The smell of burned flesh and scorched silk hung heavy over the glass-fused floor of Ring One.
Mu Chen lay curled on the melted sand, his ragged sobs echoing through the total, dead silence of the coliseum. His ruined right arm twitched intermittently, the skin blackened and split open down to the gray muscle tissue, weeping blood and fluid-draining fluid into the smoking grit.
Fifty thousand spectators sat frozen in their seats. He stared down at the nineteen-year-old fire apprentice who had just brought down the top seed of the Violet Mist Academy with a single finger tap.
Then, from the referee’s raised judgment dias at the edge of the ring, a furious, thunderous roar broke the quiet.
“HERESY! DEMONIC WITCHCRAFT!”
Master Scribe Lu of the Golden Script Guild leaped from the dias.
His azure robes billowed around him as he landed on the arena sand with a heavy, shaking thud, an eight-foot iron-headed judgment mace gripped in his white-knuckled hands.
His eyes were bloodshot with panic. He was on Zhao Wuji’s payroll, and fifty thousand spirit stones had just evaporated into the air.
