The white light washed over the foundation keel like an ocean of liquid fire.
Wedged deep within the narrow three-sided seam, Lin Tao pressed his face against the freezing Precursor bedrock. Beside him, Tie Shan lay curled into an unmoving ball of muscle and iron. His right arm was locked around his fourteen-pound pry-bar. His chin was tucked hard against his collarbone.
There was no sound of impact, no thunderous explosion, and no rush of air.
The Garbage Collector was not an explosion. It was a total absence of sound. The searing white soft glow wrapped around the outer edges of the keel. Then, all surrounding noise ceased entirely. The buzzing static of the void, the hum of the star-iron girder, and the rhythm of their own breathing were swallowed by a choking, high-pressure silence that pressed against their ears like lead weights.
Through his closed eyelids, Lin Tao saw the world turn blinding, blazing bright white.
The raycast algorithm was executing.
The wall of light swept over the massive Precursor keel. Its self-running sensors probed the outer shape for orphaned entities. But the foundation keel was an officially registered piece of the land-wide public works. Because of that, the garbage collector identified the outer polygon as a valid system object.
