The screaming from fifty thousand throats felt like an earthquake rattling the iron foundations of the arena.
Up in the VIP terrace, Chief Inquisitor Scholarch Bao was beside himself with frantic, wild terror.
The two-hundred-foot sky-screens were still projecting the damning test tracking data. It exposed the hungry defects of the Violet Mist Academy’s supreme art to every sect delegation in Iron Sword Province.
“Smash it!” Bao shrieked, leaning over the stone railing, spittle flying from his lips. “Smash the projection obelisk! Kill the heretic! Guards, onto the sand! Slay him where he stands!”
The iron pens beneath the VIP terrace blasted open.
Forty Patent Trial court guards in heavy lead-alloy mail surged onto the arena sand, their seven-foot six-sided iron staves leveled like a finger bone of pikes. Behind them rushed ten senior judges. It drew heavy bronze headsman’s broadswords that crackled with crushing weight wards.
They didn’t care about the rules of the ring.
They didn’t care about the roaring spectators hurling stones from the bleachers.
