With the poisoned payload physically checked, Lin Tao unrolled the royal master public works scrolls across the land-mapper’s bench.
The scrolls were printed on heavy, varnished silk. It was stamped with the royal seal of the Department of Celestial Mechanics. They detailed the complete layout of the Middle Imperial Ring’s power spreading and signal grid. A masterpiece of ancient Precursor civil building that the mortal dynasties had occupied but never truly understood.
Lin Tao smoothed the curling edges of the silk with brass weights, his amber sight lens scanning the fine, detailed runic blueprint.
“Observe the topology,” Lin Tao said. He gestured for Tie Shan and Doctor Su to examine the layout. “The eighty-eight regional relay towers scattered across the continent don’t receive their signal directly from the sky. The sky cloud layer contains too much spark interference to broadcast reliably to remote provinces.”
He pointed to six outer spires arranged in a perfect six-sided outer edge around the royal core.
“Beacons One through Six form the outer amplification ring,” Lin Tao continued. “They receive their data streams via underground star-copper waveguides connected directly to the center. And at the exact sharp-angled center of the continent sits this.”
His land-mapper metal pen tapped the central icon on the silk. A towering, multi-tiered pagoda surmounted by a huge signal spire.
