The pressure didn’t drop from above. It inflated the air inside their skulls.
Every drop of moisture in Lin Ke’s mouth evaporated in an instant. The golden dark shape before them was not emitting spiritual pressure in any mortal sense. It was an ontological firewall, streaming a field of total load-bearing denial.
“Move back!” Lin Ke shouted, but the sound of his voice was swallowed whole by the roaring empty pocket of the daemon’s presence.
The Arch-Daemon raised its golden headsman’s blade.
The blade was twenty feet of solid, unbending axiomatic law. Around its edge spun runes of Pre-Compiled Heavenly Judgment. Attacks that didn’t travel through space, but resolved instantly as completed, fatal state changes.
Branch, Lin Ke’s mind screamed.
In the test model, Lin Ke tried to transmit an office handshake, flashing root clearance tokens derived from his bare-metal Glass Spirit veins.
The Arch-Daemon didn’t even parse the packet.
