The white smoke had yet to disperse.
The instant Han Hu's bronze mace struck the iron wheel, he heard a sound he had never imagined.
"Clang!"
Like a massive boulder plunging into deep water—dull, abrupt, then swallowed whole.
There was no echo, no lingering ring.
For an instant, the bronze mace stopped against the wheel rim.
As though it had struck something utterly immovable.
Or rather, an iron mountain.
His mace had smashed and shattered countless things before, always cutting through dead wood and rotten branches.
Yet the sensation of this strike landing was beyond belief.
The wheel swallowed all his strength in one gulp, then spat it all back out in that same instant.
It was a backlash. Even as it returned his force, it carried an unimaginable momentum of its own.
And it came so fast, erupting so suddenly, that it made him feel infinitesimal.
Crack!
The web between his thumb and forefinger burst open in an instant.
Two clouds of bloody mist sprayed from between his hand and the mace handle.
From shoulder to wrist, every muscle and tendon in both arms was stretched to its limit by that force at the same instant, as though five fingers were being pulled in five directions by five horses.
The bronze mace shattered.
It began to collapse at the grip. Cracks burst from the middle of the mace's shaft, spreading like tree roots through soil, covering its entire length in an instant. Then, with a bang, chunks of bronze flew everywhere.
They shot in all directions with piercing whistles through the air.
A fist-sized fragment sliced across his left shoulder, taking a chunk of flesh with it and exposing bone beneath.
Another, no bigger than a fingernail, drilled into the ribs on his right side. He felt only the