The iron bell at the entrance to Peace River Town hung from an old locust tree so thick that three people together could not encircle it with their arms. Cast from pig iron, the bell had a pitted surface, and its walls were densely engraved with words-not Cloud Script, but the names of generations of townspeople. Whenever a family welcomed a child, someone would strike the bell and carve their name into it. The bell mallet was a wrist-thick length of peachwood, so heavy that it took real strength to swing.
The first day Serina picked up the mallet, she nearly threw out her back.
"It's not about brute force." Wujiu stood behind her, resting his hand on the wrist holding the mallet. "The Frequency Law isn't a burst of chakra. It's resonance. You have to find the bell's 'resonance point'-the spot where its wall is thinnest and the vibration is cleanest."
Guiding her hand, he pressed the mallet against a spot slightly above the middle of the bell's wall. "Can you feel it?"
Serina closed her eyes. The sinking light in her left shoulder pulsed faintly, and the golden light inside the fragment pulsed along with it. She could "feel" an incredibly subtle weak point inside the bell's wall-not physically thin, but "empty" in frequency. It was like the seven-beat cycle she had heard in the culvert in the Land of Waves: there was a natural pause between each beat.
"That's the comma." Wujiu let go. "Strike there."
She swung the peachwood mallet and struck that spot.
Clang-
The bell did not produce the ear-splitting sound she had imagined. It was like a stone dropped into a deep pool, sending ripples outward, ring after ring. She opened her eyes and saw the ripples of its sound spreading through the