The air fractured with the whip-crack of a sonic boom.
Lu Chen crossed the five-pace gap in a fraction of a heartbeat, his forward speed shattering the sound barrier in a burst of white-hot squeezing.
His right shoulder—clad in boiled leather, heavy linen, and heavy by solid molten fire brass—struck the four lead skeletal steeds at the same time.
The crash was not a struggle of driving force.
It was a heavy-duty wrecking ball striking brittle fine china.
The skeletal horses didn’t tumble or slide.
Upon contact with his one-hundred-and-ten-degree shoulder, their hardened ribcages and skull bones were in a heartbeat crushed into fine, white chalk dust.
Black grave-tar and desiccated sinew atomized into greasy smoke as Lu Chen’s mass tore straight through the horse team without decelerating.
