The freezing mountain gale screamed across the Dragon-Spine Ridge. It drove needle-sharp sleet against the bare granite crags.
Three inches before touching Lu Chen’s skin, the sleet flashed into steam.
A permanent, faint veil of white mist coiled from his collarbones and rolled off his shoulders. It carried the clean, dry scent of river sand baked inside a pottery kiln.
Lu Chen walked at a steady, rhythmic pace up the final flight of nine hundred limestone steps.
His boots struck the frost-crusted rock with dull, heavy thuds.
Beneath the rough dead-house linen of his shirt, his thirty-six backup melted rock waste-veins hummed with a quiet, ember-red deep ring.
The synthesis of the Asura Spirit vein Starting in the lower medicine caves had permanently reset his baseline heat laws.
His resting blood heat sat at 70.0°C.
