Black Technology, Grand Cavern, Burial Martial Cavern (Part Two)
Black technology—Jill Young finally got to see what ancient black tech really looks like.
When the stone wall opened up, behind it was a long passageway—tall and wide, practically a bomb shelter. Jill walked forward, glancing around, and realized that the entire hundred-zhang-long corridor was lined with mechanism walls. That rumbling sound from earlier? Just giant stones shifting and sliding into place.
Jill tapped and knocked along the stone walls, discovering that the entire passage was built with intricate mortise-and-tenon joints, cleverly distributing the weight and volume throughout. In plain English: if you don’t open the Burial Martial Cavern the right way, you’d have to dig through 160 meters of solid mountain. Even a demolition master would throw in the towel—unless you had a tunnel-boring machine, good luck!
This kind of mechanism is almost as complicated as the South Wasteland Ancestral Temple. Ancient black tech—so dark, you can’t even see your own hand!
“Turns out, martial arts manuals really are the ultimate productivity tool.” Jill couldn’t help but sigh. Without martial arts, even if the whole Dali Kingdom pitched in, they’d never build a place like this. This is world-wonder level stuff! Even if you went all out, it’d take decades, and the people would be miserable. Forget other countries attacking—Dali’s own citizens would overthrow a ruler who tried this nonsense.
But look at this—Dennis Duan just quietly whipped up a place like this. Who knows what tricks or what kind of weird geniuses he roped in, but no matter how you slice it, it all comes down to supernatural martial arts.
In this world, supernatural martial arts really are the ultimate productivity tool. When people get superhuman abilities, the stuff they can pull off is way wilder than what tech can do—plus it’s flexible and practical. If the Freewind Sect wanted to build a place like this, they’d just need a master engineer and a bunch of disciples with the strength of elephants.
But Jill’s inner nerd couldn’t help but pop up in the face of this marvel: “Still, moving stones this massive—never mind the structure, where’s all that power coming from?”
Ancient mechanism designers usually relied on running water, using waterwheels as a power source. But water power has its limits. Shifting all those giant stones in just a few seconds? No way water’s pulling that off.
Same black tech, but at least with the South Wasteland Sacred Mountain, you can sort of guess the power source. There’s a lava lake and a meteor crater down there, creating hot-and-cold convection, plus all those crazy eruptions—perfect for generating energy. Diamond rock is tough as nails, so it makes a great support material. But here at the Burial Martial Cavern, the weather’s chill, the geology’s stable, and the water’s calm. So what’s powering this place?