v5c15: Interlude: The Ascending Mountaineer

Liao Yushang’s sword cut through the air in a heavy diagonal slash as her opponent, Bi De in his human form, dodged.

Ascending Mountaineer, her sword, was made of Lode Iron. The sword itself weighed as much as a full grown man. With her Qi coursing through it and the artificial spirit Han had implanted into it helping to regulate and optimize the flow, it weighed twelve times as much.

Bi De could block the blow if he really wanted to, but it cost him less to dodge. Out of their whole party, only he and Spooks could say they could truly withstand one of her blows… and Spooks was complaining about headaches this morning after they had sparred yesterday. The others got to sail through the air when they made that mistake.

Victory for Yushang! Heavy Sword Supremacy!

Yushang kept her small smile on her face as she refocused on the fight and cut off most of the Qi flow when the blade nearly touched the ground, leaving only the bare amount of reinforcement a metal as durable as Lode Iron needed. The blade’s weight reduced itself by ten times. She slid one hand down slightly onto the enormous blade to give her a bit more leverage and forced it back up so that she could slam the sword’s pommel into the kick that Bi De had fired at her. The impact jarred her arms, but she stopped the blow with her rooted stance and heavy blade. Yushang continued the motion, using the pommel as a lever, and twisted into a close range slice upwards. Bi De disengaged, and Yushang immediately launched herself after him.

Aggression, aggression, aggression. Blitz them down with unrelenting attacks using a weapon your enemy could not afford to block. Apply pressure so that every opening you do present cannot be capitalized on.

That was how one used a Heavy Sword.

She looked into his pretty green eyes and sucked in a deep breath. She chambered her sword and unleashed herself fully. The air roared in protest as her sword began to cut through it.

Heavy, light, heavy, heavy, light, light.

A kick slipped through her guard and nearly buckled her leg, but she endured.

Light, light, light, heavy, HEAVY!

Bi De dodged behind one of the busted up ice blocks he used for his own technique practice. It was a pillar about as thick as Yushang, and was covered in cracks. Yushang braced and twisted.

“Jiayou!” she shouted, putting as much as she could into the strike. Even though mostly broken already, the ice held firm for a moment. The impact jarred her arms, but Yushang forced the Lode Iron to become its heaviest, shattering the ice and sending thick chunks flying at Bi De. The man looked a bit impressed, but Yushang ignored it and kept after him.

Heavy, light, light, feint heavy, actually heavy, force the dodge, and—!

Yushang stomped her foot, lowered her shoulder, and leapt forward. The [Horn of the Mountain Ram] caught Bi De for a brief moment in the gut, marking the first time during this sparring session that Yushang had ever really hit Bi De.

At first she had thought the sword manual was joking when it had instructed her to shoulder-check her way through boulders. It had taken her five years to be able to do it perfectly, but hey, it worked!

It wasn’t a telling blow, but Bi De looked quite pleased. He gave her a minute nod… and then buried his knee into her chest, twisted, and kicked.

Yushang was summarily launched through the air and out of the clearing, a big smile on her face. She had hit him! Hells yeah!

She could have caught herself on a closer tree if she really wanted to, but she was in a celebratory mood and so she angled herself just so that her arc would take her to the place everybody else was at. She hurled comically through the clearing and there she allowed herself to smack into a tree. The impact was strong enough to shake the massive thing, and while the forest floor was clear, snow still accumulated on the tree’s boughs.

Snow that fell off the tree and onto her, burying her.

“A fine blow, Yushang,” Bi De called out. “I think that is a fine stopping point for today. Please cool down and resume your meditations.”

She thrust her arm up from under the snow covering her, her thumb pointing up like Yun Ren did, before she pushed herself out of the pile, making sure to have a smug grin on her face.

Everybody was looking at her with varying levels of amusement. Yun Ren, Spooks, and Fenxian were laughing, Han and Uncle Sheng looked fondly exasperated. Ri Zu snorted, and even the ever-serious Yingwen had the corner of his lip quirk up.

Good! It was no good if you were all grim and serious all the time! Even when things were bad, Grandpa always said it was best to smile!

They were kinda in the shit, about to go fight demons and all, so smiling was more important now than ever. Smiling was better than being a grump like Yingwen all the time.

And everybody was smiling, so mission accomplished!

Yushang stood and stretched, watching with fascination as the snow around her simply started to… well, disappear. It was a subtle thing, as the flakes almost seemed to melt… or move more like sand then snow, sweeping themselves away.

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Heh. Forest Sweeper was a really apt name.

“Have a nice flight, Yushang?” Han ribbed.

“Yup, it was great! Lovely scenery!” she agreed. “I’ll show it to you again the next time we spar!”

Han huffed and she stuck her tongue out at him. He turned back to his own work, trying to refine his formula to make their blades better and stronger. She squinted at him to make sure he was really alright, but this whole mission had mostly fixed the lost look in the other man’s eyes. He was focused and determined. Same with Uncle Heng, who was standing taller and prouder day by day.

Yushang stood and stretched, then blinked as she felt Ri Zu’s fingers ghost along her back, checking for any injuries. Satisfied that Yushang wasn’t hurt, Ri Zu’s hands transitioned to getting some debris out of Yushang’s hair.

“You’ve done well,” the shorter woman told her, smiling, while Yun Ren walked up to ruffle her hair. She could see Bi De standing off to the side. The man nodded to her before, with a pop, he turned into a chicken again and started to walk over to the special tree in the middle of the clearing, the Everbloom.

…honestly, that was still kind of weird, that he was a chicken and Ri Zu was a rat. But as she looked at him and her little quirk, the ability that told her who was trustworthy and who wasn’t, didn’t change at all.

He still looked like Bi De, just like Ri Zu still looked like Ri Zu, even when they changed back and forth.

Probably why she took them changing forms so well, if she was honest. They still ‘looked’ like the people who had helped and protected her.

“You mess up my hair and poke my back instead of giving this pretty sister comforting hugs,” she complained to Ri Zu and Yun Ren, who just looked more amused… but they obliged her.

It was so, so nice to hug people again.

Yushang practically skipped off and settled down beside Bi De before she took a deep breath, preparing herself to cultivate.

She was beneath a massive tree made of ice, its blossoms stunningly beautiful. In her vision, powerful cultivators bettered themselves as they cultivated within a Spirit Beast’s domain.

It’s amazing where a quirk of fate can take you, Yushang mused.

And it had just been one quirk of fate after another, hadn’t it? A girl from a village, through a quirk of fate ignited her dantian. A girl from a backwater village who, through a quirk of fate, managed to navigate the Howling Sword Arts Academy and come out stronger, rather than chewed up and spat out like most of the other commoners.