CLANG!
The crash between Tie Shan’s star-iron pry-bar and Xuan Ming’s sky axe-spear sounded like the blast of a siege mortar in a confined quarry tunnel.
The sound blast wave blew outward across the marble steps, shattering the delicate jade balusters into a blizzard of green splinters that rained over the lower floor. Archon Xuan Ming’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief as the blast wave traveled up the starmetal shaft of his axe-spear, rattling the bones of his forearms and tearing the skin between his armored thumbs. The striking force was fully unnatural. Not the airy, drifting deep ring of spiritual Qi, but the brutal, dead-weight heavy rush of solid cold iron propelled by mortal sinew.
The Vanguard Archon was driven backward two full paces. His iron-shod boots skidded across the polished marble as he fought to maintain his balance.
“How can a mortal possess such leverage?” Xuan Ming gasped, his breath hitching in his throat as a sharp burst of pain shot through his left shoulder joint.
“Mortal iron doesn’t break,” Tie Shan replied, his voice fully level as he reset his stance, the pry-bar held at a forty-five-degree guard across his chest.
Behind Xuan Ming, Archon Shen Tu tried to vault over the broken stone railing to strike Lin Tao from the flank, his twin headsman daggers flashing toward the kneeling engineer’s neck. Shen Tu’s movements were uneven, driven by wild panic rather than disciplined martial forms.
