The valley floor beneath the Sixth Peak was blanketed in three feet of crushed rock and twisted steel.
Where once nine thousand spirit swords had danced in sky harmony. He formed the legendary domain of the Supreme Sword Saint, there was now only scrap iron. Deprived of the spiritual intent that gave them floating lift, the blades had fallen like tons of dead lead weights, speeding up under gravity until their end-post striking force drove them deep into the mountain’s granite flesh.
Lin Tao walked slowly across the terrace, his brass measuring tongs in hand. He measured the depth of the impacts.
Before him stood a massive slab of dark rock, four paces wide. Embedded within that single slab were fourteen gray iron blades, buried up to their crossguards in solid stone. The force of their descent had cracked the ancient Precursor rock into spiderwebs of jagged fissures. But the weapons themselves were fully inert.
Lin Tao reached out and touched the exposed handle of the nearest sword.
The metal was cold, rough, and lifeless. The shimmering silver runes that had once glowed with lethal spatial poison were burned away. That left behind only faint, charred grooves in the dull alloy. Without Du Cang’s nonstop spiritual refresh cycles, the condensed spiritual energy had turned straight into ash into surrounding background Qi. That left behind nothing more than low-grade, brittle iron.
