Qi Shenxiao looked down at the boot Pei Jing had planted on the cracked granite. The mountain still held. The Judge’s tablet smoked in its gold frame.
“Direct seizure required,” he said.
He slid the tablet into the fold at his left hip and reached behind his right shoulder. The twelve disks opened around his hand. From their center he drew an eight-foot halberd of black steel and gold fire.
Light bent around its crescent. Pei Jing could see part of the ridge behind it in the wrong place. He had watched the same thing happen in the deep sea when a pocket of heavy void qi pulled water and stone out of shape. The four outer disks held a little of that force along the cutting edge.
A straight blow against the edge would reach through the star iron as easily as it would reach through leather. The spine and shaft could still bear an ordinary load. Pei Jing watched the place where the gold fire stopped. The black steel behind it seemed plain enough to have come out of a forge. There was comfort in that much. He would have something to meet with his own blade if he could keep it away from the crescent.
