CREEEEEEEAK—CLANG!
Across the Red-Sand Wastes, the four mountainous capstan drums of the Rank 7 Planetary Winch-Crane ground to a halt, showering sparks five hundred feet into the air!
Nine miles of the ten-mile Planetary Spirit-Draining Nail had already been hauled up into the vertical launch chimney. Its flat, circular top was now sitting just forty-one miles below the desert surface, glowing bright blood-red as the self-destruct countdown clock sped up in panic:
“WARNING! TAMPERING EXCEEDS SAFETY THRESHOLD! EMERGENCY TIMER ACCELERATED! TIME UNTIL CORE MELTDOWN: ZERO DAYS, ZERO HOURS, TWELVE MINUTES!”
“Twelve minutes?!” Hong Ling gasped, her hands flying to her mouth as she stared at the system projection screen on the winch deck. “Young Master! Why did the timer jump from eight days straight down to twelve minutes?!”
“Because the Upper-Realm scumbag who forged this Nail rigged a dead-man’s switch onto the bottom tip,” Pei Xuan said, his golden eyes narrowing as his Rank 7 Planetary Lord divine sense scanned the fifty-mile-deep magma chamber.
Down at the very bottom of the Nail, where its final one-mile pointed tip was driven into the golden heart of Planet Canglan’s core, a web of ten thousand blood-red chains made of condensed Rank 7 Peak Soul-Formation Law had lit up!
