The drills were lined up at the head of the subterranean fire, and once drilling was complete, more than a hundred high-pressure pumps began injecting water into the hot, smoking boreholes. The sheer quantity of water meant that the water supply to both the mine and the city was cut off, which only increased uncertainty and unrest among the public. But initial results were encouraging: On the big screen in the command center, dark spots appeared surrounding the position of the boreholes at the head of the red-colored fire, indicating that the water had dramatically dropped the fire temperature. If the line of dots connected, then there was hope for stopping the fire’s spread.

But this slightly comforting situation did not last long. The leader of the oil field drilling crew found Liu Xin at the foot of the enormous rig.

“Dr. Liu, no more drilling can be done at two-thirds of the well positions!” he shouted over the roar of the drills and pumps.

“Are you joking? We’ve got to add more water-injection holes to the fire.”

“No. Well pressure at those positions is growing too quickly. Any more drilling and there’ll be a blowout!”

“Bullshit. This isn’t an oil field. There’s no high-pressure gas reservoir. What’s going to blow?”

“You know nothing! I’m shutting down the drills and pulling out.”

Enraged, Liu Xin grabbed his collar. “You will not. I order you to continue drilling. There will not be a blowout. You hear me? There won’t!”

Even before he finished speaking, they heard a loud crash from the direction of the rig, and they turned in time to witness the well’s heavy seal fly off in two pieces as a yellowish-black mud spurted into the air together with pieces of broken drill pipe. Bystanders shouted in alarm, and the mud gradually lightened in color as its particulate content reduced. Then it turned snow-white, and they realized that the ground fire had heated the injected water into pressurized steam. High up on the rig they saw the body of the drill driver, suspended and twisting slowly in the roiling steam. There was no trace of the other three engineers who had been on the platform.

What happened next was even more terrifying. The head of the white dragon broke free from the ground and gradually took flight, until finally the white steam had risen above the rig like a white-haired demon in the sky. There was nothing in the space between the demon and the mouth of the well apart from the wreckage of the rig. Nothing but that terrifying hiss. A few young engineers, under the impression that the blowout had stopped, took hesitant steps forward, but Liu Xin grabbed two of them and shouted, “That’s suicide! It’s superheated steam!”

They watched in terror as the damp headframe was blasted dry in the steam’s heat, and the thick rubber pipes strung from it liquefied like wax. The infernal steam assaulted the frame with a hair-curling thunder….