Fire and Beast, Will Triumphs over the Blade

"Hehehehe!!"

The ruddy, plump old man watched night fall. He took a human finger from inside his robe, put it in his mouth, and chewed heartily, his cheeks bulging as he ground flesh and bone to a pulp.

A black feral cat, drawn by the bloody stench, came closer.

The old man scooped up the cat and spat the dregs in his mouth all over it. Then he grabbed a handful of insects, swished them around in his mouth, and spat those onto it too.

Strangely, the moment the revolting dregs touched the cat's fur, wisps of smoke rose, and the whole animal grew indistinct.

"Di, zi! Gan jie zhong di!"

The sorcerer gave his instructions in the Jiaozhi tongue.

Go, bite them to death!!

The feral cat let out a piercing yowl and ran toward town.

The situation in town had stabilized considerably.

Chu Tianshu had just killed or wounded several of the fiercest bandits, fought his way through their ranks, and lured the swordsman away.

Wang Fu rallied himself and, enduring his wounds, hurled steel darts in rapid succession. A group of guards fought alongside him, and reinforcements were still arriving from town.

The fighting was being pushed toward the edge of town.

Suddenly, piercing cat yowls rang out, one after another.

Dozens, perhaps a hundred feral cats poured out of the woods, screaming as they darted past the bandits and charged straight at the militia and guards.

In an instant, the narrow road was filled with the leaping shadows of cats.

They sprang at people's faces and bodies, biting, clawing, and tearing, their cries hideous beyond belief.

The militiamen scrambled to shake the beasts off, but though the things were small, they were extraordinarily agile. They crawled and clawed all over people, biting their ears, making them impossible to bear.

Wang Fu saw a bandit seize the chance to slash at a militiaman.

The blade clearly swept through a feral cat, yet the cat was unharmed. Only the man was cut down.

"They're fake!!"

Wang Fu roared, "They're all fake! Don't panic!"

How were they fake? The cats' bites clearly hurt, and no one listened to him.

Only then did Shopkeeper Ma reach the end of the street.

Rather than charge straight onto the path, he hid behind the corner at the end of the street and took the bottom sheet from a stack of talismans.

It was purple talisman paper, inscribed with golden sigils.

A sudden crack beside him gave him a fright, and he turned to look.

The homeowner had smashed a window and was dragging his family away in a panic.

Shopkeeper Ma looked away, his lips trembling rapidly as his finger traced sigils through the air. At last, he pointed.

"Sha Qi, disperse; evil spirits, be destroyed! At the Spirit Official's wrath, flames engulf Kunlun! By the command of the Three Mao Patriarchs, swiftly, as the law decrees! Go!"

The talisman rose of its own accord, rounded the corner, and shot up the path as swiftly as a crossbow bolt, passing over the heads of everyone fighting.

Behind the bandits, a maddening cat's yowl suddenly erupted.

More than a hundred feral cats vanished with a bang, leaving only one black cat.

The purple talisman covered the black cat. Its eyes were blood-red and its teeth bared, but it could no more struggle free than if a boulder were pinning it down.

In the woods, the sorcerer cried out in alarm. Three bloody claw marks appeared on his face.

It was as though a fierce, dying wildcat had sprung at his face.

"Die! Die! Die!"

His face twitching with pain, the sorcerer wore a savage expression as he kicked over all three large bamboo baskets beside him, one kick apiece.

The two dwarfs guarding him looked alarmed and moved aside.

The sorcerer yanked the bone whistle from his chest and blew a chilling, mournful note.

The buzzing from the bamboo baskets grew more than twice as loud, and three streams of black smoke shot out.

They were venomous bees as long as an adult's little finger, their bodies striped black and yellow, their pitch-black stingers bearing a faint metallic sheen.

Their venom was potent, and their stingers could pierce leather clothing. But a bee died after stinging once, so the sorcerer prized them highly.

The town's strength had exceeded his expectations, but he had already suffered so many losses that it would be even harder to accept coming away with nothing.

Only then did the sorcerer release all three swarms of venomous bees.

The people on the path were still fighting. After the wildcats disappeared, they charged, driving the bandits back step by step.

But Shopkeeper Ma had already spotted the swarms rising from the woods. He hurriedly smashed his kerosene lamp on the ground.

The glass shattered, and kerosene splashed across the ground, burning in a pool of flame.

His hands flicked, spreading talismans like a fan. He swept them all through the fire, setting them alight, then crumpled them into a ball with both hands, as if he feared no flame.

Fire burned through the ball inside and out, its flames blazing as it formed a hovering fireball the size of a wine jar. It flew across the path to meet the venomous bees.

"You practitioner of crooked arts, I'll fight you to the death today!"

Shopkeeper Ma formed three hand seals in succession, invoking the Fire Spirit Official, the Fire Marshal, and the Fire True Lord. Then, holding two fingers like a sword, he swept them from the bridge of his nose up across his forehead.

A flame, gold within and red without, sprang from his fingers out of thin air. Drawing on his own yang Qi and burning his own mental power, he pointed it at the sky.

In the distance, the fireball split into three, each part flying toward a stream of black smoke.

The fireballs seemed to exert a fatal attraction on the black smoke, drawing the swarms to circle around them, unwilling to leave.

But as the bees buzzed and circled, waves of sinister, venomous Qi pressed against the fireballs, making their flames flicker between bright and dim.

One bandit tried to hurl his saber at the fireballs in the air, but a militiaman threw himself at him, and they rolled together, fighting.

The bone whistle's notes in the woods and the flame on Shopkeeper Ma's fingers waxed and waned against each other.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the orchard.

Chu Tianshu suddenly stopped and turned around, forcefully expelling the stale air from his mouth before drawing a deep breath, his sword pointing at the ground.

The green-skinned fruit on the surrounding trees gave off a sour, bitter smell in the moonlight, unpleasant to breathe.

More unpleasant still was what he heard.

With his present hearing, even here in the woods he could hear the fighting in town, the gunshots, and the screams.

There were also men shouting curses, children crying, and women screaming in alarm. The residents in the south of town were trying every way they could to take their families from their homes and escape the fighting.

It all felt like a bad dream.

Back in his hometown, Chu Tianshu had always treated reality as a haven from the storm.

No matter how frightening a dream was, he needed only to wake up to see the little bridge and fields outside, his neighbors, and the villagers walking along the road.

But here, someone wanted to make reality as nightmarish as a bad dream too. They really... deserved to die!

When the swordsman caught up, he saw that man's calm face and eyes brimming with killing intent.

But as for killing intent, the swordsman was steeped in it himself.

He held his long, narrow steel saber across his chest. Its blade was straight, with only a slight curve near the tip.

Near the tip, the back of the blade also had a palm-length false edge.

This expert among the Jiaozhi raiders was actually wielding a goose-quill saber.

The great general rode south with fearless valor, an autumn-water goose-quill saber across his waist.

The Ming Dynasty had once sent a great army to help a Jiaozhi royal descendant put down a rebellion. The rebels, battered and fearful, had surrendered and offered tribute, and had also received titles and rewards.

The techniques of the goose-quill saber had entered Jiaozhi then and been passed down to the present day. Many still carried them forward, and the tradition had never died out.

"Ruan Zhixiong. Goose-quill saber!"

The swordsman's words were somewhat stiff, and his narrow eyes were narrowed. "You. Who are you?"

This man actually knew some Chinese.

Chu Tianshu's expression shifted. He noticed that the man's left leg was maimed below the ankle, with a length of wood fitted as a prosthetic foot.

So that was why. The swordsman was clearly stronger than the leopard-cat warrior and knew some Chinese. Even if he could not converse, perhaps he could have eavesdropped, yet he had not been the one to scout the town.

Presumably, it was because his left foot was maimed, leaving him unable to move as nimbly and silently as the leopard-cat warrior when sneaking about.

"Someone ready to help cure you lot of your madness!"

Chu Tianshu loosened his left hand on the scabbard and flicked a finger, sending a silver needle at the swordsman's left leg.

The swordsman's eyes were cold. He shifted his left foot back, his long saber moving to meet the attack as though he had foreseen it.

Sure enough, Chu Tianshu had lunged in, swinging his sword in a slash. His arm lashed like a whip, the iron sword its tip.

In his hands, the thick-spined longsword was even fiercer and more forceful than a great saber.

The goose-quill saber's stroke, however, was exceedingly precise.

It avoided the sword's tip, where the force was greatest, and swept against the side of the rear half of the blade, almost at the guard.

Clang!!

A spark flashed where the weapons met, and they sprang apart.

Chu Tianshu flicked his wrist and swept downward. The goose-quill saber shifted, taking the blow head-on at the junction between guard and blade.

Sparks had barely burst forth when the sword used the recoil to spring up and thrust, trailing an afterimage of silver light.

But the goose-quill saber turned with the motion, pressing down on the sword and whirling through a flurry of strokes.

Clang-clang-clang-clang!!!

Saber and sword were almost tangled together, their piercing steel clashes and scraping ringing out in an unbroken stream.

The shrill notes rose and fell, never once stopping.

Though the swordsman's left foot was maimed, everything he had shown so far suggested that he had grown accustomed to it. It did not affect his speed when he ran or exerted force.

The one weakness to exploit was his stability. Without his natural foot, his balance was bound to be somewhat worse.

Chu Tianshu's swift, forceful sword strikes were meant to shake his opponent's balance. He had not expected the man's saber technique to be so intricate; he had clearly given special thought to handling such situations and immediately dragged the contest of weapons onto another level.

The saber and sword seemed tangled together, turning and twisting, but in truth both men were probing for a chance to thrust forward.

Whenever the sword tried to thrust, however, the saber's tip would graze its guard, forcing it to pull back.

Whenever the saber tried to thrust, the sword tip would strike its guard, checking its momentum for an instant.

The steel blades twisted, advancing and intercepting inch by inch, colliding and shuddering.

Even though both grips absorbed some of the shock, the close-quarters entanglement and rapid probing thrusts were beginning to strain their fingers and the webbing between thumb and forefinger beyond endurance.

If either relaxed even slightly, the other's blade would be the first to pierce his chest and lungs.

Both were forced to concentrate on their arms, unconsciously holding their breath.

But before that breath was spent, both suddenly realized something.

The other was harder to deal with than expected. If they fought this way to the end, there might be no victor; it was more likely they would kill each other.

Clang!!!

Saber and sword withdrew at the same time, the vibrating steel scraping out a brilliant burst of sparks.

The light flashed and vanished.

Both men had narrowed their eyes in advance to keep the sudden change in light from affecting them too much.

At that very instant, Chu Tianshu sharply bent a knuckle on his left hand and flicked out a second silver needle.

Narrowing the eyes restricted one's field of vision, but it did not affect an Aperture Opening martial artist's sensitivity.

If this needle were aimed at any part of his opponent's body, he would surely detect it.

If it were aimed at the prosthetic foot, the silver needle would only stick in the wood, accomplishing nothing.

So the needle was aimed at the goose-quill saber.

From more than five meters away, the silver needle could pierce a wooden board an inch thick.

Now, fired at a steel saber from mere inches away, its point could not penetrate the blade, so all its force struck the saber.

Clang!!

The silver needle hit the steel saber, twisted violently along its entire length, and burst apart.

In exchange, the steel saber rang as though struck by an iron marble.

The hand holding it had only just withdrawn from the perilous exchange. Its previous force was spent, and the next had yet to come; the impact checked its movement.

A flash of sword light swept back, cutting across that wrist.

A hair's breadth between fast and slow, paid for in blood!

The swordsman's pupils shrank to pinpoints, and his teeth seemed ready to crack as he kicked off and retreated wildly.

His severed hand and saber were still in the air when he twisted around in mid-retreat and ran for his life, flinging five or six iron starfish backward from his left sleeve.

He had hidden weapons too.

But the exchange of saber and sword had been so perilous that all his attention had been on his saber-wielding right arm, and he had not had time to turn any of it to his hidden weapons.

Yet his opponent seemed to have shifted focus and flicked out a silver needle at full speed in less than an instant after their blades separated.

To shift attention so quickly and make the brain command the body placed a burden on the brain that human instinct would scarcely permit. It was hard to imagine what tempering of mind and spirit that man had undergone to accomplish it.

Chu Tianshu did feel a faint stabbing pain in his head. His eyes flew wide, and his longsword flashed repeatedly, knocking the hidden weapons aside. Then he reversed his grip on the hilt.

He stepped into a bow stance and raised his long arm high. It could not be called the movement of a flood dragon or a true dragon, but in that moment his exertion flowed smoothly from legs and feet, through waist and back, and into his outstretched arm, like the twitch of one great sinew. Scorching force tightened and surged upward, reaching its peak in an instant.

"Kill!"

Like a silver vase bursting open, swift as a spark.

As the swordsman fled, he used the forest for cover, and the trees and branches had already hidden most of his back.

But a streak of silver flashed straight through three clusters of branches, seemingly without resistance, and plunged into his torso on the spot. It sank to the hilt, driving his whole body half a step forward into a tree.

Squelch-

The sword tip pierced through the fruit tree, shaking a treeful of bitter fruit loose.