Gate Warden Chi didn’t shout an order.
He didn’t draw a backup blade or command his executioners to regroup.
He simply stepped off his ribbon of golden cloud. Then he dropped his eight-thousand-jin void hammer straight toward the floating black glass shelf.
The air didn’t scream. It evacuated.
The huge bronze hammerhead, five feet across and dense as a collapsing star, created a nearby empty pocket ahead of its descent that sucked the loose gravel and blood off the rock before the metal even struck.
“Break!” Lin Ke bellowed.
There was no time to pack the receiver array.
Meng Shan grabbed Elder Wu by the scruff of his neck with his left hand, hauled his three-thousand-two-hundred-jin shield up with his right, and leaped backward toward the swirling void mist that pooled along the boundary wall.
