The heat at forty paces beneath Sub-Vault Zero was not air. It was a physical weight.
Lin Ke sat cross-legged on a six-sided slab of fiery dark rock, suspended directly above the underground magma channel that fed the Seventh Ward’s foundries.
Sweat ran in nonstop, stinging rivulets down his ribs, hissing into steam the moment it dripped onto the stone. His gray linen trousers were soaked through, sticking to his thighs like wet hide.
Inside his lower belly, his liquid spiritual sea was at maximum capacity.
In traditional training, reaching Peak Foundation was a matter of squeezing the sponge.
A fighter gathered the liquid spiritual energy pooled in their dantian and applied inward pressure, contracting the surrounding muscle-lined spirit veins like a fist closing over water. Normal channels stretched, widened, and absorbed the violent high-pressure back-shock. That let the fluid compress smoothly into a pre-crystal-clear solid.
Lin Ke didn’t have muscles lining his channels.
He had congenital glassy glass waveguides (Bing-Mai).
