The air turned to syrup in Lin Ke’s lungs.
The huge black glass doors of the Firmware Arch began to grind backward into the threshold, their movement with a low, deep hum that made the liquid in his eyeballs vibrate.
As the seal broke, an ancient, high-pressure plume of pure, raw Primordial Origin Qi erupted from the inside chamber.
The gas was not airy mist. It had the physical thickness of liquid silver.
A junior elder thirty paces behind Lin Ke took a single, reflex breath in.
The man gasped—and his lung tubes instantly hardened. His throat pipe turned to solid, flawless white green jade, the turning to stone spreading downward into his alveoli until his lungs weighed forty pounds and clinked like river stones inside his chest. The elder collapsed onto the glass flat stone slabs. He clawed at his throat in silent, choking agony.
“Seal your breaths!” Lin Ke roared, his voice cutting through the panic. “Don’t inhale through your noses! The air is high-pressure to four crushing deep-sea pressure!”
Apothecary He sprinted forward with frightening speed for an old man. He dropped to his knees beside the stricken elder. With a flick of his wrist, the old surgeon drew a razor-sharp black glass lancet and drove it cleanly between the elder’s thyroid joint padding, performing an emergency living bypass.
