The air in the courtyard cracked like lightning as Overseer Hu let loose his full training.
A wave of crushing spiritual pressure washed over the marble flat stone slabs. It sent loose limestone gravel scattering in all directions. The seventy guards stumbled backward, raising their arms to shield their eyes from the gale of yellow earth-Qi whipping off Hu’s blade.
To a common mortal laborer, a Foundation Establishment strike was a total, unavoidable death sentence. The physical speed was beyond human reflexes. The spiritual pressure alone was enough to crush a mortal’s throat pipe and rupture his inner organs.
Tie Shan roared, stepping forward to swing his twelve-pound iron pry-bar like a battering ram to intercept the strike.
“Stand down, Tie Shan!” Lin Tao ordered, his voice cold and sharp as cracked ice.
Lin Tao didn’t try to meet forty pounds of Qi-infused steel with flesh or iron. His dantian was a zero-byte void, incapable of channeling a single thread of spiritual armor. If Hu’s blade touched him, his mortal flesh would be sliced in two like damp paper.
Instead, Lin Tao watched Hu’s charge through his left eye.
In his augmented vision, Hu was not an unbeatable immortal warrior. He was an uneven, glitchy physics object moving along a predictable vector, bounded by a crude twenty-four hertz animation cycle.
Every footstep Hu took on the polished marble was heavy, unbalanced by his wild rage and the too much forward lean of his upper torso. He had committed his entire balance point to a single downward cleaving strike.
Zero point eight seconds.
Lin Tao stood fully motionless until the glowing edge of the broadsword was less than three feet from his brow. He could smell the ozone of the Qi blade and the sour, garlic reek of Hu’s wild sweat.
Frame twenty-three.
At the exact heartbeat of the physics engine’s refresh hitch, Lin Tao dropped his hips. He planted the heel of his right boot into the seam between two marble flags, and pivoted ninety degrees to the left.
The broadsword missed his ear by less than an inch.
The howling vortex of yellow earth-Qi snapped the left shoulder of Lin Tao’s coarse tunic into ribbons. But the steel blade split only empty air.
Hu’s driving force was unstoppable. Over-committed to the kill, the overseer stumbled three paces forward across the slick marble, his boots screeching as he tried desperately to reverse his stride.
Lin Tao didn’t retreat. He followed the overseer’s stumbling flight path, his boots moving in a tight, fluid circle that kept him permanently stationed inside Hu’s outer blind spot. The pain in his braced left collar bone was intense. That burning throb pulsed in his collarbone with every sudden shift of driving force. But his breath remained steady.
Directly behind Lin Tao stood the central stone-built anchor of the courtyard: the Foundational Ward Pylon.
The pylon was a massive, eight-sided obelisk of black Precursor slate, twelve feet tall and four feet thick, carved with fine, detailed silver warding glyphs that steadied the protective boundary arrays of the entire Punishment compound. It was anchored directly into the main bedrock of the mountain. For three hundred years, it had stood unmoving. It took in lightning strikes, earthquake tremors, and rogue spellfire.
Lin Tao backed toward the obelisk, his left eye calculating the deep ringing hum of the stone:
Hu spun around, spitting bloody foam from his lips, his eyes bloodshot and bulging like a rabid beast. He had lost all semblance of human reason. His mind was burned up by the animal instinct of a cornered hunting beast facing the headsman’s block.
“Die! Die! Die!” Hu shrieked, swinging his heavy broadsword in a wide, level decapitation sweep aimed directly at Lin Tao’s neck.
Lin Tao didn’t try to run. He pressed his back flat against the black slate of the pylon. He felt the cold, smooth stone through the tear in his tunic.
He waited. He waited until the shimmering edge of the sword was six inches from his throat. Then he dropped flat onto his knees against the cold marble flat stone slabs.
CLANG!
The sound was ear-splitting, like a bronze temple bell struck by a thunderbolt.
Hu’s broadsword, carrying the full, packed force of his Foundation Establishment earth-Qi, slammed squarely into the center of the Foundational Ward Pylon.
The impact drove the three-foot steel blade four inches deep into the black slate obelisk.
A blinding shower of white and azure sparks exploded from the fracture. The fine, detailed silver warding glyphs carved into the pylon flared wildly, pulsing with chaotic, ungrounded energy as the defensive matrix tried to absorb and fade the massive, unexpected moving intrusion.
Hu gasped, yanking wildly on the handle of his sword.
The blade wouldn’t move.
The crushing stress of the pylon’s crystal-clear lattice had locked the steel into its core with thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch.
“My sword...” Hu stammered, pulling with both hands until the veins in his forearms bulged purple. “Release my sword!”
Beside the wedged blade, Lin Tao rose slowly to his feet.
In his right hand, the four-inch cold-drawn steel land-mapper metal pen caught the pale morning light. Its needle-sharp tip shone with icy intent.
“The blade is locked, Overseer,” Lin Tao said. His voice dropped into a cold, terrifying whisper that made the hair on Hu’s neck stand on end. “Now let’s test the capacity of the stone.”
Hu jerked his head around, his eyes wild with feral terror. He shoved his shoulder against the black obelisk, planting his heavy boots against the base of the pylon, trying with all his spiritual might to tear the steel loose. The broadsword groaned under the bending strain. But the crystal-clear slate of the ancient Precursor monument held the blade like solid iron.
Across the courtyard, the seventy guards stood numbed. They had seen many men die under Hu’s broadsword. But they had never seen a mortal slave step through a fighter’s killing arc with the casual grace of an afternoon stroll. In their eyes, Lin Tao was no longer a slave facing judgment. He was a walking disaster, luring a rabid beast into an ancient clockwork trap.
Elder Song leaned forward over his sandalwood desk, his heart pounding against his ribs like a trapped bird. The elder knew the history of that black obelisk. It was older than the Azure Cloud Sect itself, a relic of the Precursor dynasties that anchored the spiritual ley lines of the mountain.
“Hu, you idiot!” Song screamed from the steps, his voice shaking with sudden panic. “Get away from the foundational pylon! Don’t agitate the array!”
It was already too late.