Beyond the shattered rubble of the outer drop-gate, the Inner melted into glass Sky-slit sealed the neck of the world-size vault.
The three-foot-thick slab of ancient iron-hard metal inner wall yielded with a sound like a collapsing mountain range.
K-CHUNK—GROOOOOM.
Lu Chen didn’t use a battering ram. He simply leaned forward, sinking his left shoulder into the seam between the two linked earth-shaking gates of the inner sky-slit.
The micro-star-core domain inside his lower dantian groaned. Nine counter-rotating blood-fire suns tightened their sky-high pitch by three tiny fractions of an inch, venting eighty tons of heavy local gravity torque through his collarbone and shoulder muscle tendons.
The ancient royal locking pins—each cast from cold-forged dragon marrow and dark iron—snapped clean in half.
A blast wave of white dust and glass-fused rock blew inward. It screamed through the breach at faster-than-sound speed.
Lu Chen stepped over the shattered threshold.
