The blades fell like golden rain through the rotten-egg smoke of the Scroll hall.
Twelve students of the Azure Firmament Sect, their azure silk robes billowing like kites in the rising heat draft, dropped from their floating discs with their longswords drawn. The steel was forged from star-fallen astral iron, coated with liquid gold and inscribed with blood-flensing magic charms that emitted a high, piercing shriek as they parted the damp air.
They didn’t aim to disarm or subdue. Their swords were dropping in a lethal web of killing qi designed to cleave through Qiao Ming and slice into the crowded mortal families huddled on the floor flags directly beneath the mezzanine.
Qiao Ming stood thirty arm-lengths out upon the bronze tension wire of the gallery stone railing. The wire was barely the thickness of a thumb. It shook under the tension of the massive stone arches, yet his bare, calloused feet gripped the rounded bronze cable as if it were a flat cut stone terrace. His splayed toes curved around the wire, their horn-hard pads absorbing the tiny tremors of the hall.
He didn’t draw a sword or form a qi-shield. He took the eight-sided lead line-weight into his right palm, feeling the animal fat packed into its hollow base. With a fluid, whipping roll of his shoulder, he set the sixty-fathom braided horsehair line into motion.
