The searchlights turned the void mist into curdled milk.
They didn’t emit ordinary yellow light.
They were twin beams of focused royal sun-fire, twenty paces thick. They dropped from the golden clouds like burning pillars of brass.
Every time a beam touched a drifting black glass boulder, the stone didn’t shatter. It flared white, melted into bubbling melted rock waste. Then it evaporated into an acrid cloud of stone vapor.
“The Heavenly Searchlight Formation,” Elder Wu whimpered, burying his face deeper into the dark rock scree. “They’re sweeping Sector Seven! If the sun-fire brushes against us, even our bones will turn to smoke!”
“Shan, pull back three yards into the fissure,” Lin Ke whispered.
He didn’t move fast enough.
A searchlight beam swept across the mouth of their crevice, its outer corona clipping the rocky overhang.
