The golden starlight of Emperor Xuan Yuan didn’t vanish into the void. It sank directly into the crown of the Dragon-Jade Gravitational Keystone.
The royal mandate integrated with the gearwork. Then, the entire underground sanctum held its breath.
Inside the black glass burning chamber, the two-meter sphere of stellar star-fire blazed with blazing bright perfection. The fuel pool gauge, which had hovered at a terrifying 0.42% for thousand years, surged upward with unstoppable driving force: 50%... 75%... 90%... 100.0%!
CLACK!
A heavy, ringing locking sound echoed from the core’s inside—the sound of the emergency preservation lockdown disengaging forever.
The irregular, gasping heartbeat that had troubled the mountain roots ceased fully. In its place, the Earth-Core Leyline Heart released its first true, uninhibited pulse of restored world-size life-force.
THUMMMMMMM.
It wasn’t a violent blast wave that cracked stone or tore fissures. It was a deep, velvety, a deep hum terrestrial ringing hum that rolled through the four-half-mile chamber like a warm ocean swell. The sound was sweet, ringing, and intoxicatingly pure. It shook through the white jade watching platforms, through the hundred and forty-four thousand six-sided mirrors, and straight into the ancient bedrock of the continent.
