The first strike was faster than a striking viper.
Zhu Heling crossed fifteen paces of wet hard speckled rock floor in less than half a heartbeat, propelled by the unnatural, explosive force of the three burning dao-cores wired into his chest. His golden scribe’s measuring tongs, gripped between his thumb and forefinger like a giant pen, thrust directly at Qiao Ming’s left throat with twelve hundred pounds of air-powered pressure behind the point.
The needle-sharp tips of the measuring tongs hissed through the air, trailing two thin ribbons of bright yellow, fuming aqua regia that burned the air with the smell of scorched burning acid.
Qiao Ming did not leap backward; on a wet, acid-slick floor, backward movement invited a fatal slip.
He pivoted three inches to his right upon the ball of his bare left foot, his shoulder dropping half an inch to clear the thrust. At the same instant, his right hand drove the green rust bone-awl upward in a short, rising slanted arc.
SKRRRRRR-PING.
The three-sided bronze tip of the bone-awl met the fluted golden leg of the measuring tongs half an inch from the hinge-pin.
The impact produced a shower of blinding emerald and golden sparks that lit up the dark faces of the Sovereign Master builder forty arm-lengths above. The bronze of the awl, forged five hundred years ago from the salt-hardened copper of the Ark’s lower rudder-plates, held firm against the royal gold. The sheer striking force of Zhu Heling’s thrust was deflected harmlessly…
