The sixth day of seclusion brought the transformation of the central pillar.
Pei Jing had sat motionless upon the black dark rock slab for one hundred and twenty nonstop hours. The skin of his back, pale grey and dense as horn, remained perfectly upright, lined up with the straight-line axis of gravity. The river of molten rock below surged with rhythmic, heavy pulses, releasing glowing bubbles of sulfur gas that lit up the cave vault with dull, flickering flashes of crimson and ochre.
At the sixth hour of the day, his spine began to ring.
TONG... TONG... TONG...
The sound was not metaphorical. It was a physical sound deep ring emitted by the twenty-four spine bones of his spinal column.
Through six years of Bone Cleansing and Marrow Washing, each single vertebra—from the fifth lower-back up to the atlas supporting the base of the back of the skull—had been purged of porous micro-cavities. The spongy bone had collapsed into solid, stone-hardened hydroxyapatite, infused with hard dark metal, calcium, and trace iron salts. His blood pulse drove through the anterior spinal artery. Then, the spine bones rang like tuned bronze bells struck by an iron clapper.
Through the dense scar-mesh of his back muscles, the spine bones began to glow.
