The midnight wind off the fiery volcano bowl was laced with sulfur ash that stung like needles on exposed flesh.
Inside the 404 Workshop, the forge fire had been stoked to a low, cherry-red glow. The smell of melted pine resin, bitter pine-resin, and charred pork skin hung heavy in the damp air.
Meng Shan sat bare-chested on an overturned oak barrel, his massive torso lit up by the hearth fire.
His skin was the color of weathered bronze, crosshatched with pale, stringy scars from years of iron fire melted rock waste burns. Across his chest and back, his parallel earth channels pulsed with a faint, deep-amber deep ring. It was high-flow pushback channels capable of absorbing moving punishment that would pulverize ordinary fighters.
On the workbench lay a printed proclamation that Lu Feng had pulled from the Central Plaza post:
“Senior Brother Geng of the Iron Needle Sect declares: The mountain ox of Azure Cloud will leave Ring Four as a leaking colander. Twelve Soul-Piercing Needles will pin his spirit veins to the arena sand. No quack’s salve will knit them before his core runs dry.”
Elder Wu was pacing between two iron anvils, his knuckles jammed into his mouth. “Twelve needles! The Iron Needle Sect holds Imperial Patent 08-72 for the Void-Piercing Needle Art. The needles are two inches long, forged from star-fall hematite. Then he spun at ten thousand rotations per minute! A single needle can drill clean through three inches of pig-iron armor without losing speed!”
