"My choice is—"
Murphy closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, he had formed his Golden Core.
The Golden Core: perfectly round and brilliantly radiant, as constant as the moon and as ascendant as the sun.
The inner landscape congeals, opening a path to the outer world; the soul and spirit unite, giving birth to yin and yang.
Crimson light erupted from Murphy's body, like a flood bursting through a dam, a volcano erupting, a thousand suns rising at once within the cocoon.
The light surged past the cocoon's walls, flooding over plains, hills, and rivers, dyeing the entire land crimson.
The villagers sleeping within their cocoons began to glow faintly in the light, like lamps being lit one by one.
Light poured from their bodies, converging into Murphy, then surged out of him once more—a back and forth, like the tides.
His power multiplied by thousands, by tens of thousands of times.
Things that had once required all his effort could now be done with a single thought.
