The Central Smelting Pavilion was a five-story hollow ziggurat of dark stone and star-iron that groaned like a dying beast in an iron trap.
Lin Tao and Tie Shan crossed the grand threshold. Then, the heat hit them like an open fire door, drying their throats and singeing the hair on their forearms. The inside of the ziggurat was a terrifying cave of heavy-duty violence. Massive copper steam channels, each three feet thick, snaked along the walls. It shivered under twenty sea-weights of internal pressure. Open channels of molten red bronze hissed through stone troughs along the floor. And everyone could feel the choking stench of sulfur, boiled away lead, and burning demon oil.
The sound inside was ear-splitting. The roar of burning rang through the stone columns, with the violent, rhythmic clanging of pressure safety valves that had been beaten shut with heavy sledges.
At the far end of the ground floor stood the main burning vault. A circular chamber fifty paces wide, built from linked slabs of six-inch star-iron, designed to contain the direct heat output of the Precursor core.
Standing beside the open star-iron blast door was Overseer Meng.
The overseer looked like a walking corpse. His face was gray, his eyes bloodshot and bulging with feverish madness, his silk robes stained with vomit and black waste scum. He was clutching a heavy iron wrench in his right hand, his left arm hanging limp, his breath whistling through his ruined lungs like wind through broken glass.
“Inspector Lin!” Meng wheezed, forcing an ugly, trembling smile across his cracked lips. “You... You arrived in time! The backup pressure governor on the Precursor pipe hub has seized! Look... Look at the central dial!”
Meng pointed with his wrench into the center of the star-iron chamber.
In the middle of the circular hall stood the Precursor Thermal Reclaimer: a twelve-foot sphere of dark, seamless Precursor alloy, suspended over a burning pit of white-hot coals. The alloy sphere was glowing with an intense, blinding cherry-red heat, shaking with a high-pitched sound whine of eight point eight cycles per second that made the flat stone slabs shudder beneath their boots.
Lin Tao walked into the chamber, his boots clicking over the scorching iron floor plates.
Tie Shan followed two paces behind. His twelve-pound iron bar was held in a low, ready guard, his sharp eyes scanning the surrounding iron rafters.
Lin Tao approached the ball-shaped core, his left eye scanning the test tracking data of the intake pipe hub:
The intake pipe hub was not seized.
The valves were running in perfect clockwork harmony. The pressure spike was entirely artificial, caused by three heavy barrels of demon-beast marrow that had been poured directly into the backup burning chutes behind the walls. The air inside the chamber smelled of roasted fat, sweet sulfur. The ozone discharge of an array pushed past its load-bearing capacity.
Lin Tao looked back over his shoulder toward the doorway.
Outside the threshold, Overseer Meng’s trembling smile had vanished, replaced by a twisted sneer of triumphant, manic hatred. The coward was backing away rapidly across the sorting floor. His hand already gripped a heavy bronze ratchet lever mounted to the outside foundation wall.
“A clean ledger, Lin Tao!” Meng screamed, his voice cracking into a spray of bloody foam. “You wanted a clean ledger! Now see how well your numbers balance when sixty thousand tons of molten bronze boils your flesh from your bones!”
With a wild, frantic shriek, Meng threw his entire weight downward onto the bronze lever.
CLANG-CRASH!
With a bone-shaking roar that shook the entire five-story pavilion, a ten-ton solid star-iron drop-gate dropped from the ceiling arches. It slammed into its granite tracks with earth-shattering finality.
The heavy star-iron blast door was sealed.
From the outside speaking-tube, Meng’s frantic, coughing laughter echoed into the stifling heat of the vault:
“Die, you arrogant quarry vermin! Die in the fire! The Upper Sect will have forty tons of melted bronze. Your ashes will be shoveled into the melted rock waste pit before dawn!”
The speaking-tube clicked shut with a sharp metal clatter, cutting off the dying overseer’s frantic screams.
Inside the circular burning vault, the silence lasted for less than two heartbeats.
Then, with a bone-shaking shudder that shook through the six-inch star-iron floor plates, the backup fuel injectors opened behind the fire walls.
Thick streams of black, packed demon-beast oil hissed through the copper nozzles. It splashed directly onto the glowing beds of white-hot coals. The oil blew up instantly. A howling wall of orange-and-black fire roared upward, licking against the vaulted ceiling arches, sending waves of choking, oily black smoke swirling through the chamber.
The air pressure surged wildly, popping their ears with a painful, bone-shaking pressure drop.
Tie Shan took two heavy strides toward the sealed star-iron gate, planting his bare feet into the hot iron floor. His hands gripped the twelve-pound iron bar.
“Gate is ten tons,” Tie Shan rumbled. His voice low and shook against the roar of the flames. “Deadbolts on outside.”
Tie Shan reached out, laying his callused palm against the star-iron slab. Even through the six inches of solid Precursor alloy, the metal was already streaming a blistering heat that scorched the skin of his palm. Deep within the doorframe, the four three-inch deadbolts were locked tight, heavy by heavy star-iron ratchets that held the drop-gate against the bedrock floor with thousands of pounds of gravity crushing force.
Lin Tao stepped beside him, his left eye scanning the glowing red boundaries of the room.
“He used four iron deadbolts and wrapped the levers in heavy chain,” Lin Tao said, his voice flat, test, and devoid of the blind hysteria that usually gripped men facing cremation. “He doesn’t intend to open this door until our bones are melted into the melted rock waste. Don’t waste your breath on the iron. Physical force can’t move ten tons of locked metal in a collapsing room. We must let the machine do the work for us.”