The long bronze bell sounded twice, announcing the twenty minute intermission before the start of the second trial.
Attendants in gray linen tunics moved across the white marble floor of the Grand Crucible, sweeping away scorched slag and hauling away the fractured bronze cauldrons of the nineteen contestants who had failed the fire test.
Ye Chen remained seated upon the simple wooden bench behind Station One, resting a piece of coarse oiled leather against the scarred iron flat of his broadsword.
He worked the cloth along the rusted metal in slow, rhythmic strokes, ignoring the floating scrying crystals that hovered ten feet above his head. The rich spiritual energy of the inner peaks continued to swirl through his meridians, filling his liquid core with dense power as his body adjuste
