The Precursor upkeep hall beyond the Seventh Sluice Gate was unlike any stonework Lin Tao had seen in the outer sect.
Here, the crude mortar and rough-hewn granite of the current dynasty gave way to seamless walls of dark, non-shiny dark rock composite. The joints between the ten-ton blocks were so precise that even the blade of Lin Tao’s land-mapper metal pen couldn’t find purchase between them. Along the ceiling, six-inch glass channels ran in parallel tracks. Their interiors glowed with a pale, sickly green glowing that flickered with rhythmic micro-pulses.
The air was dense with the cloying, chemical sweetness of boiling spirit herb extract, mixed with the clear copper tang of fresh blood.
“Smell that?” Tie Shan muttered, his massive chest rising and falling in deep, measured breaths.
“Organic decompensation and refined sky solvent,” Lin Tao replied quietly. “Someone is running an illicit fractional distillation array inside a stuffy pressure hall.”
Lin Tao traced the main liquid channel with his test left eye.
The visual overlay rendered the pipe in semi-clear cyan. Inside, the spiritual fluid didn’t flow according to natural water-pressure gradients. Instead, it was being drawn forward in violent, stuttering surges, sucked toward an unseen destination by an unnatural negative pressure differential.
