The ripple continued its particular, outward spread.
The Garden of Eternity held its specific, surface calm.
And the chains moved with their patient, inexorable quality toward every forehead they had been sent to reach — every forehead except one.
Wang Chen's body was untouched. Not a single chain brushed against him — they moved through the space around him the way water moves around a stone, unconscious of it, indifferent to it. He didn't exist to them. Whatever they were hunting, he wasn't it.
He kept watching.
And then his perception shifted.
