Stone blurred past Lu Chen’s shoulders, four feet of jagged, moss-covered dark rock laid by the city’s founding dynasty.
Up the narrow throat of the drainage channel, the Water Cult Patriarch rocketed like a harpooned whale launched from the depths.
Blinded by boiled clouded eye tissue, its outer gills seared into bleeding rags, the nine-foot beast was driven by a single, convulsive instinct: to reach the open surface.
Every stroke of its massive, muscular tail fin slammed against the water with ear-splitting high-pressure violence.
The displaced boiling water, trapped in the upright chimney, had nowhere to expand except upward.
The entire channel became an air-powered cannon of high-pressure boiling broth.
Lu Chen held fast.
His left fist was wrapped tight in the snarled tangle of blackened copper wires sprouting from the creature’s snout.
