A freezing black wind whistled up from the bottom of the ten-mile pit in the center of Dry-Well Capital.
Where thirty-five broken mud huts had once stood in the scorching Red-Sand Wastes, a massive circular crater now opened into the earth. At the bottom of the crater rested an ancient ring made of dark gray star-stone. It was ten miles wide, covered in deep carvings of stars and dragons, and rose higher than the city clouds.
Right in the middle of the giant stone ring, a jagged crack split the main energy core in half.
Hiiiiisssss!
Thin, icy black air leaked out of that crack like water from a broken pipe. Every time a puff of that black air touched the stone stairs around the crater, a thick sheet of white frost snapped across the rock. Three iron shovels left too close to the crack had already frozen so brittle that when a guard tapped one with his boot, the iron blade shattered like glass.
Pei Xuan stood on the main viewing platform at the edge of the crater with a warm sheepskin coat draped over his shoulders. Inside his dantian, a golden Nascent Soul the size of a baby sat cross-legged above a glowing miniature projection of Planet Canglan, breathing steady streams of Rank 7 Planetary Lord Qi.
