Through the see-through outside wireframe, Lin Tao watched Tie Shan sink into a deep, stable horse stance before the southwest corner.
The leftover bronze hounds in the arena had turned their attention entirely upon the surviving Azure Cloud students. Across the hall, seven young masters were backed against the northern gate, their robes shredded and bloodied, desperately swinging their chipped swords to keep eight snarling iron-puppets at bay. The air inside was thick with black smoke and screaming men. That created an overwhelming sense diversion. No one was looking at the silent laborer in the rear.
Tie Shan knelt on his right knee. He set the cold-drawn chisel tip of his twelve-pound iron pry-bar against the hairline joint between the dark rock floor and the star-iron baseboard.
He drew back his heavy eight-inch driving mallet with his right hand.
“Strike true,” Lin Tao commanded through the sound leak. “One blow at forty-five degrees downward. Force the metal into the map point gap.”
Tie Shan didn’t hesitate. His thick lats tightened, and he brought the eight-inch mallet down with the full moving weight of his body.
CLANG!
The impact rang through the foundation with the bone-shaking force of a small cannon. The hardened steel tip of the pry-bar didn’t bounce off the star-iron stonework. It caught the edge of the zero point four two tiny fraction of an inch floating-point seam and wedged itself two inches deep into the unrendered null-volume.
