That sound did not come from the surface of the barrier, but from "inside" the barrier.
Like a gigantic bell being struck, its toll spreading through the air from the bell itself into every direction.
But it was not a bell toll.
A bell toll was crisp, resonant, lingering.
This was a "drumbeat."
Low, heavy, like seismic waves rising from the depths of the earth.
The booming reverberated through the chests of the six.
Chu Ming's heart quivered faintly with the boom. Its rhythm was drawn along by the sound, slowing from once per breath to 0.8 times per breath. It was not an attack, but "resonance."
His body found its resonant frequency within the booming.
The ring detached from the barrier's surface.
Not "detached" as though one object had fallen from another.
Falling meant being pulled down by gravity, with acceleration and impact.
It instead "floated" away.
Like a feather lifted from a tabletop by the wind—slowly, lightly, silently.
The ring hovered in midair.
It rotated slowly at the height of Chu Ming's chest.
With every rotation, the ring's diameter doubled.
From palm-sized to millstone-sized.
As they expanded, the runes stretched, their distinct shapes turning into blurred spots of light.
The colors of those light spots faded as they spread, shifting from dark to pale, from pale to transparent.
From millstone-sized to house-sized.
Those light spots went from blurred to invisible.
They had not vanished; they had been "diluted."
Like a drop of ink falling into a basin of water—the ink was still there, but you could not find where it was, because it had dispersed throughout the entire basin. From house-sized, it expanded until it covered the whole area.
The ring's boundary vanished into the colorless chaos.
Standing inside the ring, you could not see its edge, because