The violet lightning pillar died away into the settling steam, leaving only the smell of charred stone and ozone in the cave air.
Lin Ke didn’t stand up to admire the view.
The moment the breakthrough completed, the living debt that had been deferred by fight-or-flight rush, emergency tonics, and sheer willpower arrived at once.
His knees buckled. His spine hit the rusted iron floor of the narrow high walkway, his cheek slamming into a pool of greasy, lukewarm water.
His physical meat was broken.
The Late Foundation runtime—Version 1.4 LTS—was humming cleanly inside his core. But the living container holding the software had been pushed through a meat grinder.
Lin Ke closed his eyes, his breathing shallow, wet, and rattling with tiredness.
The cold and exact reality scrolled across his vision in unsparing, brutal clarity:
