The agony was not red or hot. It was blinding, buzzing white.
It struck Lin Ke at the exact center of his skull, three inches behind the bridge of his nose. There, the Niwan Palace rested suspended in living cerebrospinal fluid.
The spiritual blade didn’t cut flesh. It didn’t sever muscle or saw through bone. It split directly through the intangible fabric of his living soul, carving through the seat of his conscious ego with the razor-thin edge of an unbending exact mandate.
SLICE.
His body bucked against the oak check table with such total moving violence that the four forged brass staples groaned, twisting half an inch in their granite footings.
The three-inch oxhide straps bit into his chest and thighs, grooving his skin with dark purple bruises. His spine arched off the timber, muscles locking in a full-body tetanic seizure that drove the heels of his bare feet into the wood until the oak splintered beneath his calluses.
Live merge in progress, his internal monitor flashed, the characters warping and tearing like paper caught in an open blast fire:
The sensation was not being cut. It was being divided.
