The silence that clamped down upon the Floating Mountain was not merely the absence of sound. It was a choking, physical empty pocket that seemed to suck the very breath from mortal lungs.
The mountain breeze died mid-gust. The fluttering leaves of the spirit-plums froze in place. Even the constant, humming drone of the hovering war chariots seemed to muffle, as if the brass hulls themselves shrank back from the terrace.
Behind Lin Xiao, Xiao Hei didn’t roar. The sky wolf stepped forward with slow, deliberate pacing, his pawsteps making zero sound upon the frost-coated cedar boards. His silver star-pattern runes blazed not with their usual gentle starlight, but with the searing, blinding soft glow of an exploding star-blast. An aura of pure lunar gravity pressed downward, cracking the cedar floorboards under an unseen pressure of ten mountain-crushing pressure.
Tie Shan’s meteor-iron right arm glowed with blinding, molten fury. Deep crimson veins of titan fire pulsed along his thick neck, the air around him distorting from intense nearby heat. Gu Qingfeng held his plain willow twig horizontally across his chest, the tip pointed directly at Bai Ming’s throat. There was no sword qi, no flashy light. But the fabric of Bai Ming’s golden silk robes over his heart suddenly frayed, a tiny thread shearing clean through under the weight of formless intent.
