Lord Of Martial Arts

The gray chain surged toward Darren, its rattling sound like the din of an avalanche.

Darren went into a frenzy as he tried to dodge, but the undulating fetter seemed to know what he was thinking and adjusted its course.

He was trapped in the void with this thing. As it had been before, no matter how he tried to escape, he was running on the same spot.

Before he knew it, the chain had wrapped itself around him several times.

The next instant it tightened, and his limbs couldn't move. He was caught. Then he was moving, being dragged along behind the armored clay figurine as it ponderously approached the space cracks.

Darren was in a cold sweat.

Few things could put such a fear into him. But now, before this thing's terrible might, he was as vulnerable as any ordinary man.

Thick, dangerous-looking clouds gathered in the sky. A frigid wind rolled across the landscape, stinging Darren's face and sending shudders through his body.

Before him, the black space crack loomed like the mouth of some giant, ferocious monster, getting ready to swallow him alive.

As they came closer, Darren peered inside the space crack.

At the far end of the dark expanse, he beheld what seemed to be a field of pinpoints of light. It looked like nothing so much as a star-filled night sky.

"Is... Is that another world?" he breathed in astonishment.

The terrific clattering of more chains interrupted his thoughts.

The armored clay figurine stopped, staring blankly into the space crack as though waiting for something.

Meanwhile, the noise was coming closer and closer.

"What a horrible sound!" he cried, though his own voice was swallowed up in it.

It was a titanic din, like the collision of mountains.

A moment passed. Just as Darren began to think the noise would drive him mad, he happened to look into the space crack again. What he saw made him sweat harder than before.

From the distant starry void came an entire crowd of beings; all of them were clay figurines like the one that had captured Darren.

They were similarly armored, but the dark auras that surrounded each of them were even stronger and more intimidating than that of the first one.

Dozens of clay figurines formed a team, and each team pulled a gray chain that was ten feet thick. There looked to be total of eighteen groups.

Faced with this sight, Darren's alarm over his own capture was overpowered by sheer curiosity. Someone or something was being held captive by those eighteen enormous fetters.

The questions of who or what that was, and why, now utterly absorbed Darren's mind.

He and his captor waited for two hours, motionless as they watched the bizarre procession moving under the starry sky.

By the time two hours had passed, two hundred feet of the chains had gone by.

Their holders seemed to be struggling, as a

He stewed in these miserable thoughts for a long moment, and soon was almost ready to give in to his injuries and allow unconsciousness to take the pain away.

Yet it was just then, at the other end of the void, that the old man slowly lifted his head again.

In a weary motion, he lifted his arms and stretched them.

As he did so, the chains that surrounded him practically exploded, scattering broken links in all directions.

The commotion that this made drew everyone's attention. For their part, the armored clay figurines who had been pulling him quickly gathered together. It was impossible to miss, however, that they were visibly trembling.

After taking another look at Darren, the old man started to move, meaning to cross to the other end of the fissure in space.

At this point, his would-be captors threw themselves at him, clearly motivated by panic rather than reason.

In the end, their colossal strength was all for nothing.

The old man walked straight through their onslaught as though he didn't even realize it was happening.

Their clay bodies broke against him like empty porcelain bottles, spraying the ground with their shattered remains.

The empty shells of their armors clattered about, ringing like cymbals.

As the old man came closer, the clay figurine guarding Darren continuously stepped backwards in terror.

Meanwhile, the whole landscape shook with a roar like the world ending.

Even as the old man continued his unconcerned march, the space cracks were beginning to close, blocking his path.

Darren watched in awe, trying to stay conscious.

Seeing the fissures begin to close, however, his face went deathly pale. His last hope of survival was being crushed as surely as the clay figurines had been.

Slowly, inevitably, darkness covered Darren's sight, hiding the mysterious old man, the starry sky, and everything else around him.