“Strike again and your Sima Clan can pay the medical bill with your ancestral graves,” Lin Mo said deadpan.
He didn’t bother taking the boarding stairs. He stepped right off the sovereign prow of the Taichu flagship, his boots riding a streak of Half-Step Nascent Soul golden light across the fifty-yard gap.
Sima Ao’s barbed Soul-Lashing Whip was already whistling downward, wrapped in jagged purple soul-lightning aimed straight at the crown of Lord Wen Zhengming’s white head.
Three inches above the old censor’s fractured skull, a bare hand reached out of the golden light and caught the whip by its iron-barbed tail.
SNAP!
The shockwave blew the loose snow off the cloud-stone flagstones in a thirty-foot ring. Purple soul-lightning hissed and spat against Lin Mo’s palm, trying to burrow into his meridians.
Instead, the Nine-Turn Benevolence Merit Golden Core inside Lin Mo’s dantian gave a lazy hum. Warm golden karma flared across his skin, snuffing out the sinister purple sparks like candle flames dipped in river water.
A weapon forged out of extorted taxes and peasant misery, Lin Mo thought, looking at the rusty barbs between his fingers. No wonder the craftsmanship feels so cheap.
