The sensation of turning into dry parchment was worse than the explosion.
Inside the fourteenth mental test model, Lin Ke watched his own forearms shrivel like salted plums in an oven. The skin turned grey, then yellow, sinking into the grooves between his forearm bone and radius until the bones projected like bare driftwood on a winter mudflat.
Every drop of moisture, every gram of stored energy in his liver, every rich fat molecule in his deep marrow was being sucked upward through his spine by a relentless, insatiable empty pocket.
In the test model, the detached astral soul hovered twenty paces above the courtyard. It glowed with majestic, crystal-clear majesty. It felt glorious. It felt omnipotent.
And beneath it, Lin Ke’s physical corpse sat frozen in lotus stance, fully desiccated, its heart an empty, brittle walnut rattling in a hollow ribs.
One hundred and eighty simulated seconds. Total living shutdown.
Lin Ke snapped back to reality with a violent shudder that nearly threw him off the wicker stool.
He clutched his ribs. He dragged in great gulps of air that tasted of dried sage and bitter pine-resin. His throat burned with phantom dehydration. His tongue felt swollen and thick, coated in invisible ash.
