The shaking in his lower belly felt like a trapped hornet the size of a fist.
It wasn’t a spiritual warmth. It was a furious, swaying clockwork hum that rattled Lin Ke’s pelvis every time he took a breath. Inside the locked quiet focus cellar beneath his drafting shed, the surrounding air was ten degrees below freezing. But his grey hemp tunic was plastered to his skin with hot, greasy sweat that smelled of copper and scorched fat.
His dantian was high-pressure to ninety-two percent of load-bearing yield.
The emergency sub-clavian heat flush that had saved his life in the limestone caverns had ignited a backup firestorm. The white-hot blood had sped up the evaporation of his stored spiritual Qi, super-compressing the vapor inside his lower belly into a dense, churning cyclone.
If he didn’t advance to the 8th Layer of Qi Gathering within the hour, the high-pressure back-pressure would shear the lower junction of his Conception vessel.
A total blowout. Instant loss of training, followed by permanent internal hemorrhaging.
Lin Ke sat cross-legged on a thin rush mat, his back braced against the rough granite wall. On the stone floor before him sat a small clay pot bowl containing a pale blue, steaming decoction. A single root-finger of Nine-Leaf Frost Root boiled with well water and crushed willow bark by Apothecary He an hour prior.
