The rift groaned above them. Cold poured down through the opening and met the warm qi still rising from the broken channels. Pei Jing could see both currents in the light from Zhao Xuan’s armor.
“You forced my hand,” Zhao said.
He let the last of his domain fall away and touched a drop of golden blood to the halberd. The shaft drank it. White light ran up the weapon into the two crescents. A black crack opened in the air along the edge.
The halberd had been forged at the Heavenly Vault. Its makers had put dragon marrow into gold taken from the heart of an artificial sun. Pei Jing could feel the heat in the weapon thirty paces away. The blood ward drank from Zhao’s core. The gold on his face thinned as it fed the weapon.
“Heavenly Severance of the Nine Firmaments,” Zhao said.
Pei Jing took a slow breath. The qi returning to the earth reached his lungs and moved through the star iron in his bones. The halberd rang high enough to hurt his ears. He listened beneath it for the rough note the whetstone had left on his blade.
The gold had been made to hold an edge against a spiritual ward. He had felt the difference between the hard part of its grain and the loose part every time the weapons met. The hardest part took the longest to give. When it did, the break traveled faster than it would through common iron.
