The heat streaming from Cauldron 084 had reached fifteen hundred Degrees of star-heat at the hearth.
Lin Tao climbed onto the backup staging platform, his iron-shod boots clanking against the steel rungs. The bronze wall of the vessel was streaming so intensely that his wool smock began to brown and smoke at the seams. It needed him to splash cold well water from a wooden bucket over his shoulders to prevent his clothing from catching fire. The water hissed into white vapor the second it touched the hot wool. It wrapped him in a temporary cloud of steam that smelled sharply of damp fleece and sulfur.
Through the circular quartz sight glass, the inside of the reaction chamber was a blazing bright storm.
The four hundred liters of dragon marrow slurry had emulsified into a swirling, blinding vortex of violet-gold fire. Intense heat-rising currents were churning the mixture at several hundred turns a minute. It was driven by the uneven heat chimney pipes Lin Tao had tuned during the second watch. The vortex was drawing liquid up along the curved bronze walls and forcing it down through the central axis, preventing any heavy fine dust matter from settling on the bottom.
