Iron Beast's First Roar Shocks Streets and Alleys, Steel Wheels Grind Earth, Terrifying Immortals and Mortals

As the days slipped by, the streets and alleys of Wu'an City gradually regained their old vitality.

While morning dew still clung to the locust leaves, the flatbread ovens on North Street began to sizzle and spit oily smoke.

Old Man Zhang flipped his flatbreads as he chatted with the proprietress of the neighboring sewing shop, though his eyes kept drifting unconsciously toward the workshops in the west of the city.

By noon, the docks along the Ming River had grown lively again. Porters shouldered sacks of grain as they hurried back and forth. Their work chants still carried a trace of restraint, but no longer trembled as they had at first.

Even the children dared chase and play through the alleys again. Yet whenever they were having the time of their lives and heard a rumble from the workshops, they would still abruptly stop and shrink behind the adults.

The common folk said nothing aloud, but each of them had a knot of tension bottled up inside.

So long as that "Lord Wuwei" remained inside the workshops, their hearts could not settle.

It was like carrying an unexploded thunderbolt in one's pocket—knowing one was safe for now, yet always fearing it might suddenly go off one day.

Until one morning, just as dawn was beginning to break.

The sheet-iron gates of the western workshops, which had remained shut for half a month, suddenly creaked slowly open.

The sound was especially piercing in the silent morning light, like a rusted giant lock being forcibly pried apart.

Several households living near the workshops were the first to be startled awake, peering outside through cracks in their windows.

As the hinges turned, metal scraped against metal with a shrill screech. The two doors slowly swung apart, revealing the pitch-black entrance within, like