Gold light rushed back to earth. Pei Jing let it go. More qi could have kept the injured soul outside a little longer. It would still have come apart at the shoulder. He called the titan back and folded the broken plate into his shoulder. Pain ran down to his fingers. He could move them, but the arm would never hold a separate shape again.
Zhao Xuan opened the Domain of the Golden Mandate. Gold spread thirty miles across the sky. The air around Pei Jing hardened into sheets. They broke and fell like hail as the weight came down.
Pei Jing held his feet in the same place. His thighs took the load. He let his breathing slow until the pressure inside him matched the pressure outside. The wind had gone out of the golden air. He could hear the Armored Soul moving in time with him.
He brought the Black Mountain Whetstone against the blade. The old scrape made a rough note inside the clear ring of the domain. Zhao’s eyes moved toward the sound, then away. The note had blurred the place where his divine sense expected to find Pei Jing.
“Blasphemer,” Zhao said.
He crossed the thirty paces between them. His Void-Severing Golden Halberd came around in the first form of the Nine-Sun Celestial Cleave. White fire ran along both crescents.
