The golden royal sword cleared its sword sheath with a sound like tearing silk.
“Enough!” Yan Tiexin roared.
The sheer volume of his Half-Step Golden Core aura shattered four carved jade screens along the outer edge of the hall, spraying polished stone fragments across the bowing elders. Grand Elder Feng Xuan dropped flat against the floorboards, covering his head with his silk sleeves. Meanwhile, the outer court guards backed away against the columns in sheer terror.
Yan’s eyes were bloodshot, his lips peeled back in a feral snarl.
“I’m the Emperor’s Judge!” Yan spat, his blade glowing with white-hot solar lightning that scorched the sandalwood incense from the air. “I don’t answer to outer-sect clerks, nor do I barter with dead stones! Disciple Lin Ke, by my emergency power under the Martial Sedition Decree, I condemn you to immediate decapitation for blaspheming the Founding Sovereign!”
Yan lunged forward, his blade carving an arc of blinding Yang fire aimed straight for Lin Ke’s throat.
The heat blast washed over Lin Ke’s face, blistering the skin of his collarbone and singing the frayed threads of his linen tunic. Deep within his chest, Lin Ke’s glassy glass spirit veins hummed with brittle tension under the crushing spiritual pressure. But his Ashen Iron bone lattice locked his stance to the floor.
