Where Lü Bu pointed his halberd, the air seemed to freeze. The cries of tens of thousands stopped dead, as though an invisible hand had seized their throats. Only the moan of wind whipping dust across the Martial Arts Training Ground remained, along with the rustle of falling rubble as Dian Wei struggled to pull his legs free of the deep crater.
On the viewing platform, Guan Yu's Phoenix Eyes abruptly narrowed, cold light flashing like lightning through the slender slits. His knuckles whitened slightly around the hilt of the Green Dragon Crescent Blade. His proud green robe stirred without wind, snapping in the air. An invisible pressure spread silently, like a sleeping dragon awakening, and crashed against the savage killing aura pouring from Lü Bu's halberd tip!
Crack!!!
The sky split open.
It was no metaphor. The night sky above the Martial Arts Training Ground, which should have been whole, now bore a black-and-red wound stretching from horizon to horizon, its edges spitting lightning that seemed almost solid. Those bolts tore at one another in midair, annihilating and regenerating, each one a manifestation of the two men's domineering wills. Lü Bu's lightning raged like a stampede of beasts out of control. The red of his Conqueror's Haki was the dark red found deep within magma, carrying a savage heat. Wherever that red passed, the air ignited, river water boiled, and even light took on a bloody saturation. Azure dragons coiled around Guan Yu's lightning, but the red of his Conqueror's Haki was the cinnabar red of a temple's inner sanctum, tempered by years of burning incense. That red gave off no heat; instead, it carried a chill, like the ashes left after the coldest stick of incense burned out at midnight on the winter solstice. An azure dragon faintly