The sky broke with a sound that shattered the memory of silence.
When the countdown expired, Supreme Arch-Elder Zhu Heling gave the command to fire. High above the mountain capstone, seventy-two moving spinal cannons discharged in a single, timed together spark pulse. Seventy-two solid heavy metal darts, each twenty tons in weight and three arm-lengths in width, were sped up down zero-pushback magnetic rails, bursting from the dreadnought’s underbelly at Mach 12.
The sky blast wave alone stripped the outer granite crags down to polished bone. An eye-searing flash of violet star-fire lit the stormy heavens as the moving barrage punched through the mountain’s outside capstone, cutting through solid rock like molten needles through animal fat.
It was an impact calculated to turn to steam solid rock. One point two nine terajoules of focused striking force delivered into an area barely fifty paces wide.
Yet the master builders who carved the Hall of Ten Thousand Statues forty hundred years ago had expected the madness of the heavens.
In the grand pillared hall of Entry hall 050, Qiao Ming stood barefoot upon the central sounding dais, his oilskin coat tied with split rush. He held the Folded brass star-compass open in his left palm. At the same time, his right hand gripped the sixty-fathom horsehair sounding line. He felt the incoming blasting blast wave through the core structure of the granite.
