The discharge began not with a roar, but with a sudden, choking empty pocket.
The cavernous jaws of the Dragon of Sins unhinged to their maximum breadth. Then, every cubic foot of air in the center of the Hall of Supreme Harmony was sucked wildly inward toward the deep-sea gullet.
Tattered silk banners snapped from their bronze poles and flew toward the throne.
Fine ash, powdered lime, and fragments of shattered roof timber whirled in a choking cyclone toward the beast’s glowing violet throat.
Across the Forbidden City, the sudden drop in air pressure caused the paper lattice screens of next-door palaces to bow inward with sharp, cracking snaps.
Then the pressure reversed.
BOOM!
The eruption was a hypersonic blast of condensed, rotting corpse-fire star-fire.
