Heavy obsidian fists crashed against the reinforced cedar gates with deafening concussive fury.
The southern gatehouse groaned down to its granite foundation. Iron reinforcement bands snapped like dry twigs, sending two-inch bolts whistling across the courtyard. Through the widening cracks in the timber, four massive shadows loomed in the midnight fog.
The four newly forged quasi-Nascent Soul Blood-Puppets struck with relentless, piston-like rhythm. Each blow carried thirty thousand pounds of kinetic force, fueled by glowing corpse-cores that scorched the freezing air.
On the battlements above, Sect Master Horgath and Patriarch Chen braced themselves against the quaking parapets.
“Hold the crossbars!” Horgath bellowed, his hands blistered from channeling defensive earth-qi into the stone. “Don’t let them breach the lower arch!”
Patriarch Chen leaned over the edge, unleashing two swirling water-dragons to freeze the puppets’ shoulders. But the obsidian plating shed the frost effortlessly, deflecting elemental spells with dull, metallic clangs. Below the parapet, fifty outer disciples struggled to haul heavy sandbags and iron anchor chains, trying desperately to reinforce the splintered cedar beams.
“The wood is giving way!” an apprentice screamed as a foot-wide timber snapped with the sound of a cannon shot. “They’re pushing through!”
Beneath the battlements, deep inside the gatehouse array chamber, the atmosphere was thick with crackling ozone.
