The lightning didn’t strike from the clouds. It erupted from the void below.
Columns of black-and-emerald rotting star-fire, each fifty paces wide, screamed upward past the edges of the Primordial Dais. The bone-shaking blast waves threw twenty-ton brass gear-teeth into the air like coins, pulverizing stone walkways and filling the gloom with blinding static.
Above them, the astral projection of Yama King Qin Guang brought both huge hands together.
The Soul-Grinding Nether Array.
A dome of crushing, world-size-scale spiritual pressure snapped shut over the floating platform. The downward force was so intense that the brass deck groaned, bending three feet concave beneath their boots.
Meng Shan was already kneeling, his teeth bared in a bloody snarl, his cracked cold-iron tower shield braced against his shoulder with both hands.
“I have the ceiling!” Meng Shan roared, blood spraying from his lips as his twelve distributed earth channels sharded the crushing sky-pressure into the brass deck. “Lin Ke! Do whatever you’re going to do!”
Lin Ke didn’t look at the sky.
