The glassy crater at the center of the plaza was streaming intense heat-rising heat that shone in the crimson air.
Lin Tao approached the glowing jade crystal shard lying among the scorched slate fragments. The object was sixteen inches in length, faceted like an elongated octahedron. Then he cut from deep emerald sky jade of peerless clarity. Inside the semi-clear stone, millions of tiny filaments—thin as spider silk, woven from spun gold and white-gold—were flickering with a fine, detailed, exact choreography.
It wasn’t a spiritual treasure. It was a physical sight storage medium, containing a dense block of pre-compiled machine instructions.
Lin Tao crouched beside the crater, unrolling a heavy sheet of oilcloth treated with powdered slate and sheep fat.
“Don’t touch it with bare skin,” Lin Tao warned as Tie Shan approached. “The surface heat is nearly eighty-five degrees. The field leakage will induce an immediate motor seizure in an unshielded nervous system.”
“I use the iron tongs,” Tie Shan said. He pulled a pair of three-foot blacksmith’s tongs from his gear harness.
“Use the tongs, but clamp only the non-current-carrying stone facets,” Lin Tao instructed. “If you pinch the gold filament terminals at the ends, you’ll short-circuit the internal logic gates.”
