Pei Jing sprang. His boots drove twelve thousand pounds of force into the frozen floor. Shale blew out in a twenty-foot ring. Two four-inch holes opened beneath his feet, and cracks ran ten paces through the rock.
He reached a hundred and twenty paces a second almost at once. The gale hit him head-on. Air piled up in front of his chest and tore loose stones from the floor with a sound like iron plates ripping apart.
The nine blades filled the pass. With the frost array coming at three hundred and forty paces a second, the distance between them vanished at a rate no eye could follow. Pei Jing kept going straight. The Black Mountain Whetstone sat tight at his hip.
He raised his left forearm to shield his face and drew his right fist back.
They met about five paces from the recess. The wall of air in front of him swept six of the frost copies sideways. They cut furrows in the limestone and sent white dust across the pass.
The other two copies and the real sword struck his left arm. They ripped through his sleeve. The Astral Crystalline Bone Sheath sent the force through his body into the floor, and the copies burst into blue vapor.
