We started to descend to this plateau—when suddenly I dragged my companions back and pointed excitedly below, exclaiming:
“Look! Look!”
There in the center of the promontory, seemingly all alone, stood the arch fiend of all this havoc—the high priest of the sorcerers, Kwo-Sung-tao!
Apparently the old fellow had chosen this spot whence he could view in safety his followers’ attack upon our party. He had not heard my outcry behind him, and remained absorbed in the Titanic upheaval of the distant mountains.
As I looked down upon his shriveled figure, a wave of savage joy swept over me! At last fate was strangely playing into our hands! Quite unsuspecting, the most menacing figure of the ages—the master mind of diabolical achievement, the would-be “dictator of human destiny”—had been cast into our net for final vengeance!
Just then the mortars boomed, and two charges of high explosives went hurtling toward the roof of the powerhouse.
Kwo-Sung-tao wheeled and stared off toward the opposite promontory. Seeing nothing, he hesitated in alarm. He did not look around in our direction.
Another instant and the explosives fell squarely upon the roof of the building, and with two frightful detonations—so close together that they seemed almost as one—the whole structure burst asunder vanished in a flying tornado of débris. For a few moments nothing was visible save a tremendous geyser of dirt, steel, concrete and bits of machinery.
While the air was filled with this gust of wreckage, my gaze sped back to the leader of the Seuen-H’sin.
The old man stood stock still, petrified by this sudden destruction of all his hopes and work. What agony of soul he was enduring in that moment I could only guess. His mummified figure suddenly to have shriveled unbelievably—to be actually withering before our eyes!