The four hundred thousand void locusts dropped through the high stratosphere like a howling black tornado. Their serrated hard-shelled wings sliced through the thin air at more than four times the speed of sound, each beat emitting micro-fractures of reality-eroding static that stripped the surrounding light from the sky. To the hive mind, this dropping wedge was a routine eradication protocol—a simple swipe of an entropic cloth to clear away a negligible speck of living moisture.
Seventy thousand paces above the earth, Lin Xiao watched the dark funnel plunge toward him.
His semi-clear eyes curved into gentle crescents, utterly devoid of fear or tension. Instead of summoning a wall of golden spirit magic charms, conjuring protective draconic scales, or igniting a blazing barrier of heavenly flame, the little blue slime simply took a deep, relaxing breath.
“Dao Spirit,” Lin Xiao communicated internally, feeling his jelly-like core begin to hum with rhythmic, fluid life-force. “Do you remember what my high school physics teacher said about water’s skin?”
“Host is referring to the cohesive forces between liquid molecules at a screen,” the Dao Spirit’s cool voice chimed smoothly. “In standard mortal physics, water’s skin allows certain insects to walk across pond water and creates ball-shaped droplets due to the minimization of surface energy. However, Host’s physical matrix is composed of unbound Primordial Chaos fluid, which possesses an infinite elastic modulus and zero atom-deep rupture limits.”
