Kaelen twisted his right wrist five degrees to the left.
The star-iron keystone under his palm gave a low, metallic groan as the ancient rebel runes aligned. Deep beneath the bedrock of thirty provinces, ten thousand dormant glyphs woke up from a two-century slumber.
Deep in his sea of consciousness, the Fallow Slate flared with silver light.
[The Fallow Slate] [Track 4: Dragon-Vein & Fortress Array Rewriting] [120-Minute Burst Window Active — Minute 3 of a Planned 5] [Active Multiplier: 18,010x] [Rate: 1 Burst Minute = 18,010 Full Baseline Hours] [Cumulative Comprehension: 36,020 Baseline Hours Applied; Minute 3 in Progress] [Mastery: Tier 6 Continental Blood-Tax Array — Transcendent Dao Intent (400%)]
Fifty-four thousand hours of array mastery is far too much work for a simple morning, Kaelen thought. A sensible architect would have left a manual on the kitchen table. Instead, the imperial builders left a booby trap under every single floorboard.
He did not channel a raging torrent of Qi. That required effort, and effort always made his lower back ache after sitting on cold star-iron.
Instead, he tapped the keystone with the knuckle of his middle finger.
The tiny vibration traveled down through the nexus dome. It slipped effortlessly into the three hundred thousand promissory notes carried by the Free Cauldron Alliance.
