The midnight draft through the drafting shed carried the sound of ten thousand men breathing at the foot of the mountain.
Lin Ke sat in the total dark, crossed-legged upon a flat slab of dressed dark rock. The iron metal pen was resting between his fingertips.
He wasn’t meditating. He was running a pre-flight system test.
Inside his lower belly, his training had reached its total physical ceiling: Qi Gathering 9th Layer, high-pressure to ninety-nine point four percent of load-bearing yield.
The spiritual vapor was so dense, so cold, and spinning with such violent, smooth-flowing speed that it felt like a polished sphere of liquid silver hovering in the center of his pelvis. Every breath was a high-wire act. A single sudden emotional spike, a momentary hitch in his deep-belly rhythm, could tip the vapor past the critical nucleation barrier.
A premature Foundation breakthrough.
In the middle of a wooden drafting shed, forty miles away from the tuned staging array in Sub-Vault Zero, without the Triple-Membrane Purification Sheath in his stomach.
An uncontrolled live deployment. Instant dantian blast.
