The hum of the copper channels shook straight through the soles of Lin Ke’s boots.
The cave floor was slick with water drops, smelling of stone salt water and rancid animal fat. Along the western outer edge of the dark rock chamber, arranged in nested semicircles facing the massive stone stele, stood two hundred stone altars.
On each altar lay a figure in the formal crimson robes of an inner sect elder.
They weren’t dead, but they were far from alive. Their skin had shrunk tight over their cheekbones, giving their faces the appearance of dried gourds. Thick copper needles, each the width of a thumb, were driven directly through their sternums, anchoring deep into their dantians.
Golden spiritual fluid pulsed through the clear quartz couplings of the needles, flowing into the overhead copper pipes with the wet, rhythmic gurgle of a heavy-duty distillery.
“Core elders,” Shen Yue whispered, her knuckles turning white against her chest. “They told the sect these elders had entered secluded training to seek the breakthrough to Soul Formation.”
“They’re not cultivating,” Lin Ke said, his voice flat as dead iron. “They’re being harvested on standby. Kept in low-power idle mode to serve as high-capacity energy reservoirs.”
