The first bolt burned at five thousand degrees. The water in the outer layer of Pei Jing’s skin turned to steam. Violet light filled the cave. It smelled of burned hair, hot copper, and ozone.
The skin over his chest, shoulders, and arms charred like bark after a fire. In all, the burn covered nearly seven-tenths of his body. The current had spent itself on the layer his qi could shed.
He held his horse stance. The stone under his feet felt steady. The pain told him where the bolt had gone. He needed to know where it was going next.
The liquid Gang Qi in his dantian spun around the earth current of the Chaos Root. It turned the lightning away from his heart, brain, and other organs. The charge ran instead through his deeper skin, muscles, and bones.
His deeper skin tightened. Minerals left by the Earth-Stalactite Milk gathered where the lightning passed and bound the fibers together. What had been soft tissue took on the feel of horn without losing its ability to bend.
Inside his body, the dragon marrow wrapped the nerves in a layer of spirit fat. The charge passed over it. Pei Jing could still feel his hands and feet. His pulse had risen to thirty-eight but held steady. The kidneys cooled his blood while the liver cleared away the burned waste.
