The copper taste of burnt copper and ozone stayed heavy on the back of Lin Ke’s tongue.
His chest rose and fell in ragged, shuddering gasps. Every breath dragged the stink of charred specters and flash-boiled cooling broth deep into his scorched lungs. Beneath his ribs, his Nine-Turn Glass Core spun down from redline speed. He settled into a cold, rhythmic pulse that sent needle-sharp twinges of phantom pain through his glassy spirit veins.
Beside the central routing console, the air still shone where Ghost Sovereign Gu had been torn apart.
Four ephemeral threads had self-destructed at the exact tick of their one-hundred-and-eighty-second watchdog timer. The soul-cleansing blast had left no ash, no bone, and no spectral residue. Only a hollow empty pocket in the local spiritual field that slowly filled with the sterile, hum of the precursor machine room.
Lin Ke slid his left hand into his sleeve. His thumb found the cold, square head of his iron metal pen. He pressed the needle-sharp tip hard into the calloused whorls of his thumb pad until a crimson bead welled against the gray steel.
The sharp, living pain cut clean through the phantom ringing in his skull.
“Branch checked,” he whispered under his breath. He felt the warm trickle of blood ground him to the stone beneath his boots. “Main.”
