The test ping took four split seconds to travel up the silver wire, cross the void. Then it hit the legacy upkeep socket.
The rejection came back in two.
Lin Ke felt the backlash physically—a thin, stinging needle of static-electric voltage snapping across his Laogong acupoint, blackening the rim of his fingernail.
He didn’t pull his hand away.
He stayed knelt in the frozen grit of the black glass shelf, his eyes closed, breathing the thin, cold air in shallow sips.
“What happened?” Shen Yue asked.
She was sitting three paces away on an upturned wicker supply basket, cleaning the red stone residue from her third brush.
“The array gave off an azure spark. It smelled like scorched sulfur.”
