A physical object fell from a height of eighty thousand feet in the upper stratosphere. Then, physics demanded a dramatic and violent spectacle.
Mortal projectiles scholars knew that any chunk of rock, metal, or frozen ice dropping from the roof of the sky would speed up toward end-post speed in seconds. Sky friction would strip away its outer layers in howling ribbons of white-hot star-fire. A roaring sonic boom would rattle the foundations of the earth. And the impact upon the mortal soil would carve a blazing bright crater forty arm-lengths deep, throwing up pillars of boiling dust and shattering ancient trees for leagues in every direction.
Lin Xiao, however, didn’t fall according to the laws of mortal projectiles.
He fell according to the laws of an overstuffed, thoroughly contented blue jelly dumpling drifting lazily toward an afternoon nap.
As gravity took hold of his forty-inch sapphire body, Lin Xiao didn’t plummet like a stone. The unbound Primordial Chaos fluid composing his mass adjusted its wind-cutting thickness with easy, gut grace. Instead of cutting through the air like an arrow, he flattened slightly at the bottom. It stretched into a smooth, hemispherical parachute of floating blue gel that caught the rising high-sky heat currents like a dandelion seed dancing on a warm summer breeze.
