The interference field didn’t manifest as visible light. It showed up as the distortion of physical space.
Tie Shan locked the final cable clamp on the thirtieth star-copper shunt. Then, the spark pushback of the entire summit plateau dropped to zero point zero four ohms. The sixty paces of dark rock became the backup winding of a huge, open-air transformer. Above the peak, the dry thundercloud layer—spanning forty leagues across the stratosphere—reacted to the massive ground plane with terrifying static-electric attraction.
The air pressure plummeted another four tenths of an air.
Lin Tao, kneeling inside the quarantine sandbox, felt the ears in his skull pop wildly. A thin trickle of dark blood escaped his left ear canal, dripping down his jawline to freeze against the collar of his linen tunic. Even inside the soundless container, the huge air-pressure drop forced cold air out of his bloodstream, causing a dull, throbbing ache across his hardened collar bone and the joints of his knees.
He ignored the physical strain, his gaze fixed on the tracking data readout.
Sixty-four thousand gauss, Lin Tao analyzed internally, his analytical mind studying the physics with cold care. The circulating eddy currents inside the bedrock are generating an alternating magnetic field that rivals the core of an MRI scanner. And look at the ringing noise hum: eighty-three point three kilohertz. The exact carrier hum of the daemon’s exact timing bus.
