Dao Spirit’s warning echoed through Lin Xiao’s mind. Then, the pleasant, hypnotic humming of the Earth-Core Leyline Heart began to reveal a heartbreaking sour note.
Lin Xiao hovered closer, pressing his fluid membrane flat against the semi-clear diamond-jade surface. Through the direct physical contact, he no longer felt merely the grand majesty of a world-size engine. He felt its painful, tiny reality.
The surrounding heat within the ball-shaped chamber began to drop rapidly. The gentle starlight breeze grew biting and thin, carrying the dry, stone-hard chill of deep space.
The heartbeat was not steady.
Between each thumping wave of golden-azure light, there was a terrible, choking pause. The interval stretched from twelve seconds to twenty, then thirty, then forty-two seconds of total, deathly stillness. During those prolonged silences, the golden warmth draining from the crystal gave way to an icy, ashen pallor, like the fading warmth in the chest of a dying elder whose breath was slipping away.
Through his non-Newtonian membrane, Lin Xiao could feel the sound groaning of the core’s internal shape. It was the sound of millions of tiny crystal lattices groaning under unbearable earth-shaking torque, begging for relief that never arrived. In the zero-gravity void, fine specks of glowing jade dust drifted away from the sphere, sparkling like dying embers in a winter chimney.
