The approach to the Grand Sovereign Relay Tower was like walking through a landscape carved from dried blood and cold black glass.
Night had fallen across the Middle Imperial Ring, but there was no darkness. The sky blazed with an unnatural, choking crimson eerie glow that cast razor-sharp, ink-black shadows across the deserted marble plazas. The air pressure had risen by twelve percent. Every breath felt heavy and metal, tasting of sulfur and copper filings.
Lin Tao led the column through the sunken royal drainage canals. His boots splashed through three inches of freezing mountain runoff.
Behind him, Tie Shan moved with silent, monstrous grace, the twenty-one-ton star-iron totem balanced horizontally across his massive shoulders. Behind Tie Shan, thirty mortal tunnel diggers moved in single file. Their bodies wrapped in was dark canvas cloaks treated with lead dust and animal fat to dampen their heat and magnetic signed names.
Lin Tao held his land-mapper metal pen in his right hand. He used its micro-needle to test the flow rate of the canal walls as they advanced.
Twenty-four hours leftover.
They passed beneath the iron air-flow grates of the outer avenues. Then, Lin Tao caught glimpses of the mortal populace in the upper districts. Through the iron bars, he saw royal clerks, artisan families, and servants lying motionless upon the stone porches of their houses.
