The floating ocean inside Valve Station Delta was beginning to destabilize.
Without Elder Qian’s Core Formation aura agitating the chamber, the unhandled division-by-zero exception was beginning to propagate through the backup Precursor subsystems. The glowing sapphire water spheres were shaking with violent, uneven tremors. Tiny micro-sparks of azure static leaped between the water droplets. The amber emergency indicators on the brass pipe hub were flashing in rapid, wild strobes:
The watchdog timer, Lin Tao diagnosed with razor-sharp urgency. The system can’t sustain an uncomputed gravity void for more than three minutes. If the hardware watchdog executes a self-running hard reset while the fluid is suspended in mid-air, the entire mass will crash downward at end-post speed. Forty thousand tons of falling water will crush this chamber into dust.
“Tie Shan!” Lin Tao called out, his voice sharp as a crack of thunder.
“Here!” the giant answered, his pry-bar locked across his chest as he hung from the pipe hub bracket.
“Secure your harness to the main star-iron pillar!” Lin Tao commanded. “Use the three-ply hemp rope! Wrap it four times around your waist! When gravity reasserts itself, the downpour will have the mass of a collapsing hillside!”
Tie Shan moved with the brutal smooth speed of a sailor preparing for a hurricane. He unslung the oilcloth-wrapped coil of mountain hemp rope from his pack, threw the weighted end around the six-foot load-bearing pillar, caught it on the fly. Then he knotted the three-ply cord into a four-fold quarryman’s hitch.
