The thousand-foot torrent of solar total ruin fire tore through the void like the uncoiling of a living star.
White-hot star-fire, white-hot to thirty-eight million degrees, boiled away the thin ether along its path. That left an empty pocket wake that groaned with distorted gravity. In traditional scripture, this was the Divine Retribution of the Third Heaven. The total, unquestioned judgment that had burned up forty-eight million ancient patriarchs and dissolved their soaring spirits into harvestable origin dew.
Aboard the Radiant Solar Sovereign, Envoy Bai Ming leaned over the gold-trimmed railing. It screamed with thrilled laughter. His fists were clenched. He waited for the blinding flash that would signify the total atom-deep disintegration of the mortal upstarts.
Beside him, Marshal Jin Yuan braced his gauntlets on the console, his veteran instincts telling him that within half a heartbeat, the golden bird, the six wooden skiffs. The blue strange flaw would cease to exist.
Down on Da Peng’s neck, Tie Shan closed his eyes, his meteor-iron arm locked around his forging hammer, his chest heaving as he prepared to meet the fire of Heaven head-on.
“Tie Shan,” Lin Xiao’s voice chimed in his mind, cheerful as a sparrow on a summer windowsill. “Hold onto your hat.”
