By late afternoon on World 16, the rhythmic RIBBIT—SHLURP—CRUNCH—CLINK of the three hundred Giant Magnet-Toad Compactors had echoed across the central continent, leaving ten thousand square miles of land completely free of rusted metal.
Neat, shining pyramids of five-hundred-pound Dry-Well Grade-A Steel Ingots stood stacked along the train tracks, waiting to be shipped back to World 15’s lava forges.
Yet down on the newly cleared fields, the mood among the three million local villagers was still heavy with worry.
Hammer Chen, Granny Liu, and fifty white-haired village elders knelt in a circle around a freshly plowed furrow. The dirt underneath the scrap metal was as black as coal tar, sticky with purple-and-green chemical streaks, and gave off a bitter, stinging smell that made everyone’s eyes water.
“Look at the ground,” Granny Liu sighed, poking the greasy black mud with a wooden stick. The end of the stick immediately sizzled and turned brittle, snapping off like burnt charcoal. “Ten years ago, my late husband tried washing fifty buckets of this dirt with rainwater to plant a single patch of cabbages. Within an hour of sprouting, the cabbage leaves turned purple, burst into green flames, and poisoned our family dog. Nothing living can touch this ash.”
