Inside the main control hall of the No. 1 Planetary Volcano Forge, the temperature gauges on the wall were dropping fast.
Out on the factory floor, fifty thousand gleaming Star-Iron Golems and two hundred thousand sweaty martial gym members stood holding their hammers in confusion as the roaring white-gold lava channels slowed down to a sluggish orange trickle.
“Hey! Why did the anvil floor get cold?!” Young Master Zhao Ba complained from Crater #6, wiping his forehead with his gold VIP headband. “I only need twelve more rails to move up to #5 on the Planetary Leaderboard! Turn the volcano back up!”
Pei Xuan walked up to the thick crystal inspection window built into the side of Main Lava Pipe #1 at the center of Mount Black-Throat.
Beside him, Chief Shi Gang pointed five miles straight down the glowing vertical shaft toward the subterranean magma sea at the moon’s core.
“Look down there, Lord Pei!” Chief Shi Gang rumbled, his orange eyes narrowing. “That gluttonous beast is called Old Nine-Mouths—a Rank 7 Mid Nine-Headed Magma Eel that has lived in the liquid core of Black-Iron Moon since before I was born! Normally it sleeps at the bottom of the magma sea for five hundred years at a time. Back in the old days, whenever a careless young golem fell into a volcano crack, Old Nine-Mouths would swallow him like a crunchy peanut!”
