The tremors shaking through the cobblestones were violent enough to shake the mortar from the brick lintels.
The Iron Crucible Giant statue stood thirty-five feet tall. A five-story humanoid war machine cast from solid pig-iron plates. Its joints were bound with three-inch steel pins. Its chest cavity glowed with the blinding cherry-red core of an ancient high-pressure spirit-steam boiler.
With every stride of its ten-ton iron feet, the street paved with granite flat stone slabs blew up into gravel.
Apartments on either side of the avenue groaned under the moving blast waves. Windows shattered, and brick chimneys toppled into the narrow alleys.
“Retreat!” Elder Wu shrieked from the cellar entryway, dragging his cedar box with both hands. “That’s an Imperial Siege Engine! Grade Three War Materiel! A single blow from that fist can punch through an outer mountain castle wall!”
Lin Ke stood in the center of the avenue, forty paces in front of the advancing behemoth.
The rotten-egg wind whipped his linen tunic against his chest. Through the fabric, his 108-channel Mid Foundation bus hummed with total, crystal-clear peace.
He pressed his iron metal pen into his thumb pad.
