The stench of rotting marrow and black venom was three inches from Lin Ke’s face.
The serrated teeth of Chi Lian’s twin sickles had already parted the fabric of his shirt. A thin line of red welled across Lin Ke’s collarbone as the icy steel of the upper blade kissed the skin, ready to sever his neck-vein and neck-artery in a single, fluid scissor-stroke.
A full-power star-fire lance was suicide.
At a distance of three paces, a standard 128-byte star-fire beam would release an omnidirectional heat back-blast of more than three thousand degrees. The bone-shaking wave would turn to steam Chi Lian’s torso. But it would also burn up Lin Ke’s face, melt his eyes, and blow his already-shredded shoulder off his skeleton.
He needed a razor knife, not a cannon.
In the heartbeat between the blade touching his skin and the muscle completing its cut, Lin Ke’s thoughts split into a split-second execution thread.
Modulate packet share-out, his mind commanded.
Drop quantum payload from 128 bytes to 32 bytes.
