The heat shock hit the Processing Cathedral with the violence of an underground explosion.
When forty thousand gallons of sub-zero earth-heat salt water—chilled to minus thirty degrees under mantle pressure—collided with three-hundred-degree dark rock giant pillars, the laws of heat laws demanded an instant equalization of state.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
A rapid-fire series of bone-shaking bangs echoed through the cave as the outer hardened crusts on the dark rock towers shattered into millions of crystal-clear shards.
Clouds of dense, white water drops blossomed across the floor, billowing outward like the blast wave of an exploding powder magazine. Within seconds, the fifty-six-degree surrounding heat collapsed, plummeting through the thirties and twenties until the air became crisp, clean, and biting cold.
Lin Tao pulled his coat tight around his chest, his breath puffing in thick white plumes against the freezing fog.
Heat-flow balance restored, Lin Tao observed. He watched the test tracking data update across his eye display. The heat throttle flags are clearing across all three hundred dark rock server towers. As the core drops below thirty degrees, the internal quartz logic gates return to their tuned space-folding tolerances.
Tie Shan sat against the bronze pipe hub casing. He pulled his discarded wool tunic over his bare, steaming shoulders. His skin was mottled with goosebumps from the sudden heat drop. But the swelling on his bruised collar bone had already slowed under the natural chilling of the air.
