High in the shadowed rosewood rafters eighty feet above the flooded atrium, four figures hung suspended by silk climbing lines like massive black spiders waiting in the dark.
They weren’t common river hired blades.
They were the elite shadow executioners of the Black-Viper Trade ring. Specialized shadow killers trained from childhood in the silent arts of spirit vein puncture, bone-softening poison, and spatial camouflage. Their skin was smeared with pitch-black potion-made animal fat that absorbed light, their clothing woven from sound-dampening silk that made zero rustle even in a gale. The silk was harvested from blind cave arachnids that nested in underground sulfur vents, spun with hollow tiny fibers that swallowed sound shaking.
In their hands, they held eight-inch throwing needles forged from toxic deep-sea bone, dipped in the curdled blood of thousand-year-old corpse-worms. A single scratch from these needles would liquefy the marrow of a Foundation Establishment fighter in three breaths.
Through the rising white steam of the put out fire, their cold, reptilian eyes were locked onto Lin Tao’s throat.
To these master killers, the giant Tie Shan was an obstacle to be bypassed. The true target was the slender seventeen-year-old youth in the charcoal linen tunic who had dismantled their master’s empire with a scrap of paper and a steel metal pen. They had watched him command the deluge. They had witnessed his cold, test gaze. He was the mind behind the trial, and minds could be cut with bone.
