The three golden star-fire dragons didn’t fall together. They spun.
Dropping in a screaming helical vortex, the three distinct channels of spark-charged sky fury drilled toward Tongtian Apex at ninety thousand miles an hour.
Each rotating coil carried a distinct hum. The northern arc whistled at sixty cycles, the eastern arc buzzed at one hundred and twenty. The western arc shrieked with a jagged, harmonically distorted scream that shattered tea bowls inside the pavilions three miles down the mountain.
“The Trinity Dragon Execution!” Array Patriarch Xuan Zhen screamed, his satin robes whipping furiously in the hurricane-force downdraft.
He fell against a stone pillar. He clawed at his ears as the conflicting frequencies threatened to shatter his Golden Core.
“In ancient texts, this is the Unsolvable Triad!” Xuan Zhen yelled to the surrounding elders. “Three heavenly pillars of destructive force, each out of phase with the others! If you block one, the second flanks your spiritual barrier! If you block the second, the third strikes your back! It’s the eternal, unbalanced wheel of divine punishment!”
Frank stood atop the western low roof wall of Classroom 404, hands on his hips.
The wind blew his canvas shop apron flat against his chest. But his battered baseball cap stayed firmly wedged over his forehead.
