A blinding web of pure spark death erupted from the floor.
Thirty-two thick arcs of violet star-fire, each as thick as a man’s thigh, burst upward from the Precursor stonework where Lei Zhen’s gauntlets were anchored. The lightning didn’t scatter into the clouds. It coiled upward, adhering to the invisible curved shape of the arena’s sapphire boundary ward, before weaving together into a dense, crackling dome of nonstop spark discharge.
The entire combat arena was transformed into a blinding, high-voltage fire.
The heat was instant and choking. The surrounding air heat skyrocketed from fifteen degrees to over eighty degrees in less than half a second, searing the lungs of the spectators in the first five rows of the gallery. Slabs of granite began to scorch, smelling of burnt quartz and bubbling stone resin.
“Die in the storm, mortal!” Lei Zhen howled through the roaring din of the star-fire arcs.
With a violent twist of his shoulders, Lei Zhen tightened the lightning cage.
The woven webs of violet electricity detached from the outer edge walls, collapsing inward toward the center of the ring in a shrinking, inescapable sphere of destruction. The gaps between the lightning strands were less than two inches wide—narrower than the width of a human hand.
