The descent of the continent blocked out every star and every shadow.
The sonic boom reached Lin Ke first. Not through his ears, but through the dark rock floor beneath his boots, a high-pitched shaking that melted the mortar between the stone blocks and turned loose gravel to dust. The sky shifted weight pushed down like a lead weight of ten mountain-crushing pressure, threatening to crush the breath from human ribs.
Fifty paces ahead, Meng Shan’s backup shields shattered.
The three-inch-thick slabs of forged iron-hard metal snapped into jagged ribbons as the unallocated void pressed down, the void horrors’ blank white mass threatening to swallow the entire command staff into an addressless grave.
Meng Shan was driven to his knees, his broken jaw dripping blood into the dust, his thick, calloused hands clutching the splintered handles of his main inner wall as his earth channels strained against the crushing overhead tonnage.
“Master Lin!” Shen Yue’s scream was lost in the sky roar as her protective paper magic charms were burned up by raw squeezing friction.
Lin Ke didn’t jump. He didn’t run.
He took a single, measured stride forward. His new body moved with eerie, terrifying grace—zero wind-cutting rough churning, zero drag, zero sound.
