Ten miles above the green plains of Dry-Well City, the upper sky still rang like a struck iron bell.
Golden sparks rained down across the open sky as the giant golden shield—shaped like a half-abacus and half-kitchen wok—slowly faded back into the glowing ley-lines of Planet Canglan. Across from the top of the Heaven-Pillar Tower, the Thousand-Foot Blood-Moon Avatar of Enforcer Xue Sha stumbled backward three giant steps through the thin air.
All six of the giant blood-avatar’s hands were split open at the palms. Dark red smoke hissed from the cracks, and Xue Sha’s real body—floating inside the avatar’s chest—coughed up a mouthful of bright red blood that froze into red ice crystals before it even fell a hundred feet.
“Impossible!” Xue Sha’s voice boomed out of the six-armed blood giant, shaking the upper air. His eyes were bloodshot and wide with shock. “That was my Blood-Moon World-Slaying Palm! I burned a hundred years of Half-Step Soul-Formation blood essence to strike that blow! How can a dirt-cheap lower-realm world block my palm without a single roof tile cracking?!”
Floating in the open sky fifty yards in front of the Heaven-Pillar Tower’s top balcony, Pei Xuan brushed a speck of space-dust off his blue town-mayor robe. His hands were tucked warmly inside his sleeves, and not a single hair on his head was out of place.
