Three royal field surgeons stripped Captain Lu Tian’s hard dark metal steel armor, wildly searching for an external puncture wound, only to find a flawless steel plate and a chest cavity filled with bone-shaking blood bruise.
Inside the canvas sick room tent behind the arena grandstand, the air reeked of hot vinegar, bitter pine-resin oil, and vomited bright red blood. Two charcoal fire bowls hissed as snow melted against the oiled tent flaps.
On the wooden running bench, Lu Tian lay naked to the waist. His face as were pale as curdled bean milk.
The chief surgeon, an elderly fighter with ink-stained glasses and trembling grey whiskers, used brass measuring tongs to inspect the outside surface of the tiny steel breastplate.
“Not a scratch,” the surgeon muttered, his voice cracking in disbelief. “The lacquer is intact. The rawhide lacing is unbroken. The boiled buffalo hide underneath shows zero tear marks.”
He set the measuring tongs aside. Then he pressed his ear against Lu Tian’s right thorax with a hollow bamboo stethoscope.
“Three ribs shattered along the costochondral junction. Massive internal heavy bleeding into the pleural space. Heart deep bruise from high-pressure rebound.” The old surgeon looked up at Garrison Commander Gao Ren, who stood by the cot with clenched fists, his iron armor rattling with suppressed fury. “Commander... This wasn’t an external piercing blow. The striking force passed straight through the steel plate as though the metal were water. It discharged into the boy’s organs like an underground earthquake. If…
