, violet giant fire. The three stolen dao-cores on his breastplate had entered their final, end-post collapse. The sapphire crystals were cracking along their internal cleavage planes, discharging raw, raw spirit currents that burned through his skin and set his iron harness glowing with a dull, cherry-red heat.
“Faster!” the Scholar snarled, his voice a ragged bark that shook the soot from the ceiling arches. “Plant the bit at the base of the groin rib! Drill the foundation block down to the lead bed!”
The two tunnel diggers reached the foot of Buttress Number One, their breath coming in wild, sobbing gasps through their respirators.
They dropped the heavy bronze air-powered drill onto the hard speckled rock pavers, its iron support legs clattering against the stone. With shaking hands, one sapper connected the armored air-hose to a portable spirit-air pump that they had dragged across the floor. Meanwhile, the other braced the fifty-pound machine against his thigh, aiming the eight-inch fluted diamond bit directly at the mortar joint where the twenty-foot granite pier met the bedrock floor.
