The SIGKILL order issued by the Precursor firmware didn’t take a split second to propagate. It was carried out at hardware speed—the speed of spark current crossing a superconductor.
In less than two nanoseconds, the Sovereign Engine cut the execution thread connecting Supreme Sword Saint Du Cang to the Nine-Peak Sword Domain.
The body backlash was instant and total.
A fighter spends five hundred years binding his spiritual soul to a weapon. Then, the weapon becomes an externalized lobe of his own nervous system. To wildly sever that connection while the weapon is trapped in an infinite looping loop is equivalent to ripping out half the lower brain with a pair of red-hot blacksmith’s tongs.
On the summit of the Seventh Peak, Du Cang’s body arched wildly off the stone.
CRACK-CRACK!
The sound was not external thunder. It was the terrifying, internal snapping of seventy-two major spiritual spirit veins bursting at the same time under high-pressure shock. Refined spiritual blood—thick, golden, and boiling with five hundred years of sword-will—erupted from every pore of Du Cang’s skin. That turned his white crane-feather robes into a sodden shroud of crimson and gold.
A fountain of black gut-deep blood erupted from his mouth, spraying across the granite in a three-foot arc. The blood was clotted with dark, rotting tissue from his stomach lining, the body consequence of severe automatic shock.
