The first cluster of three hundred swords fell from the skybox like a cascade of silver needles dropped from heaven’s ceiling.
They didn’t glide on airfoils. They didn’t tumble. Each blade dropped point-first along a perfectly straight high-speed flight path, speeding up from zero to three hundred paces per second in less than thirty feet of travel. The air screamed as three hundred faster-than-sound blast waves coalesced into a single, wall-like sonic roar that hammered against the promontory.
“Front rank! Brace!” Lin Tao commanded.
Tie Shan was already moving. The giant stepped three paces forward, planting his left boot against a raised lip of bedrock. With his good right arm and the braced support of his bandaged left forearm, he angled the broad, flat face of his star-iron pry-bar upward at forty-five degrees. That turned the fourteen-pound bar into an improvised moving deflector.
“Hold the angle!” Lin Tao shouted, stepping directly behind Tie Shan’s right shoulder blade and jamming his own boots against the rear seam of Tie Shan’s stance. “Don’t absorb the impact orthogonally! Let the moving vector glance along the iron face!”
The silver volley struck.
CLANG! CLANG-CLANG!
An ear-splitting barrage of metal impacts erupted across the promontory. The first spirit sword struck the tip of Tie Shan’s star-iron pry-bar. It shattered into a spray of cold, eerie-glowing sparks that burned small pinpricks into the giant’s leather tunic. The second blade struck two inches lower, glancing off the hardened star-iron edge and deflecting harmlessly into the gorge behind…
