The star-white-gold collar clicked flush against the stone stand. Then, the universe ceased to exist as physical space.
To Lin Tao’s senses, the physical walls of the Singularity Well, the glowing starlight of the slow buildup disk, and the massive, grounded frame of Tie Shan standing at his side dissolved into an ocean of pure, blinding exact stonework. It wasn’t a mystical vision or a spiritual illusion. It was the raw, unrendered data layer of reality flooding directly into his augmented left eye nerve.
A violent surge of spark current crackled through the six-sided shaft of the metal pen.
Lin Tao’s teeth clenched so hard his jaw muscles screamed. Every nerve ending in his right arm flared with the searing sensation of liquid copper being injected into his veins. His pulse spiked from fifty-four beats per minute to one hundred and ten in the span of three frames. Yet deep within his lower belly, the permanent zero-byte Dantian Buffer acted as a perfect, iron-hard insulating wall. The massive spark surge could find no pool to fill, no spiritual channels to rupture, and no spirit veins to burn.
The energy had nowhere to go except across the ground line, discharging harmlessly into the massive star-white-gold chassis of the dais with a sharp, crackling snap of ozone.
