The colossus inhaled early.
The planned leap into the fissure became a desperate, scrabbling slide down as the suction reversed. Bone dust and shattered ribs streamed past him into the narrowing crack. The immense plates groaned, grinding closer. Death was a shrinking line of cold light below.
Spend only what returns. The thought was an anchor. He didn't fight the pull. He angled his body, letting the current slam him against a hanging, pendulum-like rib spur jutting from the fissure's edge. The impact drove the air from his lungs and sent a lightning bolt through his already-bruised shoulder. He wrapped arms and legs around the bone, clinging as the plates met with a deafening crunch inches from his boots. The spur shuddered—but held. For a breathless moment, he hung in the sudden silence, the only sound the grinding of colossal bones and the frantic beat of his own heart.
Then, the colossus exhaled.
The fissure reopened. He didn't think. He let go.
He fell into a narrow, pulsing conduit. The air was different here—colder, thinner, humming with a deeper, more resonant frequency. The walls were a lattice of fused bone and veins of cold light. He landed in a controlled roll, the impact jolting his battered body. Immediately, he re-synced his Vein Step to the new, slower rhythm of this inner passage. The bone-resin on his soles was gone; every step had to be perfect.
He hadn't gone far when a section of the ceiling—cartilage-like gristle—tore open. An Enforcer Ape, smaller than the Alpha but thick with muscle and fury, dropped into the conduit. Its eyes, glowing with ruddy intelligence, fixed on him. There was no room to maneuver. It charged without sound, a battering ram of scarlet fur and intent.
Li Tian braced. As the ape's crushing fist descended, he met it not with force, but with acceptance. A pinpoint devour opened in his palm.
The familiar, searing agony lanced up his arm—pins and needles; a metallic cough stifled in his throat. But this time, he didn't just bleed the energy away. He guided it. The refined power—the stolen force of the ape's own blow—spiraled through his meridians along a path that felt both new and ancient. It gathered in his palm not as a blunt shove, but as a focused, drilling pressure. An emptiness inside the force.
He thrust his palm forward.
There was no loud bang, only a sound like tearing silk and cracking ice. A hollow, spiraling force erupted from his palm and struck the ape's chest. The beast froze; a faint frost-bloom spiraled out from the point of impact across its fur, fading like breath on glass. Its eyes widened, then dulled. It collapsed—life extinguished with surgical precision.
Hollow Spiral Palm — First Form.
He could not loose it twice in the same minute without tearing his meridians.
He immediately spiral-bled the remnants of the backlash, his fingertips numb and slow to recover. The cost was high, but the result was undeniable.
As he stepped over the fallen ape, his pocket warmed. The burnt, brittle star-map shard hummed, but it felt inadequate beside the power he had just channeled. A proper star-metal medium, the ring seemed to whisper. The shard was a key, not a weapon.
Ao Shun hadn't left a list of tricks—he'd left doors. Each opened only when paid in pain.
Ahead, the conduit wall was etched with a faint, glowing line—a plate nerve. As his gaze traced it, a mental image flashed: a path leading to a massive, beating nexus deeper within the colossus. The Sternum Gate.
"Impressive economy," a polite voice drifted from a vent high above, faint but clear. A soft pop followed, and a distant seal in the conduit shimmered with contained energy. The intruder was testing the cage, reminding him he was not alone.
The only path was forward, toward the drum-beat of the Gate. He pushed on, the image of the route clear in his mind.
The conduit opened into a vast approach tunnel. Beyond, a colossal structure of interlocking ribs pulsed with light—the Sternum Gate itself. As he set foot on the floor, the name-glyph on his wrist flared with cold fire. The great ribs began to grind, and the tunnel constricted, walls sliding inward like a closing throat.
He was out of time. Li Tian broke into a sprint, racing the crushing stone.