The third Thunder Dragon God projection was not the sa as the first two.
Lin Yi had recognized this within the first hour of evasion, the data from Predatory Instinct’s continuous reading producing a threat profile that did not match what the first two had generated. The first two had been strong. The third was sothing else.
He had been thinking about why between evasion sequences, the logic assembling itself during the stretches of Boundless Step traversal where the projection’s pursuit required distance maintenance rather than active engagent. When the first projection shattered, its energy structure had not simply dissolved. He had watched it from the corner of his awareness while fighting the second, and the dissolution had a specific quality. Not the dispersal of a defeated entity returning its energy to the ambient environnt. A condensing. The energy moving from the shattered form not outward but toward the third projection still present in the engagent space.
The sa had happened when the second fell.
The third projection had absorbed the dissolved essence of the other two. Each defeated projection had added its remaining energy and structural integrity to the surviving one, the three-part formation designed not as three independent entities of equal value but as an escalating sequence where the final form was the accumulation of everything that had co before it.
Two projected forms spent as foundation material for one that carried all three projections’ combined capacity.
Of course, he had thought. Cang Yutian has been doing this for longer than I have been alive. He would not send three projections of equal value when he could send three that built toward a single purpose.
The third projection’s output was correspondingly substantial. Not the full Thunder Dragon God, but a projection carrying the condensed essence of three projections’ worth of divine beast energy, the lightning discharge between its scales running at a density that made the first two look like preliminary expressions.
The evasion was manageable. That was the fact that had sustained his situation through the day since the escape from the upper atmospheric layer. Unlike Cang Yutian’s Buddha Step, the projection’s movent operated through the space it traversed. It was fast, genuinely fast, the kind of speed that corresponded to a entity carrying divine beast energy at the condensed three-form level. But it was readable. Predatory Instinct’s enhanced range from the Dragon God’s Eye integration tracked its position and movent pattern continuously, providing enough advance notice to maintain the gap that Boundless Step’s extended chain window could sustain.
He could not fight it. The output differential, at his current state with his cooldowns cycling and his HP pool at a level that reflected the accumulated engagent cost, made direct extended engagent the losing calculation.
He could survive it.
Those were different propositions and the distinction mattered.
One day remaining in the event had beco the current day, the ambient cycle of the Allheaven Expanse’s light patterns having completed and reset, and the event’s countdown operating in the background awareness.
He ran.
The projection pursued.
He used every terrain advantage the mid-atmospheric cluster zones offered, the island formations and the bridge structures and the cave layouts providing approach angles that restricted the projection’s aerial mobility in ways that the open atmospheric layer did not.
He then drew it through formations where the lightning discharge between its scales produced interference with the surrounding island surfaces, the discharge arcing to the mineral-rich formations and montarily disrupting the projection’s trajectory. He used Absolute Silence to periodically suppress his energy signature, the Void Step Compression Stone’s reduced spatial distortion residue making the transitions between Absolute Silence intervals less detectable.
It was not a comfortable evasion. The projection’s condensed essence carried the Thunder Dragon God’s sensory skills in addition to its offensive capability, and the sensory reach was not limited to the standard detection capability that typical class monsters used. It tracked through channels that Absolute Silence did not fully suppress because those channels were not skill-activation-based perception but the passive awareness of divine beast energy existing in a space.
He maintained the gap.
Not comfortably. With the sustained attention that the evasion required and the continuous expenditure of movent skill energy that Void Step Compression Stone’s forty percent cost reduction made sustainable where it would otherwise have beco critical.
He noted the ti.
He noted the projection’s position.
He noted the terrain ahead and behind and above and below, the Predatory Instinct extended range providing the complete spatial picture that the Dragon God’s Eye had upgraded to precise spatial mapping rather than general location data.
And then the sky changed.
Not in the ambient lighting cycle way, not the gradual shift of the expanse’s internal rhythms moving through their rotation. A structural change. Multiple locations simultaneously, spread across the visible range of the expanse in every direction he could see, the air tearing open in the specific way that dinsional rifts tear open.
But not the standard hunter-system rift format. These rifts were gold-bordered, the sa gold as the event’s entry gate, the sa gold as the worldwide notice that had appeared on sixty million devices on a morning that felt much further than three months ago.
Dozens of them. Visible in every direction. Appearing simultaneously across the entire expanse, the system generating exit pathways at the event duration’s conclusion in the sa global simultaneous fashion that it had generated the entry gates when the event began.
Then, a system notification appeared.
---
[Sub-Class Awakening Event — Duration Complete]
[The three-month collection period has concluded.]
[All participants are directed to exit through the nearest designated rift.]
[Inside the rift, your jade count will be assessed and your Sub-Class Awakening result will be determined.]
[You have 10 minutes to locate and enter a designated exit rift.]
[The Allheaven Expanse will close after this period. Any participant remaining inside after closure will be extracted automatically.]
---
He looked at the nearest rift. The gold border was clear, the depth-visible interior showing the white space of the processing environnt rather than a destination landscape.
He looked behind him.
The third Thunder Dragon God projection had stopped.
User Comments
0 comments from readers