Threads 423 Shenglu 2
The mist roiled with swirling snows, filling the courtyard with leeching cold. Frost hardened the packed dirt to stone and crawled up the columns supporting the peaked roof over the open viewing deck which overlooked the training field. In the courtyard, nothing could be seen, only the blank white of deepest winter.
Suddenly, it split, and a crescent of wind and metal and light erupted from its depths. The wind screamed, the frozen ground split…
And two immense metal palms caught the arc of light. The ear-splitting whine of a dozen rotating blades grinding against steel drowned out the melancholy piping carried on snowy gusts. The giant whose hands had caught the crescent blade bellowed, his stance low and widely set. Shoulders trembled as sparks of light sprayed from between his palms. Then, a blinding star bloomed above his back, a merciless star of colorless light like a banner raised high over the giant's head.
A sphere of light bloomed, shrank to a pinprick, and lanced out in an all-consuming blaze.
The snows and mist were consumed in radiance, and Ling Qi shifted her qi from emanations of ice to dream, sliding through the skien of realities and dragging Xia Lin with her, just the briefest skim through the kaleidoscope of unformed dream. When she rematerialized on frost slick ground, she was already playing the first notes of her aria. The wind howled the coming of winter, and frozen wind blasted out in a wide circle, catching Gan Guangli as he turned. A surprised shout rang out as his gleaming white armor was caked in frost and rime, sending him reeling back as metal squealed and muscles and qi seized.
Xia Lin was at her side, halberd freed from Gan’s grasp by the jump through the liminal, her legs already bending into a low crouch. Her leap was a detonation. It cratered the earth for two meters around and cracked the dirt for twice that, and it ripped at Ling Qi's hair and gown. Xia Lin split the aria’s snowstorm with a chain of thunderclaps as she aimed her halberd at Cai Renxiang floating high above.
If Ling Qi could not set up, their bid to win this spar was doomed, and so, their roles were clear.
Cai-wrought halberd met Cai-wrought saber with a shockwave and a metallic ring like a grand temple gong.
And as ice groaned and shattered and Gan Guangli's thundering stride approached, Ling Qi finally reached the refrain of her song, reducing the field to a featureless white once more. Gan Guangli raised both fists to shield the slits in his helm as the snow sought to bury him. He still strode forward, but he did so slower, and slower with each passing step.