The silence that dropped upon the East Stone Bridge was total, save for the thundering roar of the muddy rapids churning thirty feet below.
Hu Biao was suspended in the fatal heavy rush of a missed strike.
His left arm was locked in empty forward extension. His three hard was dark metal talons dripping with river mist. His right shoulder had been pried open by the brass handguard of the Cloud-Splitter. Sixty percent of his two-hundred-and-thirty-pound body weight was pitched forward over his left knee. His boots slid half an inch in the wet blood of his fallen men.
His eyes, wide and bloodshot, looked down into Pei Jing’s cold, grey gaze.
In that split second, the veteran river headsman understood what was coming.
There was no time to retract his claws. There was no time to drop his weight. There was no time to scream.
Pei Jing moved.
Gale Saber: Fourth Form—Cleaving the High sky.
