Like a silver fish battered all over and dying of exhaustion, the Whisperer coasted on its last scraps of momentum through the thick, dim energy mist of the Eternal Corridor, slipping into a relatively "calm" patch of shadow. The area lay between two enormous crystal wrecks that rotated slowly, their jagged edges interlocking. Natural gravitational disturbances and energy turbulence formed a fragile, unstable barrier that barely concealed the ship's energy signature, already so faint it was almost extinguished.
Inside the ship, the lights had been lowered to minimum survival mode. Only the medical unit and the core of the cockpit remained illuminated. The air was thick with a pungent mixture of blood, medicinal herbs, scorched energy, and metal coolant. Every breath felt heavy and painful.
The atmosphere in the medical unit was oppressively tense.
Lin Ye and Sasuke lay motionless on two treatment platforms side by side. Lin Ye's face was pale, his breathing faint. The Origin Starmark on his forehead had dimmed, and the ring of gray-black phantom runes around its edge seemed to have fallen dormant. Yet a closer look revealed that the speck of primordial light deep within the mark had grown a little more solid and stable, like a star tempered by a storm. With painstaking care, Sakura blended the remaining power of the Worldtree Seed with her highest-level Medical Ninjutsu and star-celestial healing power, turning them into the gentlest of streams and slowly feeding it into his body. She repaired the tears in his soul and the physical depletion caused by the forced resonance, while continuing to fight the stubborn encroachment of erasure.
Beside him, Sasuke's condition looked even more horrifying. His silver-white combat suit had long since been shredded by the "purification" storm, and the exposed skin was covered in dozens of wounds of