The retaliation arrived not with steel or fire, but with a silent, colorless death poured into the dark.
At the second watch before dawn. Meanwhile, the volcano bowl was shrouded in thick, freezing sulfur fog, a shadowy figure crept to the stone water tank that supplied drinking water to Pit Seven. The water tank was an ancient Precursor rainwater pool carved into the dark rock cliff. He held ten thousand gallons of cold, condensed mountain runoff that sustained the forty scavengers and coolies who had gathered around Lin Tao.
The shadowy figure unstoppered a heavy lead carboy, poured thirty gallons of clear, syrupy liquid into the water supply. Then he vanished into the smog.
An hour later, the scavengers began to wake up, coughing in the damp morning chill, gathering around the water tank with their wooden buckets to boil morning tea.
Old Wu, his lungs restored by Lin Tao’s marrow broth, was the first to lower his bucket into the dark stone tank.
“Hold the bucket, Old Wu,” a calm, cutting voice rang out from the doorway of the stone hut.
Lin Tao stepped forward, followed closely by Tie Shan.
Old Wu paused, turning around with a puzzled expression, the dripping wooden bucket hovering above his clay pot. “Brother Lin? What’s wrong? We’re only boiling tea before the morning sorting.”
Lin Tao walked to the edge of the water tank.
To mortal senses, the water in the bucket appeared fully clear, without odor, color, or oil slick. But to Lin Tao’s augmented left eye, the atom-deep thickness of the water was flashing with blinding crimson alerts:
Eight hundred and forty milligrams of arsenic trioxide per liter, coupled with three hundred and twenty milligrams of liquid silver chloride—a packed potion-made refining waste known as “Corpse-Melting Wash.”
If forty men drank this water, their intestines would slough off within twenty minutes. Their bodies would dissolve into a puddle of putrid black slush before the morning bell finished tolling.
Lin Tao drew his four-inch steel land-mapper metal pen from his belt, knelt beside Old Wu’s bucket. Then he dipped the iron tip into the water.
He took a tiny pinch of fine limestone powder from his pocket and sprinkled it across the surface.
Sssssssss.
The moment the limestone dust touched the water, the liquid began to froth wildly with acrid, green-tinged bubbles. A sharp, garlic-like stench of boiled away arsenic hissed into the morning air. That turned the surface of the wooden bucket into a charred, blackened crust.
Old Wu stumbled backward in sheer, blood-freezing horror. He dropped the bucket to shatter against the stones.
“Arsenic...” Old Wu stammered, his face turning paper-white. “Corpse-Melting Wash! Someone poured refinery waste into our drinking well!”
A wave of terrifying, murderous fury swept through the forty scavengers who had gathered around the water tank.
These were men who had endured beatings, starvation, and grueling sixteen-hour shifts without complaint. But poisoning their only clean drinking well—attempting to murder forty sleeping coolies in cold blood—shattered the last shred of their subservience.
“Meng!” a burly scrap hauler roared, brandishing a heavy iron crowbar. “It was Overseer Meng! He saw us bringing bronze to Pit Seven! He wants to wipe us out!”
“He treats us like vermin!” another coolie screamed, tears of rage in his eyes. “First he rots our lungs with his fake pills, and now he poisons our water!”
The forty laborers surged forward, their hands gripping picks, crowbars, and twelve-pound sledges, ready to charge blindly into the volcano bowl and tear the overseer’s stockade apart with their bare hands.
“Halt,” Lin Tao commanded.
His voice was not loud. But it possessed a cold, total power that cut through the mob’s hysteria like a steel chisel.
The laborers stopped in their tracks, looking toward Lin Tao.
“If you march on the central stockade with crowbars, Meng’s guards will cut you down with crossbows and claim you were an unruly slave riot,” Lin Tao said, his voice flat, steady, and terrifyingly analytical. “You’ll die in the dirt, and Meng will write off your deaths as justified discipline.”
Old Wu stepped forward, his fists clenched tight. “Then what do we do, Brother Lin? Do we sit here and wait for him to drop another avalanche upon our heads?”
Lin Tao reached into his green jade spatial ring and drew out three clean clay pot jars. The pure, drossless Dragon-Marrow essence refined the last night.
“First, we stop the water,” Lin Tao said, pointing to the water tank. “Tie Shan will dump three carts of crushed limestone and activated willow charcoal into the pool to precipitate the arsenic into harmless stone melted rock waste.”
Lin Tao turned his cold eyes toward the towering red dark shape of the Central Smelting Pavilion.
“And second,” Lin Tao continued, “we don’t march on his stockade. We let him come to us.”
Lin Tao adjusted his hemp tunic over his fully healed collarbone. He felt the four-inch land-mapper metal pen resting securely in his hip sheath.
“Meng has spent the night stoking his fire beyond safe capacity to finish his counterfeit shipment,” Lin Tao said. “His cooling valves are clogged, his guards are exhausted, and his buyers are waiting. When he arrives to finish his work, we’ll present our tally.”
Tie Shan right away went to work, his massive shoulders heaving as he hauled three heavy wooden carts filled with crushed limestone and porous willow charcoal to the mouth of the water tank.
With rhythmic, thunderous splashes, the giant dumped sixty bushels of active straining material into the poisoned pool.
Lin Tao stood at the water’s edge, his iron land-mapper metal pen sunk in the swirling liquid. As the bitter-salt limestone dissolved, neutralizing the acidic arsenic complexes, Lin Tao pulsed his micro-electric-shock current through the water at a split second intervals.
The chemical reaction sped up tenfold.
Before the eyes of the forty scared scavengers, the milky, green-tinged poison separated and precipitated into a heavy, dark-gray sludge that settled harmlessly to the bottom of the tank. That left the upper water crystal-clear, sweet, and safe to drink.
Old Wu scooped a bowl of the purified water, tasted it with trembling lips. Then it began to cry openly.
“Clean...” Old Wu choked out. “Pure as snow-melt from the highest peaks.”
Lin Tao wiped his metal pen on his sleeve. He looked toward the southern ridge where the first torches of Overseer Meng’s guards were beginning to flicker in the morning mist.
“Arm yourselves,” Lin Tao said softly to the forty men. “The audit has arrived.”