The terminal chamber had been very patient with them.
Thirty-one hours of patience—the formation light constant, the herbs breathing, the crown and the shadow sword waiting with the composed certainty of objects that have waited two thousand years and considered another day and a half entirely reasonable.
The construct in the gorge had stopped growing at the moment the compatibility mechanism registered and had been sitting outside the cave with the patient, enormous weight of a Nascent Soul-grade formation beast doing exactly what it had been designed to do: waiting.
Cang stood.
Both women looked at him.
"Time to collect," he said.
He took the shadow sword from the wall.
His hand closed around the hilt and the contact was—immediate.
