After the victory dinner of crispy green-onion pancakes and Five-Hundred-Year Golden Mushroom Pork Knuckles, the sun began to set over the summit of Myriad-Pill Mountain.
While Pavilion Master Yao sat on his little wooden stool licking the last drop of golden mushroom gravy from the bottom of his porcelain bowl—and secretly reaching for his fourth bucket of garlic—Pei Xuan walked around the wide Summit Square with Abacus Su, Hong Ling, Boom-Pot Sun, and Old Guo.
In the center of the square lay two massive pieces of high-grade metal: 1. The Sixty-Foot Star-Fallen Purple-Bronze Pancake Griddle (formerly the hundred-foot Ancestral Bronze Cauldron Golem). 2. The Two-Hundred-Foot Abyssal Spirit-Locking Iron Spike (the First Branch Spirit-Draining Nail that had just been yanked out of the mountain’s heart).
Right beside them, the hundred-foot pit was still bubbling with warm, steady Geothermal Wood-Fire Spirit Steam rising naturally from the freed underground Spirit Vein. Even though ninety-five percent of the Spirit Vein’s Qi was now flowing freely down into the three provinces below, the natural geothermal heat venting out of the mountain peak was still ten times hotter and cleaner than any mortal coal mine!
“What a waste it would be to march down the mountain and leave this peak empty,” Pei Xuan said, tapping his folding fan against his palm as he looked at the steaming geothermal vent and the newly paved Four-Lane Spirit-Asphalt Highway leading straight down to the Great Central Canal.
