The air pressure dropped like a lead metal bar falling into a stale well.
Before Zhao Wuji’s thumb could depress the brass plunger of the remote detonator, a roar of pure, homicidal fury ripped through the arched entrance of the machine room.
It didn’t come from the wavering mercenary rank, who were still backing away from Elder Wu DeZheng’s brandished royal seal. It came from Commander Tie, Zhao Wuji’s personal martial retainer. A towering, six-foot-six fighter whose skin was the color of tarnished bronze, scarred by two decades of corporate black-ops work in the lawless border marches.
Tie didn’t care about royal seals. He didn’t care about the Board of Rites or nine-clan extermination edicts. His soul was bound to the Grand Fortune Clan by a life-debt blood oath, sworn on the bones of his ancestors in the private old family shrine of the Zhao family. If Zhao Wuji fell, Tie’s clan in the capital would be stripped of their pay and cast into the slave pits.
“Die, Azure Cloud dog!” Tie bellowed, his throat cords shaking with tightly packed wind-elemental Qi that shattered two nearby crystal display covers into glittering powder.
With a terrifying leap that crushed the black meteorite flat stone slabs beneath his heavy iron shin guards, Tie crossed forty yards in a fraction of an eye-blink.
