The descent of the Eighth Wave was not a straight, clockwork bolt of electricity. It was a world-ending ballet of mythological violence.
From the churning belly of the purple vortex, the Nine-Headed Celestial Thunder Hydra didn’t merely strike. It hunted. Each of its nine snake-like necks stretched over a mile in length, woven from braided cords of hyper-dense violet Yang-star-fire that crackled at billions of volts. As the beast plunged toward the defile, the nine heads spread outward in a wide, hungry fan, weaving and crossing over one another in a hypnotic, waving dance of destruction.
The friction between the faster-than-sound star-fire stalks and the high-sky air generated a sound so wildly intense that it stripped the clouds bare for fifty leagues. It sounded like nine huge iron whips cracking at the same time against the drumhead of the sky. The sheer sonic deep ring tore across the mountain crests, shearing hundred-foot pine trees clean off their root systems and tumbling ancient boulders down the ravine walls.
On Cloud-Piercing Pass, thirty thousand traditional fighters squeezed their eyes shut, many pressing their palms against their ears as warm trickles of blood leaked from their ears.
“It has fallen...” Sect Elder Yan Lie groaned, his forehead resting against the cold granite beside his shattered broadsword. “The Eighth Wave of the Ninth Tier... May the founding ancestors receive our broken souls.”
