Chapter 13- Eating Steel

Sabers and wide knives dashed in and out. Shadowless kicks struck from odd angles, breaking knees and ribs with equal contempt. Hands flashed, blocked by iron bar arms or dodged with footwork polished on trodden corpses. This was the battlefield of mortal experts, the desperate men and women who wandered the rivers and lakes, unable to find peace in a peaceful land.

For the surviving cultivators, it was all dreadfully slow. Each swing of a saber was like a creeping disease. Inevitable, inescapable, the awareness of it seeping into everything you could see or feel or imagine. You could go mad with hope, praying that it wouldn’t land, that the end could be diverted or delayed. Where there is life, there is hope. That’s what people always tell themselves, where there is life there is hope and the contemplation of the saber’s edge before it splits your brows and everything you ever were pours into the hungry earth.

Not that they were falling under the sabers. As maddened as they were, the mortal warriors didn’t care to test their skills against immortals.

There were screams. Shouts. Furious swears and oaths of vengeance. Tian saw a fat man’s palm turn black as it swept towards a woman’s chest. The black palm was pierced by a finger more silver than white. The fat man cried silently as he shifted back. The pain in his shattered palm was only part of it. The skill he was using had rebounded, the muscles in his arm knotting and tearing under the skin.

The woman darted in and drilled her finger past the fat man’s desperate defence and jabbed him in the chest. This time she was the one to scream and stagger back, clutching her broken finger. The fat man had a heart protecting mirror under his robes. It would have been smart to retreat. To simply accept that this wasn’t the night, swear vengeance and return when they had healed.

But the erhu sawed away, its winding music fit to accompany a prince strangling his father. Music to set fire to mortal blood. Who would run from this battlefield? Who would stand out as a coward in such illustrious company? On a night where all debts are settled and all grudges repaid and all sins wiped away with sticky blood. A yin night, lit with yang fire. Inevitable. Inescapable. As natural as wasp larvae eating their way out of a paralyzed spider.

There was a charm to it. Subtle. So subtle it was almost impossible to sense. Tian couldn’t understand it. He just knew it was there.

Little Treasure couldn’t look away. It didn’t occur to anyone to try and shield his eyes. This was the martial world. Cultivating with the dawn, seeking the dao and tranquility- those things were for reclusives in their temples and mountain monasteries. Down here, in the valleys and amongst the rivers and lakes, in the stinking alleyways, fragrant brothels and rowdy coaching inns, on the moonlit docks or in front of the sealed gates of a noble manor, it was blood and pain and who could stand up one more time than their enemies.

Censor Henshen couldn’t look away either. His pale face was focused, his sword still in its scabbard, but that scabbard was in his left hand, the sword’s hilt in the thin man’s right. A chair was flung. He batted it to the side, eyes on the melee. The chair thrower rushed in, waving a heavy knife. “Unnatural freak! I’ll have your head and your purse, if you haven’t lost that too!”

The three foot blade lashed out, the censor moving forward with a single explosive step. The chair thrower’s head went flying. His body fell, spraying the Censor head to foot in blood.

“Do you think me a man without a temper? Ah, but you think me no man at all! This Henshen will teach you all very well. Witness the might of my Exorcist Sword!”

The censor dove into the melee, his cold sword warming in human meat. His swordplay was mediocre by the standards of immortal warriors. By the standards of those left standing in the dining room, he was a killing god. Each lunge came fast as lightning, each chop landed heavy as thunder. There was no defensive swordplay. When an attack came in, it was met with a dodge and a counter attack. Everything was a target- writs, fingers, the oncoming knife or saber or club itself. A superb unification of breath, strength, tempo and energy. Those who relied only on experience or crude arts were simply no match.

More bodies fell. Some from violence, others simply collapsed. Their eyes went dull and they fell on the floor. Some dead by the time their head bounced, others lay bonelessly and their breath slowed. Unable to keep up with the music of the erhu.

Tian watched Little Treasure’s eyes flicker and start to roll up in his head. There was a dreadful drop in his vitality. As though his yang essence was being drained away. Tian quickly stood behind him and placed his hand to the boy’s back, circulating Advent of Spring. He was an old hand at sending his energy through his palms and into another person. You just had to be exceedingly gentle.

He shot Liren a sharp look. She nodded and smashed one of the shutters. Her hand bounced back. She frowned as faint etchings and lines of twisting script rose up from the paint in funeral white on black housepaint. A trap. An array. And still the Elder sawed away at his erhu, his blind eyes watching, a leer dripping from his face.

Tian quickly thought through what needed to happen. Hong could break the wall, but the senior would move to stop her. He had every confidence that she would win, but Tian didn’t know if Little Treasure would survive the confrontation. All the waiters were still standing with their backs to the wall, empty smiles plastered on shiny faces. He wasn’t willing to bet they could be used for unpleasant purposes.

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He needed to break the music. That seemed to be at the core of it. The immortals weren’t immune, but at least he, Liren and Daoist Lan seemed less affected. Daoist Lan had her eyes locked on the senior up on the stage. Like Tian and Hong, she was level seven. Unlike Tian and Hong, she seemed to have no confidence in beating a Level Nine, especially not one standing in the middle of an array. She was clutching a cracked tortoise shell like it was a single thread keeping her from falling into hell.

Use his darts? Presumably there was some invisible protection for the old man. Protecting yourself while you operated the array seemed like the most obvious basic of all basics. Even the martial incompetents at the Five Elements Courtyard had their floating shields. He had better means available.

“Daoist Lan, if you can protect this boy for a moment, we can break the array.”