The bottleneck of the universe was a piece of mulberry paper.
For thirty thousand years, the Ministry of Thunder operated on a synchronous dispatch loop. A mortal fighter in the lower realms crossed the threshold into Core Formation or Nascent Soul. Each time, the spiritual rupture generated an instant inbound packet.
A bell rang at a scribe’s desk. The scribe picked up a wolf-hair brush, drew forty complex lightning runes with his own spiritual blood, stamped the document. Then he shoved it into an air-powered bronze chute.
If the mortal breakthrough occurred while the scribe was dipping his brush, the packet stalled.
If ten thousand mortals broke through at the same time during a sky solstice, the queue choked. Scribes were forced to draw at superhuman speeds until their eye vessels burst and their dantians withered from tiredness.
“It’s a single-threaded blocking process,” Lin Ke muttered, pacing the floor of the secret underground workshop. “Every incoming request locks the entire desk until the manual execution finishes. It’s primitive. It’s barbaric.”
“What else can we do?” Shen Yue asked, her face pale as she sat before eight blank jade slips. “Magic charm magic needs intent. You can’t fire a Heavenly Sky-trial without conscious spiritual posture.”
