High above the Azure Cloud Realm, eighty thousand paces above the mortal earth, the vast sapphire ceiling held firm.
Beneath that semi-clear eight-thousand-half-mile canopy, thirty-nine million five hundred thousand void locusts and ten thousand three hundred and ninety-nine Void Dreadnoughts were trapped in a state of escalating cosmic panic. The dark vessels buzzed like angry hornets trapped inside a glass lantern, their spatial thrusters blasting streams of gray static against the elastic blue walls, unable to find a single opening back into the deep void.
At the center of this world-size dome, Lin Xiao decided that waiting for the food to drift into his mouth was far too slow.
“Dao Spirit,” Lin Xiao communicated, feeling his core bubbling with cheerful energy. “If you sit at a buffet table and wait for the waiters to bring the platters to your seat, you only get whatever happens to wander past. But if you get up, grab a plate, and walk along the stations, you can pick out all the best bites yourself.”
“Host is proposing an active foraging pattern,” the Dao Spirit replied smoothly. “Moving analysis indicates that concentrating twenty-five percent of Host’s fluid mass into a ball-shaped moving orb will maximize sweep smooth speed across the high-sky pocket. Heat waste during bouncing maneuvers will be offset by instant ingestion yields.”
