The sound of the land-wide crust tearing open was not a single boom. It was a prolonged, sickening rip, like wet canvas being torn apart by the claws of an ancient underground giant beast. Across one hundred miles of the northern frontier, the earth split from east to west in a jagged wound that plunged straight down into the boiling black mantle of the Jiuzhou Plane.
A half-mile wide, the Underground Void Deep gap exhaled a sub-zero gale of ancient nether-frost that froze the muddy outer edge roads into solid glass within seconds. The icy draft carried the stench of ancient tombs and raw sulfur, coating the iron castle walls of Iron Bastion in a crust of black rime that crackled with cold void static.
High above, the fifty miles of fractures in the Heaven-Locking Barrier continued to bleed raw spiritual energy into the upper stratosphere with the ear-splitting roar of an unthrottled jet engine. Yet down on the ground, an even more terrifying sound was rising from the deep pit.
SKITTER-CLICK-CLACK.
It began as a faint, metal clicking. It was like a million iron needles dropped at the same time onto a vast marble stairs. Within ten seconds, it swelled into an ear-shattering loud noise that rattled the teeth in the skulls of every soldier along the castle walls.
