The road into Iron Hammer City was a wide, sloping avenue carved directly into the mountain's inner wall. Shops and workshops lined it, their fronts open to the heat and noise. The air smelled of ozone, hot metal, and stone dust.
Lin Tian led his group down the path, taking in the sheer scale of the industry around them. A team of bare-chested cultivators hauled a glowing ingot the size of a tree trunk on a stone sled. The heat from it made the air above it shimmer.
This place runs on power, he thought. Raw, physical power.
"Third terrace should be up that switchback," Su Lan said, pointing to a narrower street branching off to the left. "The air does feel… slightly less like a furnace throat."
They turned onto the side street, the noise of the main forges fading to a background thunder. The buildings here were still stone, but they had more windows, more signs of habitation rather than pure industry.
That's when they saw the crowd.
