Book 3: Chapter 45: I am not a Young Master |
Jun's blade carved a crescent of green Qi through the morning air aimed at he Merchant Emperor Luo Bai’s head.
Spirit fire and the She-Devil's translucent echo trailed after her wake, doubling the arc into overlapping crescents that left zero gap between them. The attack was clean and fast. Everything her Ancestor had drilled into her compressed into a single draw-cut that split atmosphere and turned the scrub grass beneath its path into ash.
Luo Bai tilted his head a couple inches to the left.
Both crescents sailed past his ear and detonated against the forest behind him. Stone erupted and a column of dirt and rock fountained skyward and rained debris across the field behind he Merchant Emperor Luo Bai, but it was aimed away from the unconscious bodies of her three thousand cultivators who couldn't even flinch because they were still face-down in the mud asleep.
Jun was already moving again, planting her foot and channeling the strike into a few more.
Her sword followed the combination her fists had memorised after a thousand Katas, thrust toward the sternum, lateral cut across the ribs, and finish with an overhead chop aimed at the junction of neck and shoulder. Each strike backed by the full weight of her Liquid Core, her mutation, her bloodline, the She-Devil's fury, and the Greater Dao residue that threaded through her Qi like veins of lightning through storm clouds even if she didn’t recognize it.
Luo Bai swayed through it all.
His feet never left the ground and arms stayed folded behind his back. His amber eyes tracked her blade with the lazy focus of a man watching a fly circle his tea cup. He leaned backward from the thrust. Stepped sideways from the lateral cut. Ducked the overhead chop by dropping his chin half an inch, the blade passing so close to his topknot that a single golden hair separated and drifted between them.
Jun's teeth ground together and she pressed harder.
Five became eight.
Eight became a storm of steel and spirit energy that filled the space between them with overlapping arcs, thrusts, draws, and Qi blasts that detonated on contact with anything that wasn't the Merchant Emperor's body. The ground cratered beneath her footwork. Scrub brush ignited in rings of green fire. The air itself tore apart in sheets that snapped and crackled like wet cloth in a hurricane.
Yet, she hit nothing.
Every strike missed by the width of a hair.
Every Qi blast detonated against empty air where his body had been a fraction of a second prior.
Every combination, no matter how tight, fast, or how she layered with the She-Devil's echo and the mutation's wood-element fury, found nothing except the faint displacement of atmosphere where a man had been standing and chosen not to be anymore.
It was like fighting fog.
Fog that gave her the most insufferable annoying smile.
"Your footwork is exceptional," Luo Bai said mid-dodge. He leaned away from a thrust aimed at his throat and the blade's tip passed close enough to shave the stubble from his jaw. "Who taught you?"
Jun shouted and doubled her output.
The She-Devil's silhouette solidified behind her, blade-edged and grinning. Launching a simultaneous attack from an angle Jun's physical sword couldn't reach. Two blades from two directions. Real and spirit. Green Qi and translucent fury converging on a single point—
Luo Bai stepped between them.
Both attacks crossed where his torso had been. The collision of Jun's Qi and the She-Devil's spirit energy produced a detonation that blew a crater into the packed earth and sent a shockwave rolling outward that flattened scrub brush in a fifty-pace radius.
Jun stumbled through the blast zone, eyes watering and ears ringing.
He stood a couples paces to her right, arms still folded. Topknot still perfect. Robes still pristine as though nothing had just happened.
A spear of white flame screamed past Jun's shoulder.
Zhong Da's twin blades intercepted a golden Qi pulse that had been drifting toward Jun's exposed flank. She hadn't even seen it. The pulse detonated against the crossed swords and the shockwave sent Zhong Da skidding backward six feet, boots carving furrows in the dirt and prosthetic arm blazing white fire that licked the morning air into steam.
He hadn't attacked the Merchant Emperor.
He'd blocked for her.
Wu Xui materialised on Jun's other side. Her crimson aura wrapped around Jun's frame in a secondary shield that absorbed the residual golden pressure still pressing against her Liquid Core. She hadn't attacked either. Her hands were open, sword had not been pulled out and Qi flowing into defensive formations that layered around Jun like armour made of blood-red light.
Neither of them struck at Luo Bai.
Jun launched again. Overhead, lateral, thrust, step to channel even more strikes. All the lessons of fighting that her master taught with the blade instead of fists. Green crescents screaming through the air in salvos of three, four, five, and six at a time. The She-Devil’s pride at her unwinnable situation only drove her forward. Her mutation surging beneath her skin, wood-element Qi threading through every strike and leaving trails of green that hung in the air like afterimages of a forest growing and dying in fast-forward.
Luo Bai danced through all of it.
His feet touched the ground in patterns that made no tactical sense until you realised they made perfect tactical sense because every step placed him exactly where her next strike wouldn't be. He read her combinations before she threw them. Anticipated the She-Devil's echoes before they formed. Moved through the gaps in her attack patterns like water through a sieve.
Jun's lungs burned and arms shook after what felt like an hour of swinging with everything she had. Sweat poured down her face and neck and soaked the collar of her robes.
The Qi made her fresh once more the second a drop touched it.
Yet, Jun could not care about her robes right now because she hadn't touched him.
Not even once.
Not a single strike, Qi blast, spirit echo, or stray fragment of green energy had made contact with any part of the Merchant Emperor's body, robes, hair, or the ambient golden aura that surrounded him like a second skin.
Jun dropped back.
Her sword arm hung at her side, trembling.
Luo Bai straightened from his last dodge and looked past her.
His amber eyes found Zhong Da and Wu Xui. Both stood flanking Jun in their defensive positions. Neither one had thrown a single offensive strike during the entire exchange.
"Strange." Luo Bai unfolded his arms and let them hang at his sides. His golden aura dimmed to a low simmer that pressed against the morning air without crushing it. "Why don't you fight? The three of you might have enough skill combined to touch the hems of my cloak." He paused and his head tilted, amber eyes measuring them with renewed interest. "Maybe. Can't tell until you try after all."
Zhong Da's twin blades slowed their orbit. White flame still licked along their edges, still carved trails of heat through the air, still radiated enough concentrated Qi to make the ground beneath them steam. His prosthetic arm blazed and jaw was set. His single hand hung loose at his side. "We aren't trying to wake the Hu Ancestor."
Luo Bai's amber eyes narrowed. "Wake him? Is he asleep? Slumbering or secluded cultivation?"
"Neither."
"And he is stronger than me?"
Zhong Da laughed at the Merchant Emperor of Yellow HearthStone City.
Luo Bai's jaw tightened and his golden aura surged by a fraction, pressing outward, and then pulled back as he caught himself. His amber eyes hardened.
Jun swung at him from the side, a desperate lateral cut fuelled by the last dregs of her stamina, and he stepped around it without looking.
The blade passed behind his back close enough to nearly slice a thread from his sash.
Luo Bai tilted his head. "You laugh? Why?"
Zhong Da's laughter faded into a grin that didn't reach his eyes. His twin blades resumed their steady orbit and the white flame solidified along their edges. His prosthetic arm's glow intensified until the swan motifs carved into the metal seemed to move, wings spreading, necks arching, beaks opening in silent cries that carried the weight of an ancient Dao.
"A thousand of you would not be enough to truly get him to be serious."
"A thousand? You exaggerate," Luo Bai said.
"Nay." A voice came from the forest.
Every head turned.
The red-and-white-haired beggar sat on the roofline of the nearest building within the trees. Cross-legged, hands resting on his knees, messy hair of red and silver catching the morning light, and a single coin he was flicking and catching. His rags hung from his frame in tatters that should have made him look pathetic, except they didn't. His sharp features carried an expression stripped of the insufferable smile and the hustler's charm.
His eyes were clear and hard and fixed on Luo Bai with a focus that made the air between them vibrate with Qi.
"I've seen their Ancestor up close," the old man said.
Luo Bai's amber gaze lifted to the rooftop. "It's you… You are strong enough to almost fight me. I respect your voice of reason."
The beggar said nothing to that.
"Tell me about this…" Luo Bai paused. His amber eyes cut toward Jun, who stood panting with her sword hanging at her side, then to Zhong Da and his burning twin blades, then to Wu Xui and her crimson shield, and finally back to the old man on the roof. "…Ancestor of theirs."
"He is the strongest being on this planet, bar the Calamity that caused the Great Seclusion itself."
Jun's breath caught.
Zhong Da closed his eyes and let his weapons drop. Wu Xui stepped closer to her husband. They both knew fully well who Yin Hu was and the mistake these people were making. If anything he was beyond even that calibre.
Luo Bai blinked. "R-Really?"
"Yes." The beggar nodded and caught the coin he had been flicking up and down. "I've never felt something so powerful before."
Jun swung again, trying to catch him unawares.
The strike came from below, an upward diagonal that she'd been loading since the beggar started talking. Green Qi erupted from the blade's edge in a wave that carved the air apart and screamed toward Luo Bai's midsection.
Luo Bai sidestepped both.
The Merchant Emperor's golden aura had pulled back entirely. No pressure or ambient force pressing against Jun's Liquid Core or the unconscious army behind her. He stood in the morning light looking like a very large, very well-dressed man who happened to be standing in the middle of a battlefield he'd created and was now reconsidering the wisdom of having created it.
His amber eyes moved from person to person, trying to find any notes of a lie or trickery. He found nothing.
Jun huffed and puffed as she tried to take his head again and again.
Zhong Da and Wu Xui did not act because Luo Bai did not had a mind to hurt Jun any more.
"Why are you telling me this? What do you gain out of it?" Luo Bai’s eyes narrowed at the beggar. "I won't give you a copper coin, you hear me?"
The beggar shrugged. “You're a stabilising force. You aren't perfect, but your existence allows for governance and order to reign unadulterated.A middle class, rich class, and poor class living in unison with opportunity for merit to allow the poor to reach the middle class, and the middle class to reach a rich status. That is enough." His eyes hardened. "Even if I dislike your methods and priorities greatly."
Luo Bai stared at him for a long stretch. It took some time before he finally came to a final resolution. The Merchant Emperor nodded once. "That's good enough for me. I am no idiot or an inexperienced young master." He turned toward Jun.
She stood ten paces away. Sword in hand, arm shaking, sweat-soaked, chest heaving, the She-Devil's silhouette flickering behind her like a candle in a gale. Her Liquid Core pulsed erratically, nearly depleted. Her eyes burned with exhausted fury, bone deep fatigue, and the specific, body trembling frustration of someone who had thrown everything they had at a wall and watched it bounce off without leaving a mark.
Luo Bai bowed. "Forgive me, Daughter of the Hu Clan, for my words." His voice carried across the distance between them. "And have a good day."
He straightened.
Jun lunged for a final hurrah with every ounce of her power.
Her blade screamed forward in a final desperate thrust aimed at the centre of his chest. Green Qi erupted from the edge–
Her blade sliced through empty air.
Luo Bai was gone.
There was nothing to indicate a monster of his calibre had been there.
Jun's thrust carried her forward three stumbling steps. Her boots caught on a crater's edge and she pitched sideways, caught herself on her sword, and stood there panting and shaking. He blade was buried six inches into the packed earth. The She-Devil's silhouette dissolved behind her in a cascade of translucent fragments that drifted upward and vanished.
The morning settled around them.
Jun pulled her sword from the dirt, yet her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
She looked at the empty space where Luo Bai had stood and felt every muscle in her body scream at her to chase and to find him. Make him take back what he'd said about her clan, her family, her dead—
Wu Xui's hand landed on her shoulder.
Jun flinched and her grip tightened on the sword. Her body coiled to strike before she registered the familiar Qi signature.
"It's over," Wu Xui said.
Jun's jaw clenched. Her eyes burned. "He—"
"He apologised, bowed, and then left." Wu Xui squeezed once. "It's over, Jun."
The sword lowered.
She stood in the middle of a battlefield she'd helped create, surrounded by three thousand unconscious followers, five patriarchs face-down in the mud, a one-armed man whose twin blades still burned with white fire, and a woman whose crimson aura held her upright when her own legs couldn't.
The beggar watched from the rooftop. “I got somewhere else to be. See you never, I hope.”
Then he vanished too.
Jun closed her eyes.
Master is going to kill me. What the hell do I tell him when he asks?