The sunrise over the melted rock waste quarries smelled of damp pine needles, coal smoke, and cold mud.
Lin Ke hauled himself up through the rusty iron grate of the abandoned drainage under-road drain, his boots slipping on wet shale before his heels found purchase on solid ground.
His clothes were shredded rags stiff with dried blood, grease, and powdered dark rock.
Every joint in his body ached with deep, deep wear. His left hand was bound tightly against his chest, his newly hardened Ashen Iron skeleton carrying the invisible weight of a body that had survived fifty sea-weights of gravity shear and a Golden Core sovereign’s boot.
Behind him, the Nine-Tier Bone-Crushing Gravity Pagoda was sealed behind heavy crimson holding wards.
Its upper tiers were jagged stumps of shattered stonework, black smoke still curling into the dawn sky from Floor Eight.
Word had already swept through the outer sect like wildfire. Total array cascade failure, dozens of students dead, the check suddenly ended. Zhao Wuji carried down the mountain on a bamboo stretcher, both legs shattered into bloody splints.
Lin Ke limped past the melted rock waste heaps. He walked down the familiar muddy lane of the Seventh Ward.
