Five miles north of Dry-Well Metropolis, the disarmed Planetary Spirit-Draining Nail lay stretched across the newly sprouted Spirit-Peach meadows like a dead metal whale.
Even with its bone-barbs shaved off by Ye Guhan and its warhead turned into rain clouds by Boom-Pot Sun, the main body of the Nail was still an intimidating sight: a ten-mile-long, two-mile-wide cylinder of solid Rank 7 Upper-Realm Purple Star-Iron, hollowed out on the inside where the spatial storage tanks and siphon pipes used to be.
Around the base of the fallen metal pillar, Frost-Giant King Gu Shan and General Tie Zhan were taking turns hitting the purple metal hull with a thirty-foot Star-Steel sledgehammer.
CLANG—BOING!
The sledgehammer bounced off the purple Star-Iron so hard that King Gu Shan’s arms vibrated like tuning forks, while not even a white scratch appeared on the Nail’s hull!
“Tough stuff!” King Gu Shan whistled, shaking out his numb fingers. “Lord Pei, this Upper-Realm Star-Iron is at least Rank 7 Mid material! Even our newly fused Star-Forges thirty miles underground would take fifty years to melt this whole ten-mile tube down into ingots!”
“And while it’s lying sideways here, it’s squishing exactly six thousand four hundred acres of top-grade purple Spirit-Soil!” Abacus Su complained loudly, tapping the side of the Nail with his golden ruler. “Do you know how many tons of Golden-Dragon Wheat and Wagyu Meat-Potatoes we are losing per hour in unearned agricultural rent?! Lying flat on municipal farmland without a lease costs ten million Spirit Stones…
