The gap was three hundred paces wide.
Across the vast, torch-lit expanse of the forecourt before the Barrier of White Jade, Qiao Ming could see the exact spot where his journey had begun seventy-four hours earlier. On the white green jade doorstep of the thirty-first gate, the first stroke of dried silver-blood ink glowed like an ember of frozen moonlight, waiting for the return of the line. The forecourt itself was a grand tiered arena of ancient stone. It was flanked by forty huge statues of the Barrier Masters whose solemn faces looked down upon the avenue with eternal, unblinking vigilance.
Between that first mark and the tip of his steaming ox-bone ladle lay three hundred paces of polished white jade.
If that gap was closed, the forty entry halls would lock into an unbroken, seventy-league circuit of spirit deep ring. The sound standing wave would complete its loop. That turned the entire outer edge into an iron-hard shear wall ninety arm-lengths high that no void-locust, steam-dredger, or void-harpoon could breach. The water-pressure forces of the deep pit would be gathered into the bedrock keel, transforming the House into a sealed safe hall against the encroaching void.
If the line failed now—if a single drop of ink spilled, if his ladle lifted from the stone for three inches, or if his heart gave out before his toes touched the doorstep—the seventy-two hours of agony would be meaningless. The ungrounded deep ring would detonate like a collapsed dam, shattering the bedrock…
