The cavern heat faded as if the mountain exhaled. Lin Tian settled into his new power. Su Lan leaned against a pillar, wiping sweat from her brow.
"We must move," she rasped. "That breakthrough was far from subtle. The upper peaks will have sensed the quake."
Lin Tian extended his senses, mapping the tunnels within five hundred meters. He felt the distant machine vibrations and the pulse of geothermal energy. So this is the True Spirit Realm.
"Can we use your passage?" he asked.
"It's our only hope," she replied, stiff from exhaustion. "Inspection teams will flood these vents within an hour. Follow me."
She turned toward a narrow wall fissure. Pressing her palm against a hidden mark, she unleashed fire-aligned qi, causing the stone to shimmer and widen into a crawlspace.
"A progenitor's escape route," she said, disappearing inside. "The sect built over ancient ruins; they left back doors."
