The copper pipes feeding into the siphon-needle did not merely pop; they unraveled like boiled string.
A jet of superheated, black Diesel-Qi screamed into the foundry gloom, slicing through the siphon-master's leather apron and striking his brass prosthetic. The high-pressure gas instantly warped the internal gaskets of his piston-leg. The mechanical limb let out a wet, sputtering hiss of gray condensation, its gears grinding to a violent halt that threw the master face-first onto the iron floor grating.
"My leg! The line... the line pressure is over fifteen thousand!" the master shrieked, clawing at the rusted floor as the iron plates beneath him began to vibrate with a deep, rhythmic thrum.
Lin Wei hung from the wall restraints, his boots scraping the iron grid. The Sovereign Engine inside his chest was no longer a metaphor; it was a rhythmic, iron heartbeat that echoed inside his ribs like a heavy drop-hammer hitting an anvil.
[Sovereign Engine Output: 11,200 Kilopascals]
[Local Reality Threshold: Near Limit. Structural flexing detected in the local pipe array.]
[Host DNA Synchronization: 12% — Your 1-Star 'Diesel-Veins' have been pressurized into 'Void-Condensers'.]
With a deliberate, unhurried twist of his wrists, Lin Wei didn't break the copper cuffs—he increased the internal heat of his blood until the metal restraints softened into a dull, orange sludge. He stepped down onto the iron grating, his boots making a heavy, solid sound against the vibrating floor.
His clothes were ruined, stained with the greasy soot of the sub-levels, but his right shoulder was already changing. The smooth, mortal flesh was gone, replaced by a dark, matte-black texture that looked like coal-milled iron, its surface etched with the microscopic, rigid lines of an interlocking gear-train that did not move.
"You..." The siphon-master rolled over, his face smeared with grease and charcoal, his fingers frantically reaching for a heavy, brass wrench dropped near the furnace. "Your Dan-engine was cracked by the Elders themselves! You shouldn't have enough pressure to clear a valve!"
Lin Wei walked over to the fallen master. He didn't use a stance from the Lin Clan's Imperial Steam-Sword Manual. He simply reached down with his human left hand, his fingers closing around the cold iron handle of the master's heavy wrench.
"The Elders cracked the machine," Lin Wei said, his voice a low, dry rasp that sounded like iron filings being scraped out of a flue. "They didn't touch the manual stroke."
He squeezed. The solid brass head of the wrench didn't just bend; it collapsed under the localized pressure of his grip, the metal folding into a useless, distorted lump of yellow slag that dropped into the soot.
[Points Expended: 200 (Structural Compaction)] [Current Balance: 973,500.]
The master's jaw went slack. In the Spire of Liang, power was determined by the quality of the coal you could afford to burn and the grade of the Dan-engine installed in your chest. A 1-Star discard like Lin Wei was supposed to have a low-pressure exhaust, a sluggish pulse that could be drained by any branch supervisor with a copper needle.
"Third Young Master," a quiet, trembling voice called out from the dark storage racks behind the primary furnace.
A girl in oversized mechanic's overalls stepped into the orange firelight. Her face was smudged with soot, her fingers stained with the silver-lead solder used to repair leaky boilers. It was Xiao Mei, a 1-Star orphan whose lineage had been reduced to "Fuel-Slaves" after her father's workshop was liquidated by the Imperial Coal Cartel.
"The... the Sector Guard will be at the lift gate within three minutes," she said, her hands clutching a crude, handmade oil can like a weapon. "The pressure spike on the main boiler would have lit up the dashboard in the Middle Tier. Your brother Hao... he'll send the Black-Vane Enforcers to seal the sub-level."
Lin Wei looked at her. In his previous life, she would have been a refugee at the Mirror-Gate or a line-worker at the Eastern Park. Here, she was just another piece of data the local Siphon hadn't finished burning yet.
"Let them seal the gate," Lin Wei said, turning his gaze toward the massive, six-inch iron pipe that ran from the ceiling down into the center of the foundry floor—the Main Line that fed the Diesel-Qi of the low-tier workers up to the clan's ancestral offices.
He walked to the pipe, his slate-iron right hand closing around the cold metal casing. He felt the sluggish, dirty energy pulsing inside the line—the stolen life-force of a thousand branch disciples, filtered through corporate meters and taxed by the ounce.
"Xiao Mei," Lin Wei commanded, his violet left eye igniting with a sudden, dull flame that cut through the coal dust. "Bring me the raw iron blanks from the scrap bin. We have three minutes to show this Spire how to forge a blade without a license."
[System Note: Sovereign Engine entering 'Compression Phase'. Weapons Tier unlocked for local materials.]