Cerqin had a hand in the design, but he wasn’t a builder; the returning Divine Officer brought not just base materials but a tide of hands and the lead architect, like gulls riding a swell.
After several rounds of debate and first drafts, they chose to raise the sea platform first, like laying a raft on a restless lake; for the underwater mining rigs, Cerqin already had lines on the paper like ink finding its riverbed.
“Planning, coordination, blueprints, and still this many meetings every day…” His voice rose like a sigh of steam from a kettle.
In the lounge of the Black Dragon Battleship, Cerqin sprawled on Silver Luan’s dragon tail like a cat in sunlit bamboo, murmuring complaints that sounded more like a warm drizzle than a storm.
“Doesn’t your Love God restore stamina? You’re winded already?” Silver Luan’s tone flicked like a fan in summer.
“How’s that the same…” His grievance fluttered like a silk kite barely tugging its string.
“Didn’t Spring Tide send you the magitech research group and a whole flock of techs?” Silver Luan rubbed Cerqin’s many heads, fingers soft as spring wind through reeds.
If anyone had the right to call himself busy, it was him; the truth under their embrace was simpler—Aileaf had been tugging at his scales and siphoning his blood like tapping a maple, and he’d nearly run dry, so he’d fled to Cerqin for Love God to pour life back like rain into parched earth.
Maybe because the sea platform wasn’t her field, Aileaf suddenly had time; she dove into potion work like a kingfisher into clear water.
For a string of reasons, all month long, Silver Luan lost a bucket of blood a day, like the tide taken by the moon.
“Still no idea what Aileaf’s cooking up…” His doubt drifted like mist over a cold pond.
Cerqin half-closed his eyes, basking in Silver Luan’s touch like tea leaves steeping in warm water, while he pushed the Love God’s power to the limit; he mended Silver Luan’s blood and qi like stitching silk, and the dim scales brightened again, jade catching dawn.
“Help does cut the workload,” he sighed, a leaf on a current, “but the key magitech devices and the platform schematics, I have to draw with my own hand.”
This platform was the hard bone and the keystone, like a beam that either holds or breaks a hall.
While the first planning lines were laid, they began laying special float materials, planks of buoyant stone like black ice, able to carry mountain weight on a rolling sea.
Every sheet of base material came by cargo ship from Eastern Sea City, a caravan of hulls like ants on a blue road; with volumes this vast and the distance long, the pace crawled like a winter sun.
By then, the builders and researchers ferried over from Eastern Sea City added up to more than two thousand, a tide of lamps spilling across decks at night.
As the platform took shape, simple structures rose first, stilted roofs like shells on a reef, and a sea-borne city began to glimmer like stars in a tide pool.
“Hey, what are you—” Cerqin stiffened, a startled fish in a net, as the dragon tail under him thinned like a serpent and lengthened; its tip coiled his thigh like ivy around a pillar.
It explored upward like a curious stream, taking little banks one by one, arrowing straight for the spring’s source.
Cerqin tried to rise, but Silver Luan pressed him down, a warm mountain on a soft meadow.
“Silver Luan, what are you— We said just restore stamina, spirit, and blood, that’s all…” His protest fluttered like a paper fan in a hot wind.
“We’re already in the room. Might as well do something else,” Silver Luan’s smile curled like smoke.
“No wonder you dragged me in here! Wait—hold on, I’ve got a meeting—ah!” His words shattered like beads scattering on stone.
“Relax. It’ll be quick.” His promise fell like a pebble in a deep well.
Quick wasn’t quick; when Cerqin finally walked out, legs trembling like reeds in a breeze, nearly three hours had slipped by like sand through a glass.
Silver Luan ignored the look Cerqin shot back, as sour as pickled plum and as soft as rain; he lay on the bed for a breath like a drifting cloud, then got dressed tidy as a drawn blade.
Time again to give blood. He sighed, like wind off a cliff, and dawdled toward a cargo ship moored on the far side of the platform, a dark whale dozing by the dock.
The entire ship had docked here for over half a month, and Aileaf had turned the biggest holds into labs, lantern-lit caves in a steel belly.
Silver Luan pushed the door open; the iron-streaked reek hit like rust rain, and for a heartbeat he thought he’d stepped into some cult’s lair, a den with candles and knives.
“Aileaf, drawing today or not? I just went to Cerqin to top off the tank. Need more beast parts…” His voice rang like a knock on a kettle.
Ten-plus huge red tanks stood in ranks like scarlet drums, each brimming with the days’ haul of dragon blood, a moon’s worth of sunsets bottled.
On platforms between them, bloody chunks of magical beast meat lay strewn like storm-tossed kelp; the stink rose like a hot tide.
“Can’t you clean this up? You’re just leaving the parts out…” He pinched his nose, a man crossing a fish market, and headed deeper, where a machine complex as a city of gears hunched like a crouching spider.
There, under the maze of pipes, he found Aileaf with twin dark circles, busy as a bee in late autumn.
“How many days have you not slept… You sure you don’t need Cerqin to refill you?” His concern spread like warm broth in cold hands.
Aileaf turned, a little fever-bright, and raked a hand through messy hair like straw. “I’ll go tonight. It’s been days. I can feel my strength running out like sand.”
“So what exactly are you doing? Time to tell me, right? You’ve used so much dragon blood that without a Seventh Rank life aura guarding me, and Cerqin’s Love God on call, a hundred Half Dragonkin wouldn’t cover your bill.”
Aileaf only smiled, brighter by the beat, like a lantern catching oil; she pointed under the machine at a vial of golden potion, less than a tenth full, gleaming like dawn in a cup.
“You’ll know in a few days. No blood today. We probably won’t need yours anymore.” Her voice fell like a soft hammer on a nail.
“Huh?” Silver Luan blinked, a heron staring at ripples.
“Not anymore? For real? Don’t lie to me.” His hope quivered like a bowstring.
“I’ve found a way for blood to replicate autogenously,” she said, calm as a still pond. “Start with a base amount, and this method grows more. It loses a little edge, like watered wine, but with regular materials and mana, it’s nearly limitless.”
“That’s brilliant…” His admiration rose like a lark at dawn.
“That means we can mass-produce certain special potions…” His thoughts raced like horses on a frozen plain, even dragging his eyes away from that golden glow.
“By the way, where’s Cerqin?”
Sleepless for days, Aileaf wanted two things now: to wait for the final brew to set like a moon in a mold, and to find Cerqin for a proper refill.
Silver Luan steadied her, hand light as snow on pine, and pushed the Dragon Deity’s life aura through her, shoring up her body like a beam set under a sagging roof.
“Your mental strength’s flatlined,” he muttered, a doctor tasting bitter herbs. The Dragon Deity’s life aura could refill body and mana like rain on a field, but it did nothing for mental strain, a drought only Love God could break.
“Cerqin went to a meeting,” he said. “They’re finalizing the sea-surface structure, the last version before steel meets storm. Come on, let’s find him. Won’t take long.”
“Okay.” Her answer was a leaf riding a current.
Time skimmed by like swallows, and soon the key structures on the sea platform stood near completion, pylons like ribs under a sky-sailed beast.
The heart of it all was a circular building at the center, the ring that mated surface to the deep, a moon-pool hub taking up a third of the whole; it could berth mining machines and receive ore, a harbor-gear that drank the sea.
Around it rose buildings for every task, but the eye was dragged to the super-furnace, a man-made volcano that would smelt raw ore into half-finished stock, its throat waiting for flame.
Secondary buildings not yet finished weren’t meant to draw from Eastern Sea City; per the plan, they’d be raised from the very ore they’d soon pull up, like a ship fed by its own nets.
The platform’s initial version stood almost complete, a floating island of iron and will; it wasn’t the final shore, though—once the ore flowed, they’d upgrade and seed more function-houses like stars on the water.
They also set a fixed communications node on the platform, a beacon like a lighthouse in fog, and placed multiple nodes along the sea lane between the platform and Eastern Sea City, a chain of lights across rough water.
The sea’s mana was a churning gale, so they needed more nodes than on land, a net with tighter knots; at the same distance, the cost swelled severalfold like a tide under wind, but the signal problem finally bent the knee.
Along the fixed route, ships could carry temporary comm rigs, so cargo ships and warships could talk across defined waters, lamps winking to lamps across the dark.
Worth noting, after processing some of the sea-crystal ore, Cerqin found a way to do multithread communication, like braiding several streams into one river without the waters fouling.
