At exactly four minutes and twelve seconds after the first injection, the final exact timing thread of the Nine-Peak Sword Domain seized.
A deep, unnatural silence fell over the proving grounds.
It wasn’t the peaceful quiet of a mountain dawn. It was the choking, terrifying stillness of a dead machine. The roaring winds that had howled between the spires vanished entirely, choked out by the complete freezing of the local sky test model.
Across all nine peaks, all nine thousand spirit swords hung dead in mid-air.
From the lowest valleys two leagues below to the high glaciers brushing the stratosphere, nine thousand silver blades remained suspended in total defiance of world-size gravity. They didn’t drift with the mountain drafts. They didn’t sway. Their tips didn’t waver by even a fraction of a tiny fraction of an inch.
They hung like iron spikes driven through the canvas of the sky.
Tie Shan stepped forward, his heavy boots crunching softly on the frost-covered dark rock. He moved with extreme caution. His star-iron pry-bar was held across his chest as he approached Blade #42 of the twelfth ring. It hung suspended at eye level three paces beyond the edge of their overhang.
The giant leaned forward, studying the blade with his narrow, battle-scarred eyes.
