The tail of the Void-Giant beast struck the light-bridge with the striking force of a falling continent.
BOOM-CRUSH!
The bone-shaking blast wave tore through the non-Euclidean space of the Well, throwing sheets of blinding violet fire across the dark volcano bowl. The impact did not shatter the tri-colored ribbon. But it buckled the crystal-hardened gravity like a spring-board, launching Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu off the pathway into the open void.
For three terrifying heartbeats, they were in total upright free-fall.
The air rushed past Qiao Ming’s face with the roar of a hurricane, peeling the leather hood from his collar and tearing at his oilskin coat with savage claws. Above him, the three stone avatars appeared to tilt into a spinning vortex of granite and gold. Below him, the glowing pearl-white surface of the seed-waters rushed upward with dizzying, total speed.
The wind howled through the bronze eyelets of his kit-box, whistling a shrill, shrieking chord that threatened to rupture his ears.
Yet Qiao Ming did not panic. His body did not curl into the wild fetal ball of a drowning landsman.
He was a water mapper of the Ninth Fathom. He had dived from the sheer dark rock cliffs of the Drowned Continental Shelf into the boiling vortices of the Hadal Trench. He knew that in a medium charged with ancient aether, end-post speed was no death sentence. It was an honest water-mapping vector that could be steered by an experienced diver who knew how to present his…
