The prime echelon of one thousand flying swords struck the airspace above the terrace like a dropping meteor.
The sheer sky shifted weight preceding the strike created a moving cone of tightly packed air. A faster-than-sound blast wave traveling at nine hundred paces per second that reached the flat stone slabs three tenths of a second before the steel itself. Air pushed ahead of the blades was tightly packed to over five hundred pounds of pressure, superheating in a heartbeat and invisible the oxygen molecules into branching arcs of static lightning that hissed across the terrace. The blast hit the terrace floor with the force of an exploding ammunition wagon, pulverizing loose gravel into high-speed shrapnel and tearing ancient dark rock flags from their bedrock mortar.
Stone railings along the eastern rim of the terrace shattered into millions of whistling fragments, blown out into the deep pit by the sheer excess pressure. The sound was not a sound shaking that could be processed by human ears. It was a physical blow that struck the skull like an iron hammer, driving blood from Tie Shan’s nostrils and threatening to rupture Lin Tao’s tympanic membranes.
“Shield up now!” Lin Tao shouted, his voice cutting through the rising roar.
