Puffffff—whooooosh!
Every six seconds, Old Shell—the five-mile-wide Rank 7 Late Island-Backed Dragon-Turtle—let out a long, sleepy breath through his twin nostrils as he rested his massive chin on the rubber bumper-pads of Breakwater Pier #1.
Because Old Shell had lived for eighteen thousand four hundred years at the bottom of the planetary ocean, his inner dantian was like an ancient furnace of pure Primordial Tortoise-Dragon Longevity Qi. Every time he exhaled, twin jets of eighty-degree golden-white steam shot thirty feet forward across the wooden pier, smelling faintly of warm sea-mineral amber and clean ocean breeze.
Right in front of Old Shell’s nose, Old Guo stood with his hands on his fat hips, his white chef’s hat bobbing up and down as he stared at those two six-foot-wide nostrils like a blacksmith staring at a pair of divine blast furnaces.
“What a waste! What a terrible waste of top-grade kitchen fire!” Old Guo clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “Do you know how hard it is to simmer a pot of tea eggs evenly without cracking the shells or drying out the yolks? Normal wood fire is too smoky, volcano lava on Black-Iron Moon is too hot, and Boom-Pot Sun’s alchemy stoves blow the eggs into the ceiling! But this old turtle’s nose-steam sits at a rock-steady eighty-five degrees, and it’s packed with eighteen-thousand-year Longevity Qi!”
