The return to bare metal was as smooth as silk sliding over polished glass.
Node 1 dropped through the solid mountain stone, hovering for half a breath above the seated physical frame of Lin Ke on the black glass anvil. With a simple, non-blocking execution of the four-stage handshake, the cyan crystal-clear figure sank back into the skull.
No soul-shiver. No convulsions. No fractured teeth.
The exact timing completed in zero-point-zero-three split seconds.
Lin Ke’s physical eyes opened.
He stood up from the stone slab with a single, fluid motion that carried neither pause nor stiffness.
The lingering burns across his belly had ceased weeping. It was sealed by a fresh layer of dense, tough scar tissue heavy by high-hum sky Qi.
His glassy glass spirit veins—once brittle and constantly on the verge of explosive heat shock—now hummed at a relaxed, easy idle. The excess heat that had threatened to melt his dantian for months was gone, nonstop vented and load-balanced between his physical organs and the detached astral compute daemon running behind his brow.
