The heavy oak door of the records annex exploded inward in a shower of splintered wood and iron studs.
Through the dust charged twenty Thunder Guards. Their bronze tiger masks shone in the lantern light, their heavy lacquered cuirasses crackling with jagged arcs of blue crushing weight lightning. In the center walked Inquisitor Xie Dong, his silver-braided scourge trailing along the floor stones. That left a hissing trail of scorched sulfur in its wake.
“Demonic infiltrators,” Xie Dong said. His voice flat with was cold satisfaction as his eyes locked onto Cui Heng’s midnight-blue robes, then flicked to Lin Ke. “Conspiring to tamper with sacred sky archives. Under the emergency power granted by the Ninth Thunder Lord, I declare this entire chamber contaminated. No prisoners.”
“Inquisitor Xie!” Cui Heng barked, raising his royal jade ruler. “I’m Chief Ombudsman of the Hall of Heavenly Scrutiny! You’re pointing weapons at a royal investigator!”
“The Ombudsman was tragically slain by demonic saboteurs before my guards could secure the outer edge,” Xie Dong replied smoothly. He raised his silver whip. “Fire.”
Twenty heavy repeating lightning crossbows raised all at once.
In his mental sandbox, Lin Ke ran sixty permutations.
In fifty-eight branches, the guards fired their opening salvo. The high-voltage bolts richocheted off Meng Shan’s shield, striking the dry cedar archive racks. The resulting firestorm blew up three thousand years of dry parchment in forty seconds. Meanwhile, the blast waves from Xie Dong’s whip cracked the load-bearing stone pillars, collapsing the entire ceiling and…
