The smell of boiling water and bitter tea leaves was the only mortal thing left in the universe.
In the vast, shadowed BIOS vault of Epoch Zero, the four-hour countdown timer on the meteorite console ticked down with silent, exact inevitability:
Lin Ke sat on a flat black glass flat stone slab, his back resting against the base of Meng Shan’s massive slab shield.
His physical condition was a medical nightmare:
A compound fracture in his left forearm, held together by hardwood splints and resin.
A snapped left collarbone and five fractured ribs.
Third-degree burns across both forearms and hands, the skin carbonized down to the muscle tissue.
And deep within his torso, thousands of micro-fractures spiderwebbed along the glassy glass walls of his spirit veins, streaming a dull, nonstop ache that felt like powdered quartz grinding inside his veins.
