The earth-shaking crust of the Jiuzhou Borderlands didn’t simply fracture. It began to peel away from the mantle like scorched bark from a dead pine.
With a grinding shriek that rattled the teacups in royal palaces three provinces away, the 100-mile Void Deep gap swelled by another fifteen miles in less than ten heartbeats. The dry earth groaned, vomiting forth huge geysers of bubbling black magma that hissed with rotten-egg entropic lightning. The ancient granite foundations of the frontier castle—a stronghold that had stood undefeated for eight hundred years—melted into smoking red mud, causing three massive stone watchtowers to tip sideways into the deep pit.
Up on the rear command knoll, the high fighters of the Great Sun Valley were already summoning their flying swords in total panic. “The land-wide plate has cut!” an elder shrieked, his topknot unraveling in the rotten-egg gale. “The dragon vein beneath Jiuzhou has died! The fiery core of the Nether Void is flooding the mortal realm! There’s no sealing this rift! Not even thirty Nascent Soul grand elders could mend a wound fifteen leagues wide! Retreat! Flee to the royal capital before the entire borderland sinks into the underground sea!”
“Evacuate the baggage trains!” Regional Envoy Wu screamed, scrambling into an enclosed iron palanquin. “Leave the heavy grain carts! Run for your lives!”
