The breakthrough of a mortal body didn’t produce sky lightning, nor did it cause dragons of vapor to coil about the roof beams.
Inside the command dugout of Trench Line Four, the single wick of the animal fat lamp burned with a steady, yellow flame. The room was four paces wide. He smelled of pine sawdust, cold dark rock. The faint, metal tang of rusted hard dark metal steel.
Pei Jing sat cross-legged on the frozen spruce floorboards.
His spine was straight, his chin drawn slightly back, his hands resting palms-down upon his kneecaps. His eyes were closed, his visual cortex disconnected from external photons.
Inside his skull, the internal sound stonework had shifted.
For five mortal realms, progression had been additive. Piling more muscle fiber onto the skeleton, thickening the tendon sheaths with connective tissue, driving more volume of red cells through widened blood channels. It was the physical equivalent of adding more iron ballast to a wooden cart.
Now, under the relentless pressure of the 100.0% ledger consolidation, the system transitioned from additive buildup into qualitative phase change.
The trigger was the central marrow.
