The tail of the Two-Tailed Shadow Panther was as thick as a man’s wrist, woven from cables of dense connective tissue and covered in coarse, wire-like black fur.
In Pei Jing’s iron grip, the sinew thrashed like a hooked river serpent. The violent lateral convulsions threatened to wrench his left shoulder socket. But his Python Tendon Stance held firm. He dropped his balance point three inches deeper into the frozen scree, channeling the thrashing torque down through his hips and into the bedrock.
With his right hand, Pei Jing brought the Cloud-Splitter Cleaver around in a tight, level arc.
The twenty-two-pound hard dark metal blade didn’t strike with a wild swing. It operated on a six-inch lever stroke, guided by the care of five tiers of saber conditioning.
SCHWACK.
The razor-sharpened chisel edge sliced through the tail two inches above his grip, cutting through skin, tendon, and the stringy gristle discs between the tail-end spine bones. The cut tail whip fell into the shale, still twitching in violent spasms, spraying hot, black dark blood over Pei Jing’s boots.
The panther shrieked—a high-pitched, metal howl of agony that rattled the frost from the canyon walls.
Deprived of its main balancing organ and driven past all instinct for self-preservation, the apex beast gathered its leftover three limbs. With a desperate heave of its massive torso, it launched its four-hundred-and-twenty-pound mass straight upward off the gravel floor.
