The northern horizon turned the color of dried, clotted blood.
Three hundred flying war-chariots, forged from dark iron and pulled by armored two-headed fire-drakes, charged across the upper clouds. The beasts roared with guttural fury, snorting plumes of burning sulfur from their scaly nostrils. Behind the chariots flew ten thousand inner-sect sword cultivators, organized in strict triangular assault formations. Their crimson, frost-white, and venom-green flying swords filled the sky like a colossal swarm of locusts, blotting out the midday sun and casting a dark, shifting shadow over the plains.
At the head of the armada flew Sect Master Yan Lie, Matriarch Bing, and Sect Master Gui.
Yan Lie had changed out of his singed bath towel into heavy crimson battle armor, but his left eyebrow was still completely missing, replaced by a strip of black medicinal plaster. Matriarch Bing’s frost-armor crackled with sub-zero killing intent, her blue eyes frozen with hysterical rage. Beside them, Sect Master Gui stood atop a coiled bone throne surrounded by swirling clouds of green serpent venom that withered the grass three hundred feet below.
Yan Huo stood in the lead chariot beside his father, brandishing his curved blood-saber toward the white battlements of Taichu Sanctuary City.
