The golden clouds above Tongtian Apex didn’t drift. They churned like liquid brass boiling in a sky crucible.
Every ten seconds, a pulse of pure blazing bright light swept across the 100,000-mile storm canopy. It cast an eerie, amber twilight over the five hundred thousand fighters standing at rigid attention with their thighs clamped together.
“The Nine Heavens Golden Flame Thunder,” Saint Preceptor Kong whispered, his voice hushed with mortal terror. “It burns without fuel. It consumes not merely the mortal marrow, but the seven spiritual souls and three ghostly spirits. When it touches granite, the rock doesn’t melt—it turns to glass!”
Grandmaster Tie Ji nodded somberly, sweat stinging his eyes. “In the First Epoch, the Sovereign Sect of the Western Sun tried to withstand three bolts of Golden Flame. Their mountain was carved into a crater four thousand feet deep. Nothing survived.”
On the porch of Classroom 404, Frank didn’t look at the burning sky.
He was kneeling beside a long, heavy pine crate that Shen Shitou and Murong Seven had hauled from the workshop shed with a loud, wooden groan.
THUD.
Frank popped the latches with his thumb, lifted the lid, and ran his fingers over the contents.
