The infant-rib bone needles struck Lu Chen’s open left palm at twelve feet per second.
TINK. TINK.
The brittle bone tips didn’t penetrate the skin.
They hit the hardened bronze callouses of his palm like dry toothpicks striking a cold-iron anvil.
Both needles snapped in half, their dark purple corpse-bile smearing harmlessly across his calloused flesh.
The heat of his sixty-five-degree skin hissed, instantly scorching the neurotoxin into dry gray crust.
Seventh Elder Shen’s eyes bulged in terror as his lunging driving force carried him forward.
He tried to recoil, to pull his withered arms back into the sleeves of his yellow funerary robe.
