The clearing remained wrapped around in total silence, save for the low, low, deep drone of the Precursor Relic and the whistling mountain wind.
The armored corpse stood before Lin Tao and Tie Shan. Its chin was held high, its milky white eyes staring blankly at the southern horizon. Its stance was no longer the hunched, hungry slouch of a reanimated ghoul. It was the rigid, unbending stance of an elite palace guard standing guard before an emperor’s throne.
Lin Tao stepped to the front of the iron-puppet, inspecting the physical screen.
The star-iron pin in the corpse’s neck was no longer humming with chaotic static. The Precursor Relic’s steady carrier wave had overwritten the lingering leftover flux. It locked the receiver into a clean, zero-jitter exact timing state.
Latency to endpoint: zero point one four split seconds, Lin Tao noted with deep satisfaction. The direct radio-hum link through the star-white-gold needle is twenty times faster than the deacon’s analog silk threads. Deacon Wu manipulated this unit. Then, his nerve impulses had to travel through his physical arm, down a braided silk thread, and into the pin. A clockwork delay of nearly thirty split seconds. Our override is instant.
“Does it obey you now?” Tie Shan asked, resting his hands atop his twelve-pound pry-bar.
