Secretary Li brought over a chair and sat outside to wait, coming in twice to bring water.
Each time, he saw Lin Mo in exactly the same position, crouching with his back bent, his eyes fixed on the floor and the brush in his hand perfectly steady.
Two hours passed.
After three hours, Lin Mo finally straightened up and took a long stretch.
Without his third-order physique holding up, an ordinary person maintaining such an intensely focused, bent-over crouch would probably have wrecked himself, and his wife would have complained.
He stepped back a few paces and inspected the floor.
The thirty-meter-diameter Magic Array lay fully laid out across the metal floor.
Lin Mo brushed the powder off his hands, walked out through the door, and said,
"Done."
Secretary Li sprang out of his chair.
"Is it ready? Thank you for your hard work, Commander Lin."
The array was finished. The next step was to cast the spell and open the portal.
Secretary Li ordered the staff to pump out the air.
The inner airtight door closed, its sealing locks engaging.
At the control console, an operator activated the vacuum pumps.
A low mechanical hum sounded, continuing for over ten minutes before gradually weakening and finally falling silent.
The air pressure reading on the panel kept dropping.
It approached zero.
"Vacuum confirmed. Chamber pressure is below 0.001 pascals," the operator reported.
Secretary Li turned to Lin Mo.
"Commander Lin, you can suit up now."
The staff wheeled over a spacesuit rack.
The entire spacesuit had smooth lines that followed the contours of the human body.
Its outer layer was made of some kind of composite material, hard yet resilient to the touch, with precision articulation mechanisms at the joints. It was a dark gray bordering on black, its surface covered