The mountain was tearing in two.
High in the ceiling vault of the underground hub, the central anchoring spindle—a sixty-foot collar of massive stone starmetal that anchored the nine crystal-clear channels to the bedrock—was screaming under monstrous, world-size tension.
The sky failsafe had engaged.
Up in the stratosphere, the Cloud Gateway had locked its high-pressure winches. It pulled upward with the crushing weight of an entire Upper Realm land-wide plate.
Down in the cave, the dark rock walls were fracturing. Giant fissures, twelve feet wide, split open across the granite ceiling, dumping hundred-ton boulders into the boiling light below.
[CRUSTAL SHEAR WARNING: T-MINUS 05:14] [Earth-shaking Strength: 24% / RAPID DECAY]
“We can’t cut it!” Shen Yue yelled, leaping down from the ceiling rift onto the narrow high walkway beside Lin Ke, her face streaked with stone dust. “The clamp is forged from Epoch Three Void-Tempered Starmetal! My magic charms bounce right off it! Even a mid-grade spiritual blade can’t leave a scratch!”
Meng Shan held the trembling narrow high walkway steady with his bare hands. He looked up at the groaning starmetal collar with gritted teeth. “It has no seams, Brother Lin. It’s cast as a single ring.”
