CLANK!!
Three hundred miles behind the firework-lit front dome of the Continent-Sized Brass Golden-Finger Smelting Furnace, the rear cavern lay shadowed in boiling crimson light. Five hundred Rank 8 Jade-Turtle Battle-Mechs of the Retired Ring-Grandpa Labor Union hovered in tight formation around the ten-foot-wide rear exhaust pipe.
Above their heads, the secondary maintenance monitor on the furnace’s lower hull flashed in urgent crimson numerals:
[RANK 9 PSEUDO-GALACTIC SLAUGHTER SYSTEM — 98.6% LOADED!]
[TIME REMAINING UNTIL HOST SOUL-BINDING: 84 SECONDS!]
Blocking the mouth of the ten-foot star-iron pipe sat a five-hundred-ton valve cap bolted down by twelve rusted star-iron hex nuts. Across the center of the valve cap glowed a complex, five-hundred-node crimson seal: the Forgemaster’s Blood-Lock.
“Look at the corrosion on those twelve star-iron bolts,” Pill-Saint Yao Gu growled inside Mech #002 as his mechanical manipulator arm brushed away a three-inch crust of solidified solar magma. “Five thousand years of sitting in a hundred-thousand-degree magma bath has fused the outer threads into solid star-slag! Even if someone had a Rank 8 Peak sword, they couldn’t cut through this valve cap without setting off Headmaster Hong’s internal tamper alarm!”
“Good thing we aren’t cutting it, Senior Brother!”
