When Frank pulled the cast-iron master disconnect lever, the sound was not explosive.
It was a heavy, clockwork CLUNK. The sound of an eight-hundred-amp double-throw knife switch dropping open on a heavy-duty breaker panel.
In that exact heartbeat, the universe broke its own rules.
Every source of light across three billion square miles of the Jiuzhou Mortal Plane was put out at the same time.
The midday sun didn’t set or dim behind clouds. It simply vanished, as if someone had flicked off a light switch in a windowless warehouse.
The moon, the stars, the shimmering auroras, the glowing lanterns of five mortal empires, the crackling hearths in four hundred million peasant cottages, and even the glowing spiritual auras streaming from five hundred thousand fighters snapped into total, total blackness.
It wasn’t ordinary nighttime darkness.
It was a deep-sea, ancient void. A zero-state of existence where photons ceased to be generated by the physics engine.
