The third Thunder Dragon God projection was not the same 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 something 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 engagement. 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 environment. A condensing. The energy moving from the shattered form not outward but toward the third projection still present in the engagement space.
