The ninth soul ring descended. Dark red light bent three times before Bai Jin's feet, but never managed to pass its original position.
Worldless Sky-Sealing locked down the spatial coordinates of the Medicine Cavern one by one. The connection that let the cavern floor leap through the Medicine Trough to the outside route was severed first, forcing the red patterns to climb along actual cracks in the stone. They did not disappear. They still pressed toward him along the rock walls, even pushing the stone dust in the dried Blood Troughs into an arc.
An iron nail fell from an old rack and struck the ground as usual. Bai Jin had not stopped time here. What he had locked were the distorted spatial destinations. Before, the red patterns could jump straight from the cavern floor to his back. Now, every change of position had to collide with a boundary he had fixed in place.
That power tested six locations in succession. The first struck beside a stone pillar; the second landed at the cavern ceiling. Each attempt afterward came faster, until red light flashed from all four directions almost simultaneously. Bai Jin's ninth soul ring deepened in red with it. The same stream of soul power caught every boundary, leaving not a single destination through which it could slip away.
He raised his hand and pointed three times ahead. Three rocks no longer bearing pressure lifted from the ground, blocking the space between the mountain spring and the Medicine Trough. The red light touched the rocks, only to discover there was no new path there either. Bai Jin had already pressed his freed-up soul power into the deepest part beneath the furnace, reducing the outer locks to just enough to hold.
If he locked the entire Medicine Cavern and kept