The terrace was dead silent save for the dripping of rain from shattered roof edges.
The cyan crystal-clear form of Node 1 drifted down toward the kneeling physical vessel of Colin Shaw. With a brief, four-byte exact timing handshake, the astral daemon slipped smoothly through the skull, reconnecting to the Ren-Du bus.
Node 0’s living vitals rebooted.
Lin Ke opened his eyes. He drew in a sharp, ragged breath that pulled at the fractured ribs on his left side. The pain was real, sharp, and grounding. But Apothecary He was already at his side, wrapping cold linen bandages soaked in bone-knitting paste tightly around his torso.
Lin Ke leaned his left arm on Meng Shan’s iron-clad shoulder, finding his footing on the slick flat stone slabs.
Across the terrace, Merchant Prince Zhao Wuji was cowering behind his four-horse sandalwood carriage.
His stitched silk robes were spattered with mud, his sable collar torn. His fingers trembled so wildly he could barely hold the black lacquered scroll case.
“Y-You murdered an Imperial Patriarch!” Zhao shrieked, his voice rising to an ear-splitting squeak as he brandished the royal seizure writ like a wooden sword. “The Grand Imperial Court will dispatch an entire Legion of Iron Censors! Azure Cloud Sect will be razed to the bedrock! Your souls will be harvested to the ninth generation!”
