The final ten minutes of the two-hour tournament clock began to count down relentlessly on the floating crystal ledgers of the Celestial Hall. The dense, white-gold medicine fog from Tony Clark's platform had drifted across the entire front arena, turning the space into a shrouded, heavily charged zone.
Tony sat perfectly still before his massive Sovereign Void Cauldron, his standard lazy posture completely restored under the folds of his dark hunting cloak. His right hand remained lightly draped over the runic rim of the black dragon-bone furnace. His dark eyes, glinting with a sharp, predatory intensity, slowly opened as his Truth Eye registered that the liquid gold herbal matrix inside had reached the absolute peak of structural runic separation.
