The suspended crimson lattice beneath the rafters shuddered as forty wooden gavels slammed down upon forty ebony desks in violent all at once.
BANG!
The bone-shaking crack of the gavels echoed through the hall like a volley of iron arquebuses.
Above Lu Chen’s head, the web of suspended blood-ink burst.
The writhing crimson ribbons broke apart into thousands of razor-sharp calligraphic strokes. They didn’t fall like harmless liquid. They spun through the air like whistling iron shuriken, trailing wisps of rotting corpse-vapor.
Every stroke was a radical of royal law.
Characters carved from clotted scholar-blood and dragon-vein spite materialized in blinding red light: REBEL, DECAPITATION, TONGUE-STRIPPING, MARROW-DRAINING, NINE-GENERATION EXTINCTION.
With a high-pitched, screaming whistle, the cloud of glyphs dropped upon Lu Chen.
