The stench of unwashed grave-dirt and stale ether rolled off the black rune in choking waves.
Lin Ke stared into the heart of Conflict #0001.
Through the telepathic cluster link, a terrifying tracking data stream filled his vision: the tracking data of the Netherworld Samsara Engine, grinding along at 99.98% memory capacity.
Across the three thousand mortal realms below, the horror was already unfolding in real time.
Infants were being born into mortal cribs with dull, hollow eyes. Babies who couldn’t cry, couldn’t nurse, and possessed only a tiny sliver of fractured soul-stuff. That was because the cosmic registry had run out of free memory addresses to allocate to new life.
“Look at the pointer tree,” Lin Ke whispered, his voice hoarse with rage. “It’s not an energetic drought. It’s an uncollected memory leak.”
For ten billion years, ancient fighters had cultivated immortality.
When they attained the Heavenly Dao, they took pride in ‘severing their karmic ties’. Which in practice meant severing their soul’s return pointer back to the rebirth pool.
