In the total blackness behind his sealed eyelids, Lu Chen lowered his balance point by two inches.
He didn’t squint.
He didn’t let his eyelashes flutter.
To open his eyes even a hairline fraction would allow the bronze sheen of the Mirror of Hundred Faces to lock onto his pupils and rip the flesh from his skull.
Instead, he tapped the iron-heavy heel of his left boot against the granite flat stone slabs.
Tock.
The sound was sharp, dry, and clean.
A high-hum blast wave rippled out from the contact point. It traveled at eleven hundred feet per second across the stone terrace.
