The third tier of the Grand Octagonal Dais looked like a potion-made melted rock waste heap after an accidental fire breach.
Fragments of crushed diamond shield littered the white marble steps, glittering like scattered sugar beneath the flickering overhead lanterns. The lead guard lay sprawled across the landing, unconscious and wheezing through fractured ribs. Meanwhile, the other two guards scrambled desperately on their elbows to pull themselves out of the giant’s path. The acrid smell of ozone and burning copper drifted down from the upper tiers. There, the power bus was speeding up toward its critical threshold.
Archon Xuan Ming backed away up the third-tier steps, his breath hitching in ragged, painful gasps.
His right thumb was out-of-joint at a ninety-degree angle, the purplish swelling already ballooning over the torn joint cord. But the physical pain in his hand was nothing compared to the psychological terror gnawing at his soul. For three thousand years, he had believed that mortal flesh was soft, fragile, and inherently inferior to sky refinement.
Yet standing before him was a mortal quarryman who had just shattered a master-crafted diamond shield with a fourteen-pound piece of scrap iron.
“You... You’re a demon,” Xuan Ming whispered, his back striking the fluted base of the fourth-tier pillar. “No mortal man possesses such strength!”
