Chapter 83: The Plasma Arc Yawn

Inside Felix Vance’s chest, the miracle of modern astrophysics was maintaining hydrostatic equilibrium at fifteen million Kelvin.

Hydrogen nuclei fused into helium under the steady pressure of his dense core.

Yet when Felix shook his tablet in frustration, his internal core wobbled by a fraction of a millimeter.

Inside his chest, it felt like nothing more than a tiny bubble of soda tickling his throat.

Felix rubbed his chest with his left hand, his eyelids drooping with heavy evening exhaustion.

"Ugh," Felix mumbled. "Too much cold tea on an empty stomach."

He tilted his head back against the wicker headrest, opening his mouth wide in an enormous, jaw-stretching yawn.

"Haaaaah..."

Felix didn’t notice the heavens tearing open.

From the center of his chest, a golden filament of pure solar plasma erupted into the sky.

It was no thicker than a sewing needle when it left his loose cotton robe.

Yet as it soared past the porch eaves, the beam expanded into a blinding golden arc of pure coronal fire. It moved at the speed of light, ripping through the clouds with a sound that bypassed human ears.

SHZZZZZZT!

The sky above Solitude Spire ceased to be blue for two hundredths of a second, the entire mountain range turned pure, blinding white. The clouds for thirty miles around were instantly blown into mist, exposing the dark blue dome of the high sky.

The golden plasma arc sliced upward at a sixty-degree angle.

It shot ten thousand miles straight into the outer firmament, carving a glowing path across the heavens that crackled with golden sparks.

And right in the path of that golden arc, plummeting toward the eastern continent, was a rogue void meteor.

The meteor was a six-mile-wide chunk of black astral iron.

It had drifted from the outer void, caught in the planet’s gravitational pull. Falling at thirty miles per second, the burning iron boulder carried enough kinetic energy to flatten a mountain range and create a crater fifty miles wide.

On the deck of the Iron Gale, First Mate Bones screamed at the top of his lungs.

"METEOR!" Bones wailed, pointing his trembling spyglass toward the upper skybox. "A VOID ROCK IS FALLING! BRACE FOR IMPACT!"

Down on the clover lawn, Sky-Captain Drake looked up, his grey eyes bulging in horror.

He saw the flaming black meteor piercing the outer stratosphere.

The heat of the falling rock was already turning the high clouds red. Drake knew that within thirty seconds, the entire academy archipelago would be obliterated into burning dust.

There was no time to run. There was no time to pray.

Across the gorge, Inquisitor Valen and twenty senior elders froze in mid-air on their flying swords.

"The Cataclysm of Iron..." Valen wheezed, his face turning the color of wet chalk. "The ancient star-stones have broken loose from the celestial wheel! We are doomed! There is no barrier in the empire that can stop a mountain falling from the stars!"

Then, Felix’s yawn arrived.

The hair-thin golden plasma arc met the six-mile-wide iron meteor at the edge of space.

There was no explosion.

There was no boom.

There was no thunderous collision of stone.

At a temperature exceeding fifteen million degrees, structural matter simply ceased to exist.

The golden beam sliced straight through the center of the celestial asteroid like a red-hot razor passing through soft butter.

ZZZZZT.

In less than three milliseconds, the six-mile meteor was severed cleanly into two halves.

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Before either half could tumble, the secondary thermal burst of the solar beam washed over them.

The ancient astral iron, dense enough to survive a billion years in the cold void, was vaporized instantly into harmless golden gas.

The sky flared with brilliant starlight.

Billions of microscopic, glowing embers rained softly across the upper atmosphere, drifting down like sparkling golden snow.

The apocalyptic meteor had been turned into a breathtaking fireworks display for the sunset.

A small, cheerful notification window popped up across Felix’s tablet screen, unprompted:

And down on Solitude Spire, Felix Vance finished his yawn.

"...waaah," Felix breathed softly.

He smacked his lips twice, feeling wonderfully relaxed.

"Man," Felix sighed, his eyelids fluttering half-shut. "That was a good stretch. Cleared my sinuses right out."

He reached over to the small pine table, picked up his Never-Cold Jade Teacup, and took a slow, leisurely sip.

The warm jasmine honey tea coated his throat, soothing away the last traces of sleepiness.

Standing by the porch railing, Lyra Ashford gripped her ancestral silver rapier with trembling fingers.

Her long silver hair shimmered in the raining golden dust, and her violet eyes were wide with religious rapture.

She had watched the golden beam erupt from Felix’s chest.

She had sensed the pure, unadulterated stellar fire that could incinerate entire realms. Yet to Senior Brother, destroying a six-mile celestial demon stone was no more strenuous than blowing away a stray dust mote on his sleeve!

The Dao of the Effortless Firmament, Lyra whispered in her heart, tears glistening on her eyelashes.

Mortal kings build thousand-mile barriers and sacrifice entire armies to ward against falling stars. Senior Brother merely opens his lips, yawns at the sky, and blesses the heavens with golden light!

Down on the lawn, thirty paces away, Sky-Captain Drake was frozen in place.

His jaw was hanging so low his chin nearly touched his collarbones.

His weathered grey eyes stared blankly at the sparkling golden dust drifting across the clear stratosphere.

He had watched the meteor fall.

He had calculated the angle, the mass, and the total extinction of the mountain range.

And then he had watched a sleepy twenty-year-old kid in frayed slippers yawn at the sky and erase a six-mile continent-killer without even putting down his tea.

Drake’s right hand began to shake violently.

His calloused fingers slipped from the hilt of his cutlass. The steel blade rattled in its leather sheath with a frantic chitter-chitter-chitter.

Across the gorge, Inquisitor Valen and twenty academy elders were kneeling flat on their flying swords.

Valen had his forehead pressed against the sword steel, sobbing in pure, hysterical terror.

"The Solar Yawn..." Valen wept, his voice echoing off the cliffs. "The Sovereign yawned... and cleaved a falling world in twain! The heavens themselves bow before his bedtime!"

Up on the deck of the Iron Gale, fifty hardened void corsairs dropped their weapons.

Cutlasses and flintlocks clattered against the iron planks as the pirates collapsed to their knees, clutching their lucky talismans.

"He... he blew up a star-rock with a burp," First Mate Bones whimpered, his eyes rolling back in his head. "We parked on a god’s lawn, boys. We’re never going home."

Down in the four-leaf clover, the eight-ton Thunder Gryphon didn’t even stand up.

The golden beast merely cracked open one amber eyelid, saw the sparkling dust in the sky, let out a bored snort, and tucked its beak deeper under its wing to sleep.

Beside the cabbage patch, Senior Groundskeeper Nether-Bane calmly picked up his wooden trowel.

The Ghost King tapped a bit of loose dirt around a sun-turnip, his skeletal shoulders steady.

A mere meteor, Nether-Bane thought, shaking his straw hat with quiet disdain. Mortal pirates tremble at falling pebbles. They do not understand that to the Master, cosmic stones are simply bugs to be flicked from the porch.

Up on the porch, Felix rubbed his nose.

He glanced over at the railing, where Barnaby sat in silence.

The plump brass automaton had his hand-carved oak bottle cork firmly wedged in his beak, his shiny copper penny clamped under his left claw. His glass lenses dilated twice, as if checking to ensure the sky was still there.

"Well, Barnaby," Felix said, setting his jade cup down on the cedar table. "The air is a little warmer now. Much better."

Under the table, Grandmaster Vivienne’s Sovereign Heart Seal—with the ancient jade seal carved underneath—remained rock-steady, without a single vibration.

Felix leaned back into the comfortable ergonomic mesh of his recliner.

Lyra stepped lightly toward the recliner, bowing so deeply her silver hair brushed her forearms.

"Senior Brother," Lyra murmured, her voice filled with hushed awe. "The astral demon rock... you dissolved its ancient malice in the blink of an eye. The entire continent has been spared from annihilation."

Felix opened one sleepy brown eye beneath the brim of his straw hat.

"What demon rock?" Felix asked, looking around the porch. "Did a pigeon fly over?"

Lyra’s breath hitched. She looked at his completely relaxed posture, her heart trembling with profound epiphany.

To Senior Brother, a six-mile apocalyptic calamity is no different from a passing pigeon! Lyra realized, weeping tears of pure reverence. Such is the state of the True Sovereign! He does not conquer threats; threats simply cease to matter in his presence!

"No, Senior Brother," Lyra said softly, wiping her tears. "It was... nothing. Merely the evening wind."

"Good," Felix said, closing his eye again. "Keep the noise down. The sun is setting, and my stamina bar needs recharging."

Felix pulled his frayed straw hat down over his eyes, ready to resume his evening nap, completely unaware that his lazy yawn had just saved three billion people from extinction.

Over in the clover, the Thunder Gryphon let out a low rumble of satisfaction, stretching its massive paws toward the warm cabbage. The sweet perfume of the sun-vegetable filled the air, washing away all traces of ozone.