Five days.
The specific, compressed quality of a duration that had delivered half the distance — five thousand kilometers of outer forest behind them, the particular, accumulated weight of everything those kilometers had contained sitting in the body and the cultivation state and the specific, changed quality of the group that had covered them. Tommy's runes denser. Ambrose's sword work sharper. The All Heavens Mandate's circulation running beneath everything with the patient, sustained quality of a process that had not stopped for a single engagement or a single camp or a single night of whatever the outer forest had decided to send in their direction.
Five thousand kilometers remaining....
Five days to cover them, by the specific, honest arithmetic of the pace they had established and the distance they had demonstrated was possible.
The last stretch.
