The scarlet sight viewports of the Precursor titan flickered wildly as its self-running threat check algorithms registered Lin Tao stepping into the center of the round hall.
An unarmored mortal youth with zero spiritual qi in his dantian.
To the machine’s cold Precursor logic, Lin Tao was an anomalous entity of negligible physical mass. But the end-post logs identified him as the main intruder responsible for the town deluge and the collapse of the outer edge defenses. Its internal targeting aiming cross locked onto Lin Tao’s chest, calculating the flight path needed to wipe out him with a single backhand sweep of its sound crushing claw. The sound cutting edges along the three bronze talons began to hum with a shrill, bone-shaking pitch that caused the air to shimmer like heated oil.
The machine shifted its entire weight onto its left bronze talon.
Its massive torso began to rotate forty-five degrees to the right, winding up its three-ton crushing claw for a devastating, end-post sweep designed to erase Lin Tao from the floorboards.
Lin Tao didn’t run.
He stood with his feet set three inches apart on the dry dark rock tiles. He held his four-inch cold-drawn steel land-mapper metal pen in his right fingers, the newly upgraded star-white-gold micro-needle poised at his center line.
