The descent into Entry hall 699 brought a sudden, dramatic plunge in heat. The dry warmth of the high foundries vanished entirely, replaced by an unnatural, bone-deep body chill that did not originate from water or ice. It was the negative heat aura of spent spiritual void—the leftover cold left behind when millions of living soul-essences are wildly put out in an enclosed space.
Dominating the center of this massive vaulted chamber was the core of the First Soul-Reactor. Suspended forty arm-lengths above the floor flags by four massive slanted struts of forged star-fallen iron was a huge sphere of dark, lead-impregnated glass thirty arm-lengths in width. The glass was four inches thick, protected by an external cage of interlaced bronze ribs fastened with heavy six-sided bolt-heads.
Etched across the entire curved surface of the sphere were ten thousand talismanic restraining glyphs, each filled with silver amalgam that had tarnished to dark, purplish black. These glyphs were not Daoist blessings of protection. They were high-hum spiritual squeezing wards designed to prevent the pulled out souls from escaping as they were white-hot and boiled away into spirit-oil.
Qiao Ming walked onto the lower watching narrow high walkway that circled the sphere, his bare calloused feet gripping the punched holes in iron treads. Even through his horn-hard soles, he could feel the cold streaming from the lead-glass hull—a dry, sucking cold that seemed to draw the vital warmth from his blood. He buttoned his oilskin coat up to his throat, adjusting the…
