The Whisperer's jump was almost unnervingly smooth. There was none of the wrenching vertigo they had felt when the Dawnbringer passed through the Stargate, nor the violent jolting of their forced entry into the Eternal Corridor. It felt more like slipping into a warm, quiet river steeped in silver light. Beyond the windows, the chaotic energy mist had given way to countless elongated ribbons of flowing silver light. They seemed alive, gently buoying the ship and guiding it onward.
Yet there was no relief in the cockpit. Ayami's warning about the "residual Deep Dream Beacon signal" weighed on everyone's hearts like a cold boulder. Every gaze rested on Xingli in the life-support unit in the corner, on the faint yet stubbornly flickering purplish-black glow at the center of her forehead.
Karin formed hand seals with both hands, pushing the star mark on her forehead and the Eye of Prophecy in her palm to their limits. Emerald and silver-white light wove into a dense sealing web, enveloping the glow layer by layer and compressing around it. She could feel that the nature of this "seed" seemed to have changed. Before, it had been like a tumor buried deep in the soul, malicious but relatively "quiet." Now, it was like an activated miniature heart, beating at an extremely faint but steady frequency, constantly emitting a peculiar "rhythm" that was difficult to isolate completely-as though it were beating an invisible drum in the dark that only a particular "receiver" could hear.
"It won't work... I can't block it completely." Karin's face was pale, sweat running down her cheeks. "What it's giving off now isn't pure energy or spiritual fluctuations. It's more like a special... 'pheromone' or 'law marker' produced by a mixture of 'Terminus' contamination and Xingli's precognition bloodline. My seal can block