The air inside the machine room smelled of ozone, dry quartz sand, and sterilized empty pocket.
It was sixty degrees, perfectly controlled, and utterly devoid of the damp sulfur stench that choked the outer deep gap. Down the central aisle of the giant stone chamber, three dozen towering crystal-clear racks stretched into the gloom like the giant pillars of an unearthly library. Each rack was thirty feet tall, carved from solid, zero-spreading sight crystal, housing hundreds of sliding dark rock trays that pulsed with timed together silver light.
Behind Lin Ke, greed overcame shock.
“The immortal cores!” Master Yan’s voice cracked in manic, frantic excitement.
The formation master shoved past the guild guards. His eyes were wide and bloodshot as he stared at the glowing crystal-clear trays. “They’re solid spirit-essence matrices! An entire hall of Grade-Eight immortal jade! Each one is worth fifty thousand high-grade spirit stones in the Imperial Capital! Take them! Pry them from the altars before the Azure Cloud dogs touch them!”
“Hold your positions,” Lin Ke said, without turning around. His tone was as dry as old parchment. “Those aren’t storage metal bars. Those are high-hum routing matrices. Don’t touch the bus.”
Nobody listened to him.
