Inside the frozen stillness of the southern border canyon, physical time slowed to an absolute crawl under the crushing weight of the spatial lock.
The curved crimson edge of Lord Xue Ying’s blood scythe remained suspended a single millimeter from Ye Chen’s throat, its polished steel reflecting the microscopic dust motes hanging motionless in the dead air.
Behind Ye Chen, the terrified grimaces on the faces of Han Ping and young Zhang Yue were locked into place like stone carvings, while across the gravel ridge, fifteen mutated blood hounds hovered mid-stride with strings of red saliva frozen like glass beads between their fangs.
Within the deep recesses of Ye Chen’s mind, the newly initialized System V2.0 interface expanded into an interlocking array of crystalline violet obsidian pane
