The sky above the Grand Coliseum didn’t merely cloud over. It blackened into a dark vortex of swirling, electrified deep pit that cast an eerie violet twilight across eight hundred square miles of the royal metropolis.
Stepping out onto the combat pitch was General Lei Kun, the supreme champion of the Imperial Lightning Vanguard and the personal martial guard of the Crown Prince.
Standing over seven feet tall, Lei Kun was wrapped in jagged thunder-dragon layered-scale plate forged from purple spirit-magnetic iron, its overlapping scales crackling with volatile star-fire. Around his massive gauntlets leaped blinding arcs of violet electricity that cracked the air with ear-splitting sonic detonations every time he drew breath. Behind him rolled a pair of heavy iron wheels carrying a bronze storm-storage tank, pulsing with five hundred thousand volts of ancient Violet Heavenly Dragon Lightning. A sacred, hereditary royal element capable of vaporizing an entire army battalion in a single flash.
Lei Kun leveled his twin-headed axe-spear at Murong Seven, his eyes blazing with blazing bright purple fire.
“Murong Seven!” Lei Kun bellowed, his voice amplified by crackling thunder that rattled the stone railings of the highest bleachers. “You terrible traitor! You share the ancient bloodline of the northern thunder clans! Your ancestors rode the sky tempests and commanded the storm clouds of the first emperors! Yet you abandoned your noble heritage to grovel in the coarse work jeans of a common ditch-digger! You drag bright shiny straps across the royal dirt! Today, the Royal Court will…
