The eight-inch bronze needle sliced through the hemp sounding-line with the clean, easy care of a black glass scalp parting silk.
Yet Qiao Ming did not cut the rope to release the Scholar’s harpoon wire. He cut the line to create a whip-lash release of stored dynamic tension.
When the soft lead plummet snapped free from the cut hemp cord, the four coils of twisted lead wrapped around the shaking steel cable did not slip. The sudden release of counter-tension sent a high-hum transverse wave racing down the braided wire at two thousand arm-lengths per second. That sonic pulse struck the internal winch drum inside Zhu Heling’s chest. Then, the reduction gears—already screaming at four thousand revolutions a minute—jumped their guide teeth.
A shower of snapped bronze teeth exploded from the Scholar’s shattered chest window. The internal winch seized solid with a painful screech of metal, halting his upward climb two arm-lengths below the bulwark railing.
Across the tilted forecastle deck, Yan Zhiqiu scrambled across the wet oak planks toward the port deck drains. Her bare knees slid through the oily slurry of sulfuric acid and river silt, her bruised fingers reaching out into the churning foam that washed over the deck edge.
