The sound of an eighteen-thousand-ton warship losing its floating field was not an explosion.
It was a clatter.
It began with the failure of the port-side backup steadying vanes. Thousands of small, linked bronze scales along the flagship’s bilge that rattled against each other like an avalanche of loose copper coins falling down a dry well. The melted spreading bus broke contact with the floating coils. Then, the magnetic cushion that had held the Heavenly Mandate aloft for three decades simply ceased to exist.
Gravity, patient and unrushed, reclaimed its balance.
The massive bronze dragon-prow dropped twenty paces in a single, sickening swoop, the cedar hull timbers screaming in load-bearing agony as forty thousand tons of sideways tearing force twisted through the keel. High on the upper yards, gold-trimmed silk sails tore loose from their bronze stays, flapping wildly like broken wings in the churning mountain air.
On the lower deck, Marquis Zhao stumbled backward from the glowing, slagged heap of the spreading pipe hub, his dragon-bone sword scorched black and his golden gauntlets smoking with melted bronze. The warlord’s face was pale, his breath ragged, his Soul Formation core fully empty by the total back-emf that had surged through his spirit veins. Just then, the bus melted.
