The high-pressure steam core of the Iron Crucible Giant statue screamed like a dying dragon.
White-hot steam roared from the four main boiler vents across its breastplate, superheating the air in the street until the rotten-egg sleet boiled away before hitting the ground. Beneath its iron skin, forty thousand gallons of high-pressure liquid spirit fire were being pumped toward the throat nozzle, ready to carpet the avenue in a sixty-foot wave of liquid melted rock waste.
Standing on the cobblestones forty paces below, Lin Ke looked straight up at the machine’s neck joint.
His blunt iron metal pen drove into his thumb pad.
Tsk.
“Branch checked: main.”
In sim/battery-focus-a, Lin Ke simulated Shen Yue exploding all five hundred Open Flame-Spike magic charms at the same time against the golem’s chest plates.
The test model compiled: Five hundred magic charms firing in a single bone-shaking wave produced huge striking force. But ninety-two percent of the heat blast was absorbed by the four-inch cast-iron armor plating. The boiler core survived. The liquid fire purge started three seconds later, burning to ash the street.
