The first signal flare had barely shot through the tower window when Xie Yue's Moon Blade chased after it.
The blade grazed the pillar of fire in midair, slicing in two the bamboo tube packed with blue flame powder. Fire scattered, half falling toward the buildings inside the pass, half swept beyond the walls by the north wind. Yan leaped onto the wall and slammed his palms together. A wave of crimson fire curled back into a vortex and swallowed every stray flame.
"The false signal's out!"
The soldiers on the wall did not fire their crossbows. The three squads Hu Liena had posted earlier had already seized the mechanisms and pinned several of Luo Jun's guards, who had tried to cock them without orders, against the wall.
But a deeper explosion sounded inside the Armaments Tower.
Luo Jun smashed through the storeroom door in his Iron Thorn War Rhino true form, his horn severing two Soul Guide Fuses. Burning oil ran down the Stone Steps. Driven by their mechanisms, twelve heavy crossbows turned at once, half their bolts aimed at Blue Lightning territory and half at the Golden Generation rushing to intercept them.
He meant to send the final volley across the boundary marker.
Hu Liena's mental power pierced the tower first, searching for whoever controlled the mechanisms. Luo Jun had already cleared everyone out. He held the bowstrings taut with sheer Soul Power, the strength of an eighty-sixth-level Soul Douluo bearing down on the triggers through twelve Iron Thorns. Strike any one, and the others would fire at once.
"Don't touch the mechanisms!" she shouted, stopping Xie Yue as he prepared to cut through the door.
Yan saw the burning oil creeping across the ground and stamped up a semicircular Rock Embankment, trapping it within the drill ground.