The first salvo reached Pei Jing as a long shudder through the stone. Another followed, and another. The twelve Sun-Fire Siege Batteries kept firing at the faults above the basin. By the seventh day of his seclusion, the ceiling of the chamber was breaking apart.
Slabs dropped four hundred paces into the magma. Each one sent a wave against the base of the platform. Red spray rose through the clouds of dust. Soon Pei Jing could hardly see five paces in front of him.
He sat with the Nine-Fold Astral Bone Blade across his knees. The handle and the squared corner rested against the stone. When the shock from a salvo reached his bones, he passed most of it through his knees into the star iron. The Saint marrow inside the blade rang in time with the marrow in his legs. The blade gave a deep hum, and the force passed back into the rock.
His Dantian stayed steady. The pillars kept turning around the core. The gold had thickened into an apple-sized ball with flat faces beginning to show. The light from the five fires broke into different colors as it passed through them.
Something cracked directly overhead. Pei Jing felt it through the platform before he heard the stone begin to fall. A slab of dark rock had broken free from the ceiling. It weighed more than fifty tons, and it was dropping straight toward him.
