The failed purge command was the final straw that broke the Nine-Dragon Barrier’s internal heat-powered balance.
Deprived of math cycles to manage its heat fading away grids, Dragon Core 05 entered total load-bearing breakdown. It held the western anchor above the Jagged Ridge. The fifty-league phantom of solidified amber energy began to shriek. Its scales shook so wildly that sound waves shattered the stone low roof walls of the western watchtowers.
Lin Tao raised his left hand, tapping his temple to monitor the tracking data of the dying core.
Thread focus has dropped to zero, Lin Tao recorded in silent, cold and exact care. Core 05 has lost its phase lock with the central clock. Its internal holding field is collapsing under uncontrolled heat runaway.
High in the western sky, Dragon Core 05 simply tore apart.
It didn’t explode with a single moving blast. Instead, its forty-league body dissolved into a blinding shower of millions of sparkling golden embers that cascaded through the upper air like a waterfall of liquid stars. The falling light was beautiful, terrible, and fully inert. The pure, unformatted life-energy of eight hundred thousand stolen spirit stones returning to the natural world.
As Core 05 dissolved, the leftover eight dragons shuddered wildly.
