T-Minus sixty seconds to sky-high impact.
The sky above the Demon Trial Valley blew up into a blinding dome of white-violet fire. The high-sky mesosphere was torn open as the Grade-Six Patch Daemon breached the upper sky envelope, shedding blinding sheets of ablative star-fire that turned the mountain crags into stark, shadowless silhouettes.
A sound like the tearing of land-wide canvas echoed from the heavens. A terrible, shrieking roar that shattered the ears of fifty outer students and caused the floating platforms to sway wildly on their spiritual moorings.
At the base of the pagoda, the gap under the falling drop-gate was shrinking with horrific speed:
Three feet.
Two and a half feet.
Twenty-six inches.
Lin Tao and Tie Shan were ten paces away, sprinting at twelve meters per second. At that clearance, running was no longer possible. To pass beneath the dropping star-iron slab without being cut in half needed a total commitment of moving driving force.
