The cedar splint was bound so tight Lin Ke could feel his pulse throbbing against the wood like a trapped moth.
On the dark rock floor beside him lay a scroll of tarnished lead foil, retrieved from the unsafe archives of Sub-Vault Zero.
Its title was etched in sharp, jagged Nether-Script: The Void-Cavity Compression Manual.
Beneath the title was a warning written in the blood-ink of an ancient sect master. Three hundred elders tried this path. Three hundred elders suffered internal void collapse, their dantians crushed into red mist.
Lin Ke sat with his back propped against the fire stonework, his right hand slowly unrolling the heavy metal foil.
Traditional manuals treated core squeezing as an act of spiritual willpower.
The Void-Cavity Manual, however, treated it as a brutal high-pressure inward collapse. It instructed the fighter to create a total empty pocket in the center of the lower dantian. It allowed the surrounding sky and spiritual pressure to crush the liquid sea inward like an empty tin can stepped on by an iron heel.
The physics were ruthless.
