Shen Shitou exhaled.
It wasn’t a martial roar. It wasn’t a battle cry meant to summon the fury of ancient ancestors.
It was simply a quiet, rhythmic puff of air. The calm breath a seasoned carpenter takes before making a final finishing cut on a miter saw.
However, as that breath passed through Shitou’s forty-two tiny fraction of an inch silver-steel-heavy dark metal channels, the air didn’t scatter into diffuse mountain breeze.
Bound by the strict shape of zero-friction smooth-flowing posture, the expelled qi tightly packed into a pencil-thin, semi-clear amber beam. It sliced across the thirty-yard deep gap separating the two platforms with zero scattering, zero sound distortion, and zero visible rough churning.
The beam struck the bronze intake nozzle of the Ancient Blood Resonance Cauldron dead-center.
PHWUMP.
The sound was tiny—like a wine cork being pressed firmly into a glass neck.
