Lin Yi looked at the nearest rift. The gold border was clear, the depth-visible interior showing the white space of the processing environment rather than a destination landscape.
He looked behind him.
The third Thunder Dragon God projection had stopped.
It was hovering in the mid-atmospheric layer approximately three hundred meters back, the lightning arcs between its scales still active, its directional orientation still toward him. But it was not advancing. The event's conclusion had produced a response in the projection's operating framework, Cang Yutian's command architecture presumably carrying some instruction about what the event's end represented relative to the projection's directive.
Or the projection's own existence was tied to the expanse's operational framework and the framework's shutdown was interrupting its ability to maintain the pursuit.
Either way, it had stopped.
He looked at it for two seconds. Then he looked at the rift.
