The silence inside Lin Ke’s chest was heavier than a falling mountain.
The screaming frequencies had collapsed. But the sheer crushing weight packed within his lower dantian was bending his internal sense of space. Every tiny fraction of an inch of his flesh felt as though it had been cast in solid lead and chilled in freezing liquid. His heartbeat was a painful, sluggish thud that echoed through his glassy bones like a muffled war drum.
Suspended two feet above the white quartz dais. His muscles remained was locked in rigid, crystal-clear tension.
Around his floating frame, the six ephemeral soul shadows hovered in a precise circle. Their semi-clear forms flickered at a steady, timed together rhythm. Their one-hundred-and-eighty-second watchdog timers were at eighty-two seconds. Each shadow was pouring its dedicated processing bandwidth into holding the six incoming ancient streams in total spatial balance.
Below him, Meng Shan slowly raised his head, his face caked in gray soot and flaking stone skin.
“Lin Ke?” Meng Shan rumbled, his voice barely more than a dry rasp. “Is it done?”
“Don’t move,” Shen Yue warned sharply, her hand catching Meng Shan’s shoulder. Her twin brushes were poised, ink shimmering with defensive wards. “Look at the core field around him. The potential isn’t faded away. It’s suspended at zero speed. A single perturbation will trigger an inward collapse.”
