The third stroke of the plummet drove the hum to two hundred and forty cycles.
At two hundred and forty cycles, the sound wave achieved phase-inversion with the spiritual hum of Zhu Heling’s star-fire aura. Through the six-foot dark rock wall, the physical law of destructive interference asserted its total power over the chaotic energy of the nine longevity pills.
Through the quartz viewport, Qiao Ming watched the scholar’s aura disintegrate.
The searing bright purple fire that had wrapped around Zhu Heling’s body collapsed like an unsealed empty pocket tube. The intense beams of spiritual light shining from his eye-sockets sputtered and died, replaced by wisps of grey, foul-smelling ash. The purple veins along his arms burst, spraying streams of blackened, spent blood onto the wet flags as the internal pressure tore his artificial spirit veins apart.
He brought his Folded brass star-compass to the viewing port.
The instrument confirmed that the star-fire envelope had decayed by sixty-four percent. The scholar’s spiritual power was plummeting from fourteenth-tier sovereign thickness back into the fragile, broken limits of mortal flesh.
Zhu Heling fell to his knees in the two feet of salt water on the outer floor. His golden staff clattered away into the drainage gutter. His arms hung limp, smoking with the bitter soot of burned spirit-oil. He looked up at the Great Iron Arch, his mouth opening in a soundless, horrified scream as the full reality of his defeat crashed down upon his shattered mind.
