ZZZZZZT—THUMP. ZZZZZZT—THUMP.
In the center median of the newly paved Mount Azure Canyon Expressway, the exposed head of the octagonal black iron spike pulsed like a greedy iron leech buried inside the earth’s heart.
Even though Ye Guhan’s Rank 6 Canal-Cleaver Heavy Sword had sliced away the five miles of solid granite above it, the three-hundred-foot-long spike buried vertically beneath the roadbed hadn’t suffered a single scratch. Cold, dark-purple runes—written in a twisted script that didn’t belong to any mortal kingdom on Planet Canglan—crawled up and down its eight flat sides, sucking nine-tenths of the eastern Spirit Vein’s golden energy into a sealed vortex at the bottom of the spike.
Sitting on the granite sidewalk thirty feet away with his two-copper jaywalking ticket still sticking out of his collar, Sect Master Ling Xiao watched Pei Xuan, Old Wei, Tie Zhan, and Ye Guhan gather around the black spike.
“Don’t waste your strength,” Sect Master Ling Xiao croaked hoarsely, hugging his knees. “That is the sacred Eastern Heaven-Pillar—what you call the Fourth Spirit-Locking Nail. It is the largest and heaviest of the four ancient nails in the Central Continent! Five hundred years ago, our Four Golden Core Ancestors tried to shift it by half an inch to adjust the sect barrier, and even with all four of them burning their Golden Core essence together, it didn’t budge a hair’s breadth!”
