The gentle rain stopped on the morning of the seventy-fifth day, twenty-eight hours into the three-day advance.
A deep, rhythmic thrumming began echoing from the bedrock beneath Kaelen Vance’s bed, vibrating through his teeth. It was not an earthquake. It was the sound of his own dantian straining under cosmic pressure.
Above his closed eyes, the amber letters of the Fallow Slate flared with blinding intensity.
[Track 1: Cultivation (Passive Multiplier)] [3,600h 00m Reached -> 5-Month Milestone Crossed!] [Current Multiplier: 36,010x] [Remaining to 6-Month Cap: 720h 00m (15 Real Days under Hibernation Compression)] [Warning: Fallow Distension Active in Saint Vessel Meridians]
Kaelen pressed his palms against his forehead and let out a muffled groan.
His skull felt like a sealed iron kettle boiling over a blacksmith’s forge. Inside his chest, his Saint Vessel Late core was spinning with such ferocious velocity that the surrounding air distorted into faint ripples of jade light.
Cultivation stories always talked about breakthroughs as moments of supreme enlightenment. They described floating petals, divine music, and profound peace. They never mentioned the terrible headache that came with storing five months of hyper-compressed cosmic energy in mortal flesh.
Kaelen curled onto his side, pulling his goose-down pillow over his ears.
