The Whisperer, that elegant creation of antiquity, now resembled an old man in his twilight years, relying on an ever-weakening borrowed vitality to stagger through the cloying darkness of the Eternal Corridor for the last time.
The three sets of basic vector thrusters at its stern no longer emitted smooth, steady ion streams. Instead, they sputtered intermittent flames of mottled energy-pale gold, emerald green, and occasionally a trace of unstable silver-white-like candles guttering in the wind. That energy came from Naruto and Sakura's continuous, unreserved chakra output, barely channeled and converted through Lin Ye's Origin mark and Ayami's Starwhisper Crystal. The efficiency was despairingly low, with over ninety percent lost. Yet that almost negligible thrust allowed the enormous hull to maintain something closer to "floating" than "falling," drifting agonizingly slowly toward the dark red Echo Core ahead, which looked like a congealed scab.
They moved more slowly than a person could walk. Within the vast Eternal Corridor, such movement was almost indistinguishable from standing still. But to them, every meter gained meant another step toward their destination, toward either an end to their despair or a faint glimmer of hope.
The cockpit was steeped in oppressive suffering. Only the emergency lights and a few core displays gave off a dim glow. Lin Ye sat on the floor with his back against the main console, one hand pressed into the energy interface recess, the other gripping the Purification Prism fragment against his forehead. His face was deathly pale, and sweat mingled with still-wet blood to soak the hair over his brow. His body trembled uncontrollably under the strain of continuously channeling energy and bearing the mental burden. The mark on his forehead shone faintly, yet the spark of primordial light deep within it burned with extraordinary persistence, as though resisting exhaustion