Shattered oak gates slammed across the courtyard flat stone slabs with a thunderous report that rattled the bronze roof tiles.
Lu Chen stepped through the ruined threshold.
Before him stretched the Grand Courtyard of the Dragon-Tiger Pavilion. Four hundred paces of flat, blue-veined granite flat stone slabs. It was flanked by carved stone pillars and bronze fire bowls spitting sullen green flame into the autumn downpour.
The leftover sixty students of the pavilion were already waiting.
They didn’t break or scatter like the green recruits on the lower steps. These were the true inner-chamber killers of the Upper Citadel, men who had eaten grain soaked in wolf marrow and trained in blood-combat since boyhood.
In the center of the yard stood Instructor Meng, a hulking martial artist clad in full black-iron layered-scale armor. In his hands rested an eight-foot dragon-head poleaxe weighing sixty pounds.
“Nine-Coil Tiger-Dragon Array!” Meng roared, slamming the butt of his poleaxe into the flat stone slabs. “Form the iron wall! Entangle his limbs!”
The sixty students shifted instantly.
