Book 3: Chapter 29: Green Angels and Red Demons |
Jun sat at the head of a table that had no business existing.
A few days ago, this courtyard had belonged to Patriarch Guo and his students. Now it stretched across the combined grounds of five dojos, three of which had voluntarily demolished their own walls to create a single unbroken training field that could accommodate the a growing number of cultivators who showed up every morning at dawn, stood in formation, did not complain once, and punched the air until their knuckles bled…
Which didn’t make sense, but it was happening for some reason.
Over a thousand individuals who all committed to the most basic and introductory technique her Ancestor had taught her like fish to water.
She knew it was more than a thousand… but stopped counting at around that mark because the numbers had made her vision swim.
The Green Grass Blades Sector of the Hu Clan.
Wu Xui had named it.
Jun had opened her mouth to object and Wu Xui had smiled that smile and Jun's mouth had closed and the name had stuck and now it was stitched onto banners of pale green cloth that hung from every remaining wall in the compound. The calligraphy was beautiful. Zhong Da's wife had done it herself with a brush that moved with the precision of a woman who had found her calling in the art of making Jun's life progressively more complicated.
A gorgeous green Jian with a white tassel was drawn in the center of it all.
Guo, Liang, Fen, and two new additions whose names she had learned yesterday and already wished she hadn't.
Patriarch Sho of the Falling Leaf Academy, a stocky man with a shaved head and hands like shovels who had arrived a couple days ago with over two hundred students or more, whom all knelt before her for four hours, and refused to leave until she acknowledged his school's existence. She'd acknowledged it by telling him to stand up because his knees were going to give out.
The ancient man had wept before her like she had promised him salvation.
Her face had never burned brighter.
Patriarch Duan of the Stone River School, the oldest of the five at somewhere north of ninety, had simply walked in during yesterday's training session, sat down at the edge of the formation, studied them for a second, and then started copying the one-two combination alongside his hundreds of students without asking permission, introducing himself, or saying a single word to anyone.
Jun had noticed him two hours into the session because her eyes had been swimming at the scene before her.
She didn’t doubt for a second that Wu Xui had known.
He'd bowed once, said "Patriarch Duan, Stone River School, at your service, Young Mistress," and then gone back to punching.
She hadn't known what to do with that, so she'd done nothing, and doing nothing had apparently been interpreted as acceptance because his students were now integrated into the morning formation and his banner hung beside the others. All of them much smaller than the Green Grass Blades Sector of the Hu Clan’s banner which stood high in the air for everyone to see.
She just hoped Yin Hu would somehow miss it…
Hu Jun rubbed her face.
Master is going to kill me. He's going to kill me and then bring me back and kill me again and then make me do Katas until my arms fall off and then kill me a third time for good measure just to make sure the message hits home… What do I do now?
Jun's face burned.
It hadn't stopped burning in days.
She'd developed a permanent flush across her cheeks that Wu Xui had commented on exactly once before Jun's expression made her reconsider ever mentioning it again.
The five patriarchs sat in a semicircle before her. Tea had been served by Patriarch Fen's senior disciple, a nervous young woman who kept glancing at Jun's sword like it might leap from its sheath and bite her. The She-Devil pulsed at Jun's hip, radiating amusement so thick it was practically audible. Yet, beyond that amusement was a sense of superiority and satisfaction in Jun’s knew position in the world.
As though people kowtowing before her was the preferable outcome in this situation.
Jun ignored the weapon spirit and focused on the five old men.
They were quiet.
Too quiet.
Guo's white hair caught the afternoon light as he stared at his tea without drinking. Liang stroked his grey beard in that deliberate way he did when he was chewing on something he didn't want to swallow. Fen cracked his knuckles one at a time, each pop echoing in the silence. Sho's shovel-hands were flat on his thighs, fingers pressing into the fabric hard enough to leave wrinkles. Duan, the oldest, sat perfectly still with his eyes half-closed and his breathing measured.
They kept exchanging glances quick, darting looks that bounced between them like a ball nobody wanted to catch. Guo would look at Liang. Liang would look at Fen. Fen would look at Sho. Sho would look at Duan. Duan would look at nobody because his eyes were half-closed, but his jaw would tighten by a fraction and the cycle would start over because Guo would get upset that no one looked at him.
Hu Jun sighed and stopped rubbing her face hard. "What's the matter? Speak up."
Five pairs of eyes found the ground simultaneously.
Guo cleared his throat. Liang's beard-stroking accelerated. Fen cracked a knuckle he'd already cracked. Sho's fingers dug deeper into his thighs. Duan's half-closed eyes opened fully for the first time since he'd sat down, revealing irises that were sharp and deeply, profoundly unsettled.
"There's been news from the gang territories," Guo was their defacto representative.
Jun waited.
"Very bad news," Liang added.
Jun kept waiting.
Fen leaned forward. "A new Demon has appeared amongst their numbers."
The word landed in the space between them and sat there.
"A Demon? You mean a Demonic Cultivator?" Jun asked.
"No, not a Demonic Cultivator in the traditional sense," Duan spoke for the first time with a slow measured pace. "A title that is earned through action. The gang territories have been in flux for the past week. Smaller factions absorbing each other, territory lines shifting, leaders kneeling before a single king, the usual chaos that follows any power vacuum or disruption."
"Except this isn't usual," Sho cut in. “This is unprecedented. The nine strongest gangs. All of them conquered and unified under a single banner in less than three days. The CoolSpear Gang, the Iron Talon Brotherhood, the Jade Serpent Syndicate, the Broken Fist Collective, the River Rats, the Black Nail Gang, the Gilded Knives, the Ash Walkers, and the Stone Tide Crew. Every major criminal organisation in the western and central slum districts. Remade into the image of a single organized unit."
Jun's frown deepened. "By one person?"
"By one Demon," Guo said. "That's what they're calling it. The Red Demon. Appeared out of nowhere with a pressure so vast it collapsed entire warehouses full of armed cultivators without throwing a single strike. Red miasma that chokes the air and makes grown men lose consciousness. Eyes that screamed with lightning and terrifying form. A presence that—"
"Red miasma…?" Jun asked, she could feel her stomach drop.
She remembered the scene when Shui had walked into the dojo right before Patriarch Guo had kowtowed before her.
Guo nodded. "Red miasma. The survivors describe it as fog that screams. It rolls through doorways, fills rooms, grips the heart, and anyone caught in it either submits or drops unconscious with no exceptions. The CoolSpear Gang's entire fighting force, forty-seven cultivators, went down in seconds. The Black Nail Gang's leader tried to fight and his arm locked at the elbow before his fist got within inches of the Demon's face."
"Inches?" Jun asked.
"Inches," Guo confirmed.
Jun's left eye twitched.
Red miasma. Lightning behind red eyes. Collapsed forty-seven cultivators without throwing a punch. Arm locked at the elbow. Inches from the face.
No. No, no, no, no, no.
Jun closed her eyes. She didn’t care that the patriarchs were watching her. "This Demon… What does it look like?"
The five patriarchs exchanged another round of glances. This one was faster and more frantic.
"The reports are... varied," Duan said.
"Describe them."
"Small framed…"
Jun's stomach dropped further.
"Young, but that might be an illusion for all we know…"
She felt her head spin.
"And carries a massive hammer."
Her stomach hit the floor and kept going.
The She-Devil erupted with laughter inside her mind. A cackling, howling, shrieking gale of amusement that bounced off the walls of Jun's consciousness and made her temples throb. The weapon spirit hadn't laughed this hard since the Shao Yating fight, and even then it had been a restrained chuckle compared to the full-bodied hysteria currently ripping through Jun's skull.
Shut up! Shut up!
The She-Devil did not shut up.
Jun opened her eyes. Her face had gone from its permanent flush to something closer to the colour of raw liver. Her hands gripped the edge of the table hard enough that the wood groaned. A crack appeared in the surface, splintering outward from her right thumb.
All five of the old men flinched at the display.
"Continue," her voice felt raw like she had been screaming all day.
The five patriarchs looked at each other one final time. Some silent consensus passed between them, communicated through the universal language of old men who had collectively decided that they were already committed and retreat was no longer an option.
All five dropped to their knees.
Foreheads hit stone with synchronised thuds that echoed across the compound and made the nearest disciples, who had been pretending not to eavesdrop from behind a pillar, flinch and scatter.
"Lady Matriarch of our Green Grass Blades Sector of the Hu Clan!" Guo shouted from his kowtow.
"Help the weak and destitute!" Liang added, forehead grinding against the stone.
"Save the righteous and the mortals of our poor city!" Sho made sure to shout even louder than the previous two.
"The Merchant Emperor and his ilk don't care for our safety as long as it doesn't mess with their wealth!" Fen's voice cracked on the last word. "And this Demon is wily! Knowing when to back off and when to advance! Never calling forth forces they know they can't defeat! Picking targets with precision that suggests intelligence behind the madness! And not a single gang has lasted even minutes against its most devious forces of evil!"
Duan, the oldest and quietest, looked up with wet eyes that were holding back heavy tears. "We need a protector, Young Mistress!” One of the tears broke through. “Someone who can stand against this Red Demon and shield the people caught between the gangs and the Emperor's indifference. We need an angel–"
He pressed his forehead back to the stone.
All of them slid forward to get closer to her and the table before her.
"–an Angel of Heavenly Green. The Green Angel!"
The courtyard went silent beyond the meeting room and its large table.
Over a thousand cultivators had been listening in and stopped their afternoon drills. Every single one of them faced the window that was open where their five patriarchs lay prostrate before a sixteen-year-old girl whose face had achieved a shade of red that medical science would have found concerning.
Jun just sat there, as her eyes drifted to where Wu Xui was currently standing…
The older lady stood against the far wall with her arms crossed and an expression that Jun refused to look at directly because she knew, she knew, it was that smile.
The Green Angel.
They want me to be their Green Angel.
They want me to fight a Red Demon that is obviously, unmistakably, without any shadow of any doubt whatsoever—
Jun's jaw clenched so hard her molars creaked.
—my idiot little sister.
She looked away from the five kowtowing old men who had started banging their heads on the ground as her gaze looked out to stare at the pale green banner. A slight tremble passed through her entire body as it all came crashing down on her.
Everything that had happened so far had felt like a dream… now it felt like an unmistakable mess. One that Shui seemed to have ended up making as well.
The two messes that were about to collide in a way that would make their Ancestor's frozen Dao look like a mild inconvenience.
Jun took a very long, very slow breath.
"Rise," she said.
The five patriarchs lifted their red and bruised heads.
"Tell me everything you know about this Red Demon's territory, forces, leadership structure, and operational patterns. Every detail and rumour. Don’t even leave the whisper from the beggar, merchant, wealthy middle class outside of the city walls, and the guards who had seen or heard anything at all."
Guo's eyes widened. "You'll help us?"
Jun's expression settled into the stoic, superior look she had learned to dawn from her Ancestor and the training he had given her. The same one she had given Shao Yating so far back. The She-Devil's influence crept across her features, tilting her chin up, narrowing her eyes, pulling her lips into a line that promised nothing good for anyone standing on the other side of it.
"I'm going to have a conversation with this Red Demon once you’ve gathered enough information…"
She stood from the table and the five patriarchs scrambled to their feet.
"...and then I'm going to drag her home by her ear."
The patriarchs froze.
"Her?" Guo blinked.
Jun was already walking toward the compound gate, hand on her sword, face burning, stomach churning, and a single thought hammering through her skull louder than seven hundred and thirty-one fists hitting air.
Master is going to kill us both.