The emerald torrent of the subterranean waterfall crashed down upon Ye Chen’s bare skull with the weight of falling timber.
He sat cross-legged on the submerged basalt boulder, his knees locked against the surging current as the boiling sludge rose to his collarbones. There was no golden interface hovering in his peripheral vision, no algorithmic buffer to soften the intake, and no automated health meter to warn him when his cellular walls approached their breaking threshold.
He drew in a deep breath through his clenched teeth, opening every pore in his chest to draw the violent, unrefined Chaos Qi directly into his fractured meridian channels.
Gulp... hiss... roar.
The unrefined mire did not enter his body as a smooth stream of spiritual energy; it struck his central channels like a r
