The inside of the Grand Sovereign Relay Tower was an upright deep pit of raw building.
A central hollow shaft fifty paces wide ran the entire twelve-hundred-foot height of the structure, housing the massive upright star-copper coolant lines and the humming high-voltage bus channels. Around this central deep gap coiled the upkeep ramp: a spiral roadway twelve paces wide, carved from polished black dark rock and cantilevered out from the outside green jade wall without supporting pillars.
Looking upward, the ramp spiraled into the heights like the inside of a huge snail shell, disappearing into the pulsing crimson mist of the upper tiers.
Lin Tao halted at the foot of the ramp, his boots crunching lightly against crushed mortar.
“The air is heavily spark-charged,” Lin Tao said, looking back at the thirty tunnel diggers. “Smear the bitter pine-resin animal fat across your faces and palms now. Don’t touch the inner copper handrail. It carries forty thousand volts of induced current.”
The tunnel diggers right away obeyed, digging their fingers into their clay animal fat pots and rubbing the thick, pungent grease across their exposed skin.
Above them, three sharp, brassy chimes echoed down the upright shaft.
The shaking traveled through the dark rock ramp into the soles of their boots. Lin Tao raised his head, his amber sight lens zooming into the dark tiers above.
