The knight commander, clad in his heraldic armor, no longer wielded the flashy spiral lance. This time, he used the dark red atom lance issued to the Starrealm Knights. He launched one attack after another, his thrusts, slashes, sweeps, and feints flowing without a hint of wasted motion as he constantly shifted direction with his footwork. His steps were as ghostly as if he wore a lightweight tunic rather than a suit of heraldic armor weighing at least half a ton.
Yu Lian quickly recognized the technique Count Tatie was using: "Twilight," a secret psychic martial art of the Imperial Court. It was said to have originated in the Empire's classical mythology. In the myths, the sun god Rei suppressed and executed the world's demons at twilight before yielding the world to the moon goddess. Thus, at dusk, when night was about to fall and the sun left only the evening glow on the horizon, everything seemed most illusory—and yet was also at its strongest and most dangerous.
The "Twilight" style was exactly like that. Every time his blade spun and danced, it did so without a hint of wasted motion, yet the air along its path combusted, exploded, and even ionized in an instant. Then came the crisp sounds of countless ions scraping against one another, like the cries of countless birds in flight.
But those weren't ordinary lightning bolts. They were charges naturally produced when air dissolved under extreme heat. In terms of the destructive force they unleashed in an instant, they even surpassed the ion cannons of a battleship. Yet this astonishing power was concentrated strictly along the path of the attack, without spreading at all to the surroundings.
Yu Lian knew a little about this so-called "Twilight." He knew that as long as one wasn't directly