Tie Shan moved with the unstoppable moving driving force of an avalanche breaking loose from a high granite crest.
His iron-shod boots struck the dark rock flat stone slabs with thunderous impacts, each stride cracking the polished stone and sending micro-fractures splintering across the diamond-dusted floor. He ignored the choking air pressure bearing down from the ceiling. He drove his massive legs through the dense static-electric fog as if he were wading through knee-deep mud in the river paddies of his youth. His breath came in steady, deep rasps, his jaw set like an iron vise as he closed the sixty-pace distance across the grand hall in less than four seconds.
“Stop him!” screamed Archon Xuan Ming from the second throne, his golden visor snapping down over his eyes. “The mortal brute is charging the sacred dais! Slay him where he stands!”
Two armored sky attendants, stationed at the base of the tiers with long silver spears, lunged forward to intercept the giant. Their armor gleamed with refined spirit jade, their spearpoints crackling with tightly packed wind essence designed to pierce mortal armor and turn internal organs into crimson mist at thirty paces.
Tie Shan didn’t even slow his stride.
