Crown Prince Yan Wuji hovered thirty feet above the arena floor, his teeth gritted so hard that dark blood seeped from his gums.
“Unsafe?” Yan Wuji repeated, his voice dropping to a low, deep-throated hiss that caused the surrounding heat across the arena to drop twenty degrees. “You dare stand upon the old family soil of the Great Da-Qi Conferred Megacity, in the presence of five hundred thousand royal subjects, and declare the Grand Coliseum unsafe?!”
The hundred armored royal dreadnought guards encircled Frank in a tight, bristling ring of cold steel, their five-foot execution broadswords raised, veins bulging in their forearms. They waited for the royal command to butcher him.
Frank didn’t even look at the swords.
He didn’t look at the Prince.
He stepped past the lead dreadnought captain as if navigating past an awkwardly placed coat rack in an office hallway. The captain lunged forward with an execution sweep aimed at Frank’s neck—
CLANG!
The razor-sharp spirit blade struck Frank’s denim shoulder and bounced off with the dull, hollow chime of a butter knife hitting a steel safe!
