The third day brought the living threshold of heat death.
At thirty-six hours of sustained exposure to the underground magma vents, Pei Jing’s inner body heat crossed forty-four degrees. This was the permanent clotting point. Serum albumins denatured into solid white curd, enzyme chains unraveled, and brain neurons suffered permanent rotting death.
Even with the stone-hardened osteon lattice of Bone Cleansing acting as a heat sink, the heat-powered load was reaching saturation.
His deep gut-deep core—the retroperitoneal space surrounding his kidneys and belly main heart artery—registered an internal heat measurement of one hundred and four degrees. The water within his cellular cytoplasm was threatening to boil. Outside his body, the river of molten dark rock hissed and bubbled with unceasing ferocity, venting white-hot gases that kept the cave air locked at one hundred and sixty-two degrees.
Pei Jing sat upon the black dark rock table, his naked torso coated in a hardened crust of yellow sulfur and rusted red blood dust. His lips were very thirsty into cracked, leathery grey strips. His eyelashes were singed to tiny black nubs.
Then, the body self-preservation reflex engaged.
It wasn’t a conscious martial technique. It was the ancient defense gearwork embedded within the human renal stonework: the awakening of the Kidneys—the Water Viscera, governed by the spirit hum of the Black Tortoise (Xuan Wu).
