At the base of Central Dragon Pylon 00, the cold streaming from the stone was intense enough to freeze spilled water within seconds.
Lin Tao walked the sixty-foot outer rim of the green jade foundation. His brass measured tongs and his land-mapper metal pen working in seamless exact timing. Beside him walked Tie Shan, the giant’s eyes following every movement of the engineer’s hands with the gut understanding of a master quarryman who had spent forty years splitting granite in the deep pits.
“Every stone has a natural grain, Tie Shan,” Lin Tao said. He tapped the white green jade with the star-white-gold needle of his metal pen. “Even a monolith carved by the Precursors is subject to the crystal-clear laws of stone formation. When they poured their golden energy into this core, they lined up the atom-deep axes to maximize spark heat flow along the upright axis.”
Tink. Tink. Tink.
The metal pen produced clear, high-pitched chimes against the unbending stone.
“Upright heat flow creates level shear vulnerability,” Lin Tao continued, moving three paces to the left. “To resist that shear, they bound the green jade with eight star-iron collars. But when sixteen million half-open inquiries flooded the system, the energy didn’t flow vertically. It thrash-locked horizontally across the logic gates. Look here.”
