Without the charred quartz metal tube bridging the terminals, the three-hundred-foot lightning spear became wildly unstable.
Deprived of even its rusted copper bypass jumper, the massive sky voltage had nowhere to flow.
CRACK-CRACK!
Stray jagged bolts of uncontrolled white static erupted from the exposed socket inside the star-fire beam. It whipped across the sky like cut high-pressure high-pressure lines.
One rogue arc struck the upper troposphere, boiling a cloud bank twenty miles wide into white-hot steam within a split second.
Another arc lashed downward against the western ridge of Tongtian Apex, shearing off a three-hundred-foot granite spire as cleanly as a hot wire cutting through cold butter.
“The heavens are shorting out!” Array Patriarch Xuan Zhen screamed, hugging the base of the porch post as blue corona discharge danced across his fingertips. “Without the Core Seal, the primal light will leap into the mortal leylines! The world-size air will ignite into a single ball of fire!”
The Heavenly Dao Avatar in the sky flailed its golden arms in desperate, self-running panic.
