The aftermath of the sound backfire left sixty-one elite fighters of the Sovereign Conclave lying across the red stone flags like drunken sailors after a long voyage.
They were fully unharmed in bone and sinew. The curved niches of the fluted columns had focused the sound wave with such terrifying care that the moving shock had been absorbed entirely by their ears, their magic charm-tunics, and their jade-core drums. But their vestibular systems were utterly destroyed. Every time an adept tried to push himself up on his elbows, the world tilted ninety degrees in his vision. He fell sideways onto the cold stone, vomiting thin yellow bile from violent inner-ear dizziness.
High in the rafters, Yan Zhiqiu stood up upon the Sixth Tie-Beam, her notched hook-blade hanging loosely at her side.
“Loose!” she commanded in a low, sharp whistle.
From the high tie-beams seventy arm-lengths above, forty bowstrings snapped in timed together harmony.
Forty bone-tipped arrows whistled down through the gloom of the hall, striking the floor with rapid, care thuds:
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Not a single arrow pierced flesh. With the exquisite, deadly accuracy of mountain hunters who could clip the wing-feather of a flying grouse in a gale, the snipers pinned the wide silk sleeves, the trouser-legs, and the leather belts of the fallen adepts directly into the soft lead packing between the red stone flags.
