The heat eighteen miles below Smelting Ward Seven smelled of rotten eggs, boiling salt water, and white-hot quartz.
Fifty veteran fire slaves—men with scarred shoulders and skin like cured pig leather—stood along the narrow dark rock ledge. They swung thirty-pound iron sledgehammers in rhythmic four time.
CLANG-THUD. CLANG-THUD.
Every blow of their bronze-tipped chisels broke off flakes of black fiery rock, slowly revealing the curved flank of Siphon Conduit Number Four.
The pipe was thirty feet thick, cast from massive stone Epoch Three spirit glass. Through its semi-clear walls, a blinding, emerald-colored torrent of tightly packed world-size Qi rushed upward with the ear-splitting shriek of a captured hurricane.
The surface of the glass was blistering hot. A drop of sweat falling from Lin Ke’s brow hit the casing and exploded into an instant puff of steam before it could slide an inch.
Lin Ke stood on a suspended iron scaffold three feet from the pipe. He held a heavy iron crowbar wrapped in layers of asbestos cloth.
In the mental sandbox, Lin Ke ran one hundred and ten high-pressure diversion simulations.
