The underground upkeep channel smelled of warm grease, damp mold, and the rotten-egg exhaust of fifty dead smelting cycles.
Lin Ke sat with his back against the rough granite wall of Sub-Vault Zero, a clay bowl of cold tea resting untouched beside his knee. A single animal fat lamp sputtered on an overturned wooden ore crate. It cast long, twitching shadows across the low stone vault.
Opposite him, Meng Shan was sharpening the edges of his eight-hundred-jin Black Magnetite shield with an oily whetstone. Every stroke of the coarse stone produced a dull, rhythmic shhk that shook through the floor plates.
Shen Yue sat cross-legged near the air-flow grille, her fingers tracing blue red stone glyphs onto box-shaped slips of parchment at a wild, rhythmic pace. She was drafting two distinct ward magic charms at once. Her left hand writing a heat fading away circle. Meanwhile, her right inscribed a moving dampener.
Lin Ke closed his eyes.
Initialize complete system audit, he commanded. Print commit graph.
The tree flared in his Sea of Mind like a blazing bright mix woven from barbed wire.
Four thousand one hundred and twelve commits.
