The silence from the Netherworld bus was ear-splitting.
On the central console, a massive tracking data gauge pulsed in violent, alarming amber:
Fifty-eight minutes.
Through the telepathic monitoring feed, Lin Ke could see the staggering horror across three thousand mortal realms:
In funeral halls, departing souls hovered above their corpses, unable to dissolve, drifting like pale, confused lanterns trapped between the planes.
In birthing rooms, midwives held newborn babies upside down, slapping their backs, weeping in despair as the infants lay limp, unable to draw their first breath. That was because the cosmic soul pool had zero free execution threads.
“The wheel has stopped turning,” Shen Yue whispered. Her hands shook as she lowered her brushes. “If the thread pool starves, every soul in limbo will suffer permanent dissociation. They will turn into wandering ghosts without memory.”
“The legacy scheduler was hardcoded with a priority inversion bug,” Lin Ke said. He leaned over the console.
