The impact of Marquis Zhao landing on the lower deck of the Heavenly Mandate shook the entire warship like an artillery strike.
The golden warlord didn’t use the gangways. He drove his armored boots directly through the bronze check hatch of the central engine compartment. He dropped into the screaming, steam-filled bowels of the flagship. Around him, dozens of royal engine-fighters were coughing and choking in the yellow chemical smoke. He grabbed their scorched hands where the burning bronze valves had blistered their flesh.
“Out of my way, cowards!” Zhao roared, his golden aura blowing the toxic smoke through the shattered deck grates.
He strode to the main spreading pipe hub. A massive, eight-sided chamber of riveted star-white-gold where the sixteen fire channels came together into the central floating bus. Inside the chamber, the master valve sat shaking in its wild twenty-four-cycle spinlock. Its bronze locked pins cherry-red and shedding showers of white sparks.
Marquis Zhao shoved the Chief Sailing Master aside, gripped the five-foot dragon-bone broadsword with both gauntleted hands. Then he reversed the blade.
With a terrifying roar of hard effort, the Soul Formation general plunged the sword directly into the heart of the spreading pipe hub, channeling the entire terrifying reserve of his golden spiritual core into the locked circuit.
