To transform three thousand arm-lengths of poisoned, hostile void-iron into the permanent load-bearing ballast of the Primordial Ark was a building task of staggering boldness.
A lesser sounder would have tried to dismantle the monster plate by plate, cutting through the heavy steel ribs with sky fire. But to do so would have taken decades, and the loose fragments would have cluttered the basin, clogging the Nine Golden Pipes with jagged debris.
Qiao Ming understood the deeper wisdom of the ancient dike-builders: You don’t destroy the stone that blocks the channel. You incorporate it into the foundation of the pier.
The Void-Giant beast was composed of eighty-four said clearlysegments, forged from millions of tons of dense, star-fallen void-iron. If properly locked still and hydraulically bound to the dark rock bedrock, its huge mass would provide the exact counter-ballast needed to stabilize the Ark’s bottom spine-beam against the huge upwelling currents of the Well of Genesis.
The beast would not be destroyed; it would be converted into an unbending foundation caisson.
To achieve this, Qiao Ming had to apply the Seven Cords of Imperial Binding. The ancient mooring system developed by the Great Shipwrights of the Southern Estuary to anchor floating castle-cities during Category-Nine typhoons.
