The tearing didn’t start in his mind. It started in the marrow of his collarbones.
Colin Shaw had run mental simulations in the sandbox. Then, death had arrived with the crisp, painless abstraction of a stack trace: a flash of red light, a sensation of falling, and an end-post prompt reporting an exit code.
Meatspace had no exit codes.
Meatspace had three hundred million nerve endings screaming all at once as seven years of living tissue were forcibly dissolved in reverse chronological order.
In the granite basin, Lin Ke’s physical body went rigid as iron.
Every vein in his neck, forearms, and thighs swelled to the thickness of heavy twine. That turned a bruised, violent indigo beneath the pale skin. Then, with a sickening, heard shluck, the pressure reversed.
Every drop of refined spiritual fluid circulating through his three hundred and sixty-five minor channels was dragged backward toward his lower dantian in a violent, total bubbling blast wave.
It felt as though someone had hooked a heavy-duty empty pocket pump to his navel. Then it pulled the trigger.
