The bone-shaking blast wave blew the wooden lantern from its wall hook, shattering the glass pool into sharp shards across the flat stone slabs.
Above the underground ceiling, a grinding shriek of collapsing timber and snapped iron signaled the end of the Outer Barbican. Three hundred tons of green limestone had just pancaked into the defensive moat. He took the outer drawbridge and the western sally-port with it.
The defensive arrays were down to thirty-two percent.
Through the crack in the iron doorframe, Lin Ke could hear the shrill screaming of brass alarm whistles echoing down the halls, mixed with the wild shouts of supply runners hauling dry brimstone bags toward the backup walls.
Time was up. The confinement solenoid was designed, but the timing exact timing patch still needed compilation.
If the crash latency remained unpatched, having a magnetic bottle would mean nothing. The asynchronous race condition would blow the bottle apart from the inside before the magnetic flux could even stabilize.
Lin Ke leaned his head against the stone base, took three slow, controlled breaths to drop his heart rate. Then he closed his eyes.
Tianfu branch sim/safety lock-ring, he commanded.
