The smell of crushed red stone and crushed river pearls hung thick over the drafting table.
Shen Yue’s slender hands moved with dizzying, inhuman care. Four fine-tipped squirrel-hair brushes floated above the table, each guided by an independent thread of her multi-threaded divine sense.
Four concurrent streams of silver magic charm ink traced fine, detailed sharp-angled lines onto twelve discs of semi-clear white jade, never crossing, never colliding. It hummed with high-hum deep ring.
Lin Ke stood beside her, leaning his knuckles against the wooden edge of the workbench.
“The internal channels are clean,” Lin Ke said, pointing at the jade discs. “Inside the flesh, the Ren-Du channel carries sixty-four pulses a breath without friction. But the moment the second spirit detaches into open air, the surrounding rough churning in the air scatters the pulse like wind scattering smoke.”
Shen Yue didn’t stop her four brushes. Her eyes remained calm and focused, shimmering with silver light as she kept four same-time thought loops.
“The air of Mount Lingxiao is crowded,” Shen Yue said, her voice lilting like bronze bells in a mountain breeze. “Thousands of students breathing, ancient earth veins churning, the mountain wind carrying spiritual static. When the spirit leaves the shell, it hears the roaring of ten thousand voices.”
