In the quiet shadows of the Precursor end-post vault, Lin Tao took a deep, steady breath, resting his hands upon the cool star-bronze console.
Beside him, Tie Shan sat on a square block of ancient black glass. He used a soft piece of oiled calfskin to wipe the last traces of soot from his straightened twelve-pound iron pry-bar. The giant’s breathing was slow, heavy, and calm, the rhythm of an unmoving mountain resting after an earthquake.
Lin Tao opened the internal test ledger in his mind.
Across the eighteen months of their southern campaign—spanning hundreds of leagues of unbending struggle—every step of their journey had been paid for in body permanence and physical toil:
They had begun eighteen months ago. Unsafe melted rock waste-pit slaves in the choking darkness of the Black-Crag Iron Works. They were marked for execution in the sky blast furnaces. Lin Tao had possessed nothing but a permanent 0-byte Dantian Buffer—a body incapable of holding a single drop of spiritual qi—and a test vision inherited from a lifetime of systems building.
Beside him had stood Tie Shan, a battered miner with shattered ribs and broken knuckles, whose unbending loyalty and Peak Iron-Bone frame had become the physical anchor for every reality exploit they dared to execute.
