The central hall of the Dragon-Tiger Pavilion smelled of scorched bone, rotten-egg bile. Then he split marrow.
Shattered sandalwood rafters hung like broken ribs from the vaulted ceiling forty paces above.
Across the wide expanse of six-sided solid mountain stone, the dragon-bone staff lay splintered into seven jagged shards, its marrow hollows oozing a thick, sticky, tar-like grease.
In the center of the crater lay Grandmaster Yu.
The eighty-year-old tyrant was pinned flat against the cracked stone, his silk robes shredded into carbonized ribbons.
His chest bone was a crushed cavity of splintered bone and torn muscle.
On the flat stone slabs three paces to the left, the excised Red-Winged Asura lung still twitched, its withered crimson air-sacs deflating in the cold draft like a dying jellyfish.
Lu Chen stood motionless over him.
