The scent of scorched void-grease hung heavy in the damp air of Entry hall 002, competing with the ancient stone petrichor of wet pale limestone.
The Iron Crane rested like a butchered whale upon the shallow terrace of the cut stone basin. Its blackened iron ribs, thick as the trunks of mountain pines, creaked with every shift of the building’s heat currents. The impact had driven the vessel forty deep-water lengths across the paving flags, gouging a trench five paces deep through the decorative relief of the Drowned Star-patterns before the massive prow wedged itself into the foundation joint of Pillar Seven.
From the snapped vent-pipes along the lower hull, streams of boiling potion-made salt water gushed onto the flat stone slabs, throwing up thick blankets of rotten-egg steam that rose toward the ninety-arm-length barrel vault overhead. Where the steam met the falling cosmic frost, needles of black ice formed in mid-air, falling back to the floor with a dry, rustling hiss like salt thrown on a hearth.
Qiao Ming stood thirty paces from the crumpled stern, his bare soles firmly planted upon the slick, algae-stained margin of the high stone temple steps. His toes gripped the cold edge of the stone, feeling the tiny shakes of the iron hull transmitting through the bedrock.
