The realization did not come with a surge of adrenaline or a frantic racing of the heart. Such things were biological, and Finn was currently existing beyond the reach of biology.
Instead, it arrived as a cold, crystalline certainty — a mechanical calculation performed by a mind that had been stripped of everything except its fundamental intent.
He was holding the thread of his own existence in a state of terminal friction.
The tenth soul mass, a dormant entity that had once represented a milestone of his future power, was now nothing more than high-grade fuel. He felt it being stripped away, layer by layer, as the Great Dao's nullifying force ground against it.
In his future timeline, he would have guarded this soul mass with everything he had, but here, right now, he watched its destruction with a sense of profound, predatory liberation.
