The golden mist drifting down from the backup pipe hub had barely kissed the highest branches of the Desolate Forest before the Throat of Heaven wildly convulsed.
It began not with sound, but with a painful, space-folding tremor that rattled the spatial fabric of the upper stratosphere. The shimmering ribbons of emerald and violet auroras, which had just begun to unfurl across the purple high sky, snapped taut like plucked bowstrings. Gravity within the space-folding fissure warped. It sent loose fragments of sky bronze and crystal-clear melted rock waste tumbling toward the sub-space void.
Gu Qingfeng gripped his chipped wine gourd, planting his cloth-shoed feet onto an invisible eddy of sword intent. His faded gray robes whipped wildly against his shins as his sharp eyes locked onto the huge three-mile-wide channel above them.
“Kid,” Gu Qingfeng barked, his voice cutting cleanly through the mounting hum of spatial distortion. “Something big just dropped into the pipe. The flow is stalling.”
Su Ling’er hovered beside him, her nine snowy fox tails flaring with defensive vermilion fire as she instinctively formed a barrier of protective heat. Her amber eyes widened as she tracked the violent energetic spike surging through the sky bronze plating.
