The spear-shaft did not move.
Held between Qiao Ming’s calloused left palm and Zhu Heling’s trembling hands, the six-foot length of seasoned ash-wood groaned under opposing forces that threatened to snap the seasoned timber in two. Zhu Heling tried to twist the weapon, hoping to use the three-sided leaf-blade as a lever to tear Qiao Ming’s shoulder-blade apart. But the land-mapper’s grip was an unmoving vice that locked the wood along its central grain.
The two men stood chest to chest upon the central mosaic of the Grand Round hall, their breath mingling in the cold, sulfur-tainted air.
The three stolen dao-cores on Zhu Heling’s breastplate were dying. The sapphire soft glow had turned to an ugly, curdled violet. The copper channels that connected the nodes to his neck-spirit veins were spitting sparks of uncontrolled, uneven electricity that scorched the skin of his throat. His right eye was blood-red, weeping dark fluid. At the same time, his left eye was a milky, blind void that saw only shadows.
“Let go...” Zhu Heling wheezed, his teeth chattering wildly as his body-heat was burned up by the dying cores. “Let go of the spear, Qiao Ming... I will give you half the cores... I will make you a Master of the High Court... I will give you an airship to sail the dry sky...”
