The celebratory bells of the Azure Cloud Sect rang for three hours across the mountain peaks.
Up on the surface concourse, the Council of Elders had already ratified the decree. The Seventh Smelting Ward was officially declared an Autonomous Ancestral Artisan Enclave, freed from debt, granted independent stone rights. Then it placed under the direct honorary patronage of the Outer Office Board.
The fire slaves were drinking spiced rice wine from iron basins in the courtyard. Zhang was weeping into his bandages. Young haulers were smashing their old servant contract tags against the anvils. And Elder Wu DeZheng was happily drafting seventeen new indemnification forms to permanently protect his pension from any future audits.
Lin Ke was not drinking wine.
Lin Ke was dropping the spiral iron stairs into the freezing, bone-dry darkness of Sub-Vault Zero, his left hand clamped tightly over his lower belly.
Every step was a battle against heat laws.
Inside his pelvis, the temporary stash buffer he had allocated the night before had fully dissolved. His dantian vapor had re-swelled to its total physical maximum, superheating as it circulated at thirty-eight packets per second through his Vitreous Glass Spirit veins.
The deep water pressure had reached one hundred and twelve kilopascals.
