The physics of a two-handed overhead pry-bar strike by a peak Iron-Bone body refiner are governed by strict, Newtonian mechanics.
Tie Shan’s body was a moving buildup engine. He planted his left iron-shod boot three inches into the frozen shale. He locked his ankle, knee, and hip joints into an unbending three-sided foundation. His massive torso coiled forty-five degrees to the right. He drew the twelve-pound cold-drawn star-iron bar up over his right shoulder until the chisel tip pointed straight at the overcast sky.
In that single half-second pause, eight hundred pounds of packed muscular mass and twelve pounds of dense star-iron stored sixty-four thousand Blasts of heat of gravity and elastic potential energy.
Directly before him sat the target: the central axle of the nine-foot giant beast carriage.
Carved from the solid, stone-hard ivory tusk of an ancient deep-sea dragon, the nine-inch-thick axle was designed to support twenty tons of armored carriage weight. But ivory, no matter how ancient or chemically soaked with rotting essence, possesses a rigid crystal-clear grain structure. Under crushing loads, it was nearly iron-hard. Under sudden, nearby transverse sideways tearing force, it was as brittle as unannealed glass.
Lin Tao analyzed the moving equation through his test left eye. He projected the failure threshold upon the ivory’s stress lines:
