Su Li closed his eyes.
Aether within him surged toward that eggshell-thin barrier like a tide.
The furnace fire turned crimson.
It had begun.
The barrier shattered on the forty-second cycle.
There was no sound, no beam of light shooting into the sky—only an exceedingly soft crack somewhere inside Su Li, like a fissure splitting across a sheet of ice.
Then the flood of aether poured in.
His meridians abruptly swelled, every inch of every channel being stretched open, widened, and reinforced. The Sword Spirit Root spun madly at the center of his body, compressing the incoming aether layer by layer.
The bonded short sword on his knees hummed and trembled, its forging patterns glowing with blinding brilliance.
Su Li clenched his back teeth. The ugly stability talisman in his palm gave off a gentle, low-frequency vibration, easing each wave of excess impact from the widening of his meridians.
Useful.
The thought had barely crossed his mind when the transformation inside his body was complete.
Fourth rank.
Clean and decisive—far superior to the miserable way he had rammed his way through in his previous life, after being beaten half to death by fifth-rank armor.
Su Li opened his eyes and let out a long breath. The crimson coals in the furnace hopped twice with his breath, as if responding to something.
At the same time.
A muffled thud came from the kitchen.
"Hiss—"
Saina held the temperature-controlled copper pot in both hands, bone broth for tomorrow morning still simmering inside. The strength in her hands suddenly doubled, and the pot's rim was dented beneath her five fingers.
The scalding broth sloshed inside the pot.
Saina's expression changed. Both her arms swelled, every tendon feeling as though someone were pouring molten iron into it.
But she refused to let go.