The cold wind howled across the mountain ridges, carrying the choking stench of rotted blood and ancient charnel pits.
Up on the second-floor terrace of the chairman’s residence, Lin Mo held his black Benevolence Card between two fingers. He did not look at the ten miles of rotted red clouds churning above. Instead, his gaze rested calmly on the logistics interface displayed on Su Wan’s sovereign terminal.
“Master Lu Jian,” Lin Mo spoke clearly into his communicator. “You have thirty seconds to explain the specifications of the Nine-Heavens Benevolence Aegis Array.”
In the subterranean array control bunker, Master Lu Jian tapped his bright yellow hard-hat with a steel wrench. His voice crackled through the speakers, loud, enthusiastic, and completely unbothered by the demonic siege overhead.
“Chairman! I have been designing this beauty since the day we acquired the Nine Earth-Dragon Veins!” Lu Jian shouted over the roar of cooling fans. “Most ancient sect barriers are rigid and brittle. When hit with massive brute force, their spirit foundations crack and backlash onto the operators. But our Nine-Heavens Aegis is different!”
Lu Jian pulled up a three-dimensional holographic blueprint on the shared network.
“We use nine interlocking layers of kinetic-dampening merit crystal,” Lu Jian explained, his eyes shining with pride. “Each layer is anchored directly to one of the nine subterranean dragon pulses. When external energy strikes the outer dome, the array does not merely absorb the impact. It converts kinetic force into pure thermal energy, feeds it through Tang Xiaomi’s talisman…
