Blood dripped from both of Lin Ke’s ears, hot and thin against the freezing flesh of his neck.
The sonic scream from the multi-faced monster didn’t rattle his ears. It rang directly inside his skull. It shook his Sea of Mind like a jar of water struck by an iron hammer. In his lower belly, the Nine-Turn Glass Core spun in wild, uneven wobbles, its clean crystal-clear ringing tones fractured by the multi-tonal psychic howl. Every tooth in his jaw throbbed with a dull, leaden ache that made swallowing feel like grinding broken glass against his throat.
“Lin Ke!” Shen Yue screamed.
Her voice sounded distant, sunk under ten feet of icy water.
Ten paces ahead, Meng Shan roared as the blast wave struck his position. The massive Foundation Establishment earth-tank didn’t buckle at the knees, but his nose and mouth gushed dark, clotted blood that froze instantly as it struck his chest plate.
The entity didn’t strike with physical stone or steel. It pointed its long, rotting burial sleeve at Meng Shan, and three dozen semi-clear spirit daggers shot from the open silk. The daggers passed straight through Meng Shan’s iron-hard metal tower shield as if thirty pounds of dressed dark rock were nothing more than morning fog.
