The iron-rimmed wheels of the heavy wagon screeched against a shelf of glass-fused black glass.
Ten thousand feet beneath the shattered Netherworld Gates, the air pressure sat heavy upon the chest, thick with sulfur, dead stars, and the bitter copper stench of stone-hard dragon blood.
Lu Chen walked beside the left wheel, his iron-soled boots leaving faint, glowing prints in the soot.
Inside his lower dantian, the tiny blood star-core spun in silence.
Its slow buildup disk cast a pale white-gold warmth through his belly wall. It locked his baseline resting blood heat at exactly one hundred and twenty point zero degrees.
His backup spirit veins, recrystallized into iron-hard metal channels, bore the steady gravity hum without a shudder.
In his sea of mind, four thousand five hundred units of purified malice rested within the Asura Crucible, dark and dense as liquid silver.
An Ni pulled on the leather reins, halting the two armored draft mules at the edge of the downward ridge.
