The cold before dawn was heavier than lead.
Inside the Seventh Ward’s main smelting floor, the giant bellows were silent. Their leathers were tied off with thick hemp cord. Over five hundred outer students, apprentices, and fire workers sat packed together on the cold flat stone slabs. Their knees were pressed against their chests to conserve warmth.
No torches were lit. Only three animal fat candles burned atop empty crucibles, their pale flames fluttering in the drafts leaking through the heavy timber barricades.
In the gloom, hundreds of faces turned toward Lin Ke.
They were young men with scarred arms from molten melted rock waste, girls with hands rough from pesticide weeds, and gray-haired laborers whose backs had bent under sixty years of carrying coal. Each one held a crumpled, dog-eared copy of the yellow safety manual tucked inside their tunics.
“Brother Lin,” an apprentice named Song spoke up, his voice trembling in the dark. “We felt the change. When we practiced the level loop, our chests stopped aching. The numbness in our spines went away.”
The boy paused, swallowing hard.
“But tomorrow... When Grand Elder Feng Xuan steps onto the White Jade Plaza... He will open his Domain. Everyone knows that inside a Soul Formation sovereign’s Domain, mortal arts simply cease to exist. His will becomes the law of the world. How do we survive inside a god’s private sky?”
