Five rings opened above what was left of Sky-Piercing Peak. The outside burned red. Green vapor turned inside it, then a heavy band of ochre and a white ring that sang like metal. At the center there was black cold.
A cultivator with one spirit root could hold off a storm of the same kind. The other elements would reach him through whatever that root could not take. Sects put five defensive artifacts around a cultivator and fed each one with spirit stones. Pei Jing had brought his body and the Astral Bone Blade.
His Chaos Spirit Root could pass each element into the next. He set the five organs in order. Wood in the liver. Fire in the heart. Earth in the spleen. Metal in the lungs. Water in the kidneys.
The first five strikes came together. Fire washed over his left shoulder. A spear of water caught his right thigh. The weight of Earth drove down through the floor. Metal needles swept his chest while green spores tried to settle in the cuts.
He sent the fire into his heart. Its strength went into Earth, where the heat became weight. Earth fed Metal, which held his lungs together when the needles struck. Metal fed Water. The cold it gave back kept the fire in his chest from spreading. The last of the current reached Wood, and the cuts began to close.
