Irrelevant. If a link of 72 could match the power offered by the CK, there would never have been a need to construct them, and the AS could have used a link to create the barrier they were intending to use the CK for.

CK was created at the end of the war, after the whole balefire thing. This means that when those cities were balefired, LESS power was used than CK at maximum.

It seems to me then, that if the power was directly connected to the width of the destruction area, to destroy a city of 100K people would have required a truly humongous amount of power. More than the AoLers had available.

I mean when Rand, the most powerfull channeler, using an angreal creates the most powerfull balefirestream he can, its about the thickness of a man. A meter or so maybe? How big is a city of 100K. Many kilometers certainly. If the only way to increase the thickness of the bar is extra strength. and the most powerfull channeler, with an angreal could only create a bar meter thick, imagine the sheer immense power required to do one several kilometers thick to wipe out a city in a single blow.

So it seems likely to me that there is a way to create a balefire bar that destroyes things in a large area, but only burns things back a short time. Essentially, this strongly implies that a skilled channeler can alter the form of the balefire. It can be a spear directed at a single target with most of the strength in it going to burn the target backwards as much as possible. Or it can be a sort of weapon of mass destruction, where the strength is added to the area effected, while lessening the time the threads burn backwards.

Given that, the most likely explanation to me was that Rand, using LTT knowledge did just that. He used the CK to create a beam wide enough to erase the whole of the palace at a single blow, but still kept the total strength level low to miminize the damage to the pattern.

I should also say that if the pattern could survive the instant annihilation of hundred thousand people at a single instant, how bad could the deaths of 300 people truly be? Adds more credence to the idea that Rand, with LTT's memories knows far better how much the pattern can take than Cadsuane or any other AS.

Seems clear to me, though I do admit that I am pretty tired and going to bed now. Hopefully this will still make sense to me in the morning.

Goodnight all!