The sound of three thousand iron-shod warhorses shook the dying embers of the valley.
Lin Ke was slumped against the railing of the pylon platform, his knees buckling under the total weight of living tiredness.
His four worker threads were idling in heat cooldown, their crystal-clear waveguides cold and unresponsive.
His physical spirit veins felt like dried riverbeds filled with crushed shale. He didn’t possess enough internal Qi to light a wax candle, let alone fire a defensive ward.
At the base of the mountain trail, three hundred paces away, General Ba Lie’s three thousand heavy cavalry broke through the smoke like an avalanche of iron.
*
Ba Lie rode at the front. His heavy glaive glowed with the desperate, dying crimson embers of his Golden Core.
“DIE, HERETIC!” Ba Lie roared, the thunder of his mount drown out all other sound.
