The Sky Palace Forge District burned like the open maw of a sky kiln.
Above the underground foundry, the gold-trimmed terraces of the upper pavilion were packed with hundreds of dignitaries, sect delegates, and high officials of the Celestial Ministry of War. Clad in stitched silks of royal yellow and ritual dragon brocade, the courtiers watched the floor below through screens of cooling ice crystals suspended in brass cages. The contrast was obscene. While courtiers sipped chilled plum wine and fanned themselves with peacock feathers, two thousand laborers choked in sulfur smog sixty feet below.
Down on the stone floor of Row Eight, the heat was choking enough to blister bare skin.
Lin Tao stood beside the burning hearth of Cauldron 084, wiping salt water-soaked sweat from his eyelashes. Around him, the air thrummed with the timed together shaking of one thousand and twenty-four roaring fireboxes. Thick oily smoke billowed from the ash pits. He carried the intoxicating, heavy perfume of boiling spirit herbs and scorched animal fats. The dark rock pillars that held up the huge vaulted roof groaned under heat swelling, shedding fine granite dust onto the narrow high walkways.
In high-load data center operations, Lin Tao noted as his test left eye zoomed into the upper galleries, the executives arrive only. Just then, the critical batch job is about to commit. They sit in air-conditioned watching booths drinking chilled wine, fully clueless to the heat stresses tearing the hardware apart below.
