The stone shelf beneath Ye Chen’s knees was still wet from the river, but the radiant heat pouring from his newly forged Core Formation dantian dried the rock in seconds.
He knelt before the golden kinetic bubble, staring through the translucent barrier at Lin Xi’s motionless face. The black necrotic frost had thickened over the last three hours, weaving jagged crystalline spikes along her jawline and locking her slender throat beneath a sheath of dark ice.
Without a system interface to run automated safety diagnostics, Ye Chen raised his right palm, pressing his bare skin flat against the surface of the kinetic sphere.
"Let us see if this new iron holds," Ye Chen murmured, his voice steady in the quiet cave.
He extended a thin, disciplined strand of his Primordial Chaos Qi from his pa
