The smell of his own blood was the only constant left in the dark.
Lin Ke sat cross-legged on the bare dark rock slab at the center of Black Crag Basin. Outside the ring of iron chains, the cooking fires of Captain Lu’s blockade squad flickered against the fog, with the dull clink of mercenary dice and the occasional drunken shout.
Lin Ke heard none of it. His sense input had been decoupled from the meatspace world.
In the quiet slaughterhouse of his mind, the first test model compiled.
Try 042.
The virtual Lin Ke started the three-phase star topology. The Crimson Yang ignited in his solar nerve web, shooting up the spinal bus at seven hundred and eighty degrees. But as the heat crested, the Ashen Bone Lattice tightened too wildly to brace against the heat surge.
CRUNCH.
His virtual chest cage caved inward like an eggshell beneath a boot. Twelve shattered ribs sliced through his lung lobes and heart-artery arch. The phantom Lin Ke drowned in his own bright red blood in two point four seconds.
