The Late-Night Military Workshop Meeting

The dead silence lingered a moment longer.

At last, a young man in the corner of the middle row suddenly raised his hand.

He did not raise it high. It was even trembling a little.

Halfway up, nearly a hundred pairs of eyes swung toward him. His face flushed visibly, and he started to pull his hand back.

But Shien stopped him with a gentle, "Go ahead."

The young man stood. He was only a Construct Studies apprentice, usually quiet at the Workshop Directorate, where he helped out on a research team.

But Shien remembered him. The Canon of Grace and Righteousness had marked him as highly gifted in craftsmanship, with an exceptional sensitivity to tiny components.

The apprentice swallowed. At first, he stammered. "M-my lord, I was thinking about the first problem. How do we find it sooner?

If the underground root nodules pulse, and the Blood-Returning Bridge carries corpses, then vibrations in the Frozen Tundra, its hollow layers, and its pulse channels should differ from ordinary dead ground."

Afraid he might lose his nerve, he rushed to get the rest out. "We could make a long metal probe to drive into the ground, with a thin resonating plate and an amplification chamber at the top, then engrave a set of resonance Runes on it to listen for echoes underground.

If something down there is alive, it can't be completely silent. Human ears may not pick it up, but we can let the Runes listen for us."

His voice rose noticeably on the last sentence.

Quite a few people in the hall looked intrigued and instinctively glanced down at the structural diagrams on the table. Others were already frowning.

Before the young apprentice could breathe a sigh of relief, an old craftsman spoke up with a frown. "The Eternal