The mountain didn’t merely crack. It opened like an iron clam.
In Cloudford Town square, three thousand feet above the fiery fault line, the lead outer student of the Cloud Mist Sect had taken two strides toward Pei Hongcheng, his dao-saber humming with green wind-blade Qi. The town guards had closed their eyes. Magistrate Wang lay with his bleeding forehead pressed into the freezing mud. It waited for the sound of the old blacksmith’s skull splitting open.
Then, the bedrock of the valley bucked upward by four inches.
BOOOOOOM.
The underground blast hit the soles of their boots with terrifying bone-shaking force. Paving stones cracked along their mortar joints. The fifty heavy iron carts rattled on their chained axles. Their ten-ton ore loads jumped an inch into the freezing air.
From the jagged northern ridge of Cloudford Mountain, a five-colored pillar of living light—White, Blue, Emerald, Crimson, Gold—punched through the granite crest, vaporizing three hundred yards of ancient forest in an instant flash of quartz dust steam.
The blizzard of sleet was destroyed.
The low, grey winter clouds spanning the entire valley were blasted apart in a nested blast wave. It exposed a circular vault of cold, diamond-clear blue sky.
