Most of the last bolt had scattered in the wind. Enough had come down through his arm and into his dantian to set the Foundation.
He shifted off his knee and crossed his legs on the stone. Above him, starlight came through the place where fifty feet of rock had stood. The air was twenty degrees below freezing and smelled of cold peat and crushed stone.
He set his hands on his knees and closed his eyes.
The absorbed charge replaced what the punch had cost him. In the nine-zhang basin, about five hundred drops’ worth of Gang Qi were white-hot and churning. They had to set into a solid platform. If he fought with a pool that size still loose in his belly, the force of his own strikes could tear it apart.
The sects called a one-zhang disc a Mortal Foundation. Weak medicines and mixed roots left holes and cracks in those discs, and the cracks limited what the cultivator could do afterward. Pei Jing had room to build all five of his currents into one piece.
He drew cold water qi into the basin until the temperature fell from three hundred degrees to seventy-two point four. Then he gathered yellow earth qi at the very center. A single tiny cube formed with a clear ping. From that seed, crystal grew outward in even rings.
