The gathering of the Nine-Heaven Thunder-Hex began with a sound that felt like the crushing of iron filings between the back teeth.
In the center of Entry hall 150, twelve heavy jade-core drums began their timed together invocation. The twelve drum-bearers, their bare torsos gleaming with sweat and pulsing with scarlet spiritual glyphs, struck the giant beast-skin drumheads with heavy mallets of carved star-fallen bone. They didn’t strike with rapid rhythms. Their rhythm was a terrifying, low, deep throb that occurred once every three heartbeats:
BOOM.
The sound wave did not travel through the air as ordinary noise. It rolled across the red stone floor as an eighty-four-hertz pressure wave that tightly packed the air. It set the water puddles in the drainage grates dancing in sharp, needle-like spikes.
BOOM.
With the second stroke, Grand Elder Geng raised his iron thunder-wand, channeling the entire spiritual pool of his Late-Stage Core into the bronze gong in his left hand. The crimson magic charm-tattoos across his chest flared with blinding, cerulean lightning that crackled along his collarbones, arcing into the iron wand until the six-foot shaft glowed white-hot in the gloom.
“Hear the voice of the Dying High sky!” Elder Geng roared, his voice amplified by the twelve green jade drums into an ear-splitting bellow that set the ancient lead packing between the flat stone slabs groaning. “Shatter the rafters! Break the stone! By the mandate of the Obsidian Scroll hall, let the heavens fall!”
