The last blow had carried them up to the rim of the rift, forty-eight thousand feet above the ground. Zhao Xuan hung from the collar of his dented armor. Gold blood froze on his chin. His core was cracked. Each time it turned, his eyes went dark for a breath.
“You’re a monster,” he said. “No mortal body could do this.”
Pei Jing used his good arm to hold Zhao until the soul’s gauntlet could close over the collar. It held Zhao against the floating rock and left both of Pei Jing’s hands free. He drew one hundred of the two hundred High-Grade Spirit Stones he had left and took their charge into his bones. The pull of the rift eased along his arms. He drank from his clay canteen. Cold water cleared the taste of the air from his mouth.
Pei Jing had Zhao by the collar. He should have pinned both wrists. Instead he eased the gauntlet’s grip to feel how the rift was moving. Zhao drew a purple jade talisman and breathed onto its face before Pei Jing could take it away.
The Nine-Void Displacement Talisman caught fire. It took three hundred years from Zhao’s life. A violet current rose behind him and drew him away from Pei Jing, deeper into the opening.
