The golden dome of Elder Wu’s holding barrier hummed like a trapped hornet.
Outside the semi-clear shell, Captain Lu’s face was twisted in a savage, murderous scowl. He could see through the amber warding. Lin Ke sitting wrapped in his grey stone back shell, Shen Yue kneeling at her control junction, Meng Shan locked to his northern pylon.
“If the boy dies inside that dome, his corpse vaporizes in the lightning,” Zhao Wuji whispered from behind the mercenary captain, his voice poisoned with malice. “The furnaces, the ore contracts, the secret manual—we get nothing. A total write-off.”
“He won’t even reach the lightning,” Captain Lu snarled.
He stepped toward a heavy, tripod-mounted siege giant crossbow set just outside the golden ward. The weapon was loaded with a four-foot steel-core bolt, tipped with a formation-piercing drill head designed to penetrate city gates.
Wu’s barrier was an emergency earthen ward. Because of that, it was designed to deflect energy explosions from within, not physical moving penetration from without.
Lu lined up the iron sight with the lower rim of the quarry. There, the third nested copper grounding trace crossed a shallow depression in the rock.
“Trip his ground line,” Lu commanded.
