Chapter 29- Hooked on Acacia Thorns

Tian stepped between Little Treasure and the inn’s window, his passing leaving the grass and dirt twisting behind him. He sent out his mind, calling for the crane to come quickly, to hurry over now. Danger! Terrible danger!

The window, and the wall around it, exploded outwards. Tian sensed more than saw knives flying towards him. They curved, flew straight, seemed to be reaching for every part of him. But if he dodged, they would shred Little Treasure. Tian didn’t try to get clever. Instead, he pulled out their fishing boat from a storage ring. The knives shattered the hull, but it broke their momentum.

It also blocked their vision. He flung out his Heavenly Swallows to his right, even as he ran left. “Hide under the boat, both of you!” The bald man sneered as he flung another knife at Tian’s face before pulling out a hatchet. Tian slipped the curving knife and rushed in. The hatchet rose to parry a suddenly striking rope dart from Tian’s sleeve.

“Hidden weapons against the Black Acacia Gang? You are courting-” The invisible darts slammed into the bald man’s temple, sharp metal qi piercing thin bone and destroying the brain behind it. Tian ripped the darts away with a hard flex of his vital energy, even as he kept his rope dart spinning.

The world went white, there was a sudden ringing in his ears, dizzy, he nearly fell over. The pain in his meridians made him gasp. His long soak in the yin pond hadn’t been as healing as he had hoped. The three men jumping out through the hole in the wall looked delighted, however.

“I see you aren’t doing too well. Tell you what, kill yourself, and I’ll leave you an intact corpse. You won’t get a better offer today.” All three had shaved heads, looking less like a monk’s tonsure and more like a blister or infected growth rising from the neck. Revolting and unnatural, and their leering grins said plainly they liked how they looked.

“There are no grudges between us. Why do you do this?” Tian asked, keeping the rope dart moving. The men hadn’t stopped either, spreading out, pulling out hatchets and short, heavy knives.

“Grudges? We love you. We love you, your little female friend, your bird. We love you so much!” One of the bald men giggled, moving to put Tian in a three way pincer with the others in the gang. Tian, for his part, couldn’t move too far from the overturned boat.

“Strange way of showing affection.”

“Five hundred spirit stones a head. Two thousand for the three of you if we take the crane alive. It seems someone fancies a new flying mount. Rest assured, our love is entirely sincere.” The man moving around to his back had a serious face and a serious voice.

Tian’s eyes narrowed slightly. Their voices weren’t similar, they were identical. The tone and manner of speaking changed, but the voice didn’t. Same with their faces- each wore a radically different expression, but it was the same face over and over again. “You are… triplets? No, there was a fourth baldie, quadruplets?”

“Hehehe. There are more arts in the world than your mountain would like to admit. It seems your fellows aren’t coming to your rescue. The offer is still open. No? Pity.”

The three struck with easy coordination- two from the sides, one from the front. Tian kept the boat at his back. It wasn’t much of a wall, but it was all he had. The rope dart twisted and flew out, the rope hooking on his elbow and getting yanked back in time to be kicked over into the face of another rushing bandit.

Injured or not, Tian had spent years using a rope dart. He had long since transformed it into another limb. A hatchet came in from the left. Tian shifted right as his foot snagged the rope and whipped it up from directly underneath the arm to wrap around the wrist. Then Tian stomped down on the rope and reversed direction, slamming his elbow into the bald man’s temple as his arm was yanked out of position. Then a wide, thick knife stabbed at his gut and Tian had to shift forward and right again, unable to capitalize further on his strike.

He dodged the knife. He didn’t slip the kick that slammed into his ribs. He could feel them creak, the air driven from them. He returned the favor by grabbing the leg and stepping backwards again as he twisted the foot as close to a full rotation as he could manage. The bald man swore and tried to flip in the air. Tian stopped his rotation, then turned the foot in the other direction. just in time to block a chop from the knife with the bald man’s calf.

A woman strolled out of the hole in the wall of the inn, drinking in the scene. Bald, tattooed, and he couldn’t keep an eye on her because the thugs never let up.

Something hit the back of his head. Stars burst in purples and blues and whites across his eyes and he staggered forward. He tried to whip his dart around, build some distance, but without Snake Head Vine Body, he just didn’t have the space to build up momentum. Without momentum, he was just waving a rope around.

“Don’t run! If you run, we kill the kid first, then your little eunuch slave!” The woman yelled, as a baldie rushed in, swinging his hatchet at Tian’s neck.

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Tian didn’t bother speaking any nonsense. He just did his best to sway back from the blow and countered with a savage kick to the bald man’s nuts. That was the thing about hatches and knives. Not much reach. Tian might not be able to use his arts, but he hadn’t been cultivating his body just for the fun of it. He kicked the man hard enough to lift him off his toes and leave him kneeling and vomiting on the ground.

“Bastard! How dare you?” The bandit who got cut across his calf was up and moving again. Tian could smell the blood clotting powder on him. He was well back, thrusting carefully with a narrow black spear. Not trying to finish off Tian, just disrupt him, pin him down enough for the others to finish. They were moving more cautiously too- Tian tried to get his rope dart into the one rolling up off his knees, but the bandit managed to deflect the dart with his hatchet. The fluidity of the move made it clear the bandit had been ready for it.