The smell of boiling pitch and molten cold-iron hung thick over the Azure Cloud drydocks.
For seven straight days and nights, the clang of heavy blacksmith hammers and the acrid smoke of runic solder had not ceased for a single breath.
Lin Ke stood on the raised overhead frame. He leaned against an iron handrail to take the weight off his battered left knee. His newly reset right wrist was bound in stiff splints soaked in bitter green serpent-bile. His ribs were wrapped so tightly in linen that every inhale was a deliberate, calculated effort.
Below him lay the black, wedge-shaped dark shape of an ancient Pre-Collapse Celestial Dreadnought.
Recovered from the deepest underground vaults of the fallen Celestial Monolith, the vessel was three hundred paces long, forged from solid, dense cold-iron rather than traditional spirit-pine.
Traditional immortal galleons were built like floating palaces. Gold-trimmed pavilions, open courtyards, and delicate silk sails designed to ride the floating currents of surrounding spiritual qi.
In the Outer Void, such ships were floating coffins.
An traditional vessel crossed the broken high sky into the void sea. Then, its floating lift formations would collapse from zero surrounding qi. Its pine timbers would rot in seconds. Its crew would be torn apart at the cellular level by unallocated cosmic heat wave.
