The corpse of the Primordial Uncanny Source dissolved into a sea of hissing black grease.
Thirty thousand units of ancient malice swirled above the shattered dark rock throne of the World Core. It screamed with the dying shrieks of ten thousand ancient calamities.
The underground chamber, suspended twenty thousand li beneath the land-wide crust, trembled on the brink of load-bearing collapse.
Earth-shaking plates groaned in the darkness above.
Miles of white-gold crystal-clear strata had shattered into jagged giant pillars. He drifted weightlessly in the broken gravity pull of the world-size center.
Without the Ancient Source holding the ancient corruption together, the dying heart of the world was bleeding its leftover heat into the void.
The heat in the vast core chamber was plunging by fifty degrees every heartbeat.
If the core froze, the land-wide mantle above would snap like brittle glass. He cast the thirty-six provinces of mortal men into the eternal dark of the outer void.
