The hammers pounded until midnight. All three hundred Spirit-Locking Nails were finished.
Lu Chen stood at the city gate, looking at the iron nails piled into a small mountain.
Each nail was three chi long and three fingers wide, its surface coated with a layer of silvery-white liquid—prepared by Yun Qingyue using Medicine King Valley's secret formula, capable of suppressing deathly energy.
Every one of them was heavy in the hand, like gripping a block of ice.
"Did you understand the blueprint?" he asked Zhou Tieshan.
"I did. Fourteen formation nodes—seven on the outer ring and seven on the inner ring. The outer ring locks down the deathly energy, while the inner ring suppresses the seal." Zhou Tieshan pointed at the markings on the blueprint. "But six people won't be enough—"
"Not six people. You'll take thirty men to lay the outer ring. I'll lay the inner ring."
Zhou Tieshan looked up. "By yourself?"
Lu Chen did not answer. He drew the sword from his waist and plunged it into the ground.
The blade sank three cun into the earth. The bone ash around it was jolted into the air, and when it fell, it traced a neat circle around the sword.
The blackness on the blade shifted in the torchlight, like the contracting pupil of a living thing.
"We move at dawn."
He turned and walked back to the tent. Yun Qingyue was changing Tuoba Shan's dressing. The bandages on his left arm had been removed, revealing bruised purple skin below the elbow.
Veins bulged beneath the skin like tree roots, their color fading from deep purple at the elbow to bluish black at his fingertips.
"Can he take medicine tomorrow?" Lu Chen asked.
Yun Qingyue pressed crushed Dragon Blood Grass leaves onto Tuoba Shan's elbow and wrapped them