71: A Blade Unsheathed
Gu-en met spear, deflecting its ethereal point, as Fushuai called upon qinggong and Moonstep to meet the attacks of a flitting phantom. Lin, Lao, and Bai Tu quickly found themselves occupied with a sudden rush of the Yaoguai. The deformed beasts surged forward in response to the conduct of what could only be their master. Shrewd enough not to challenge foundation cultivators, they sought out weakness wherever it could be found.
Fushuai was too engaged to protect his sister or his disciple. Shang Tsung, even if he was only a remnant, presented a formidable foe. He quickly found himself as hard pressed as if he were once again facing the three Ash Eater sect members. Blows fell in an unending flurry, as light and numerous as raindrops, and yet even a touch would be deadly. The creature was no longer veiling itself. Void, dream, and flame aura combined to form a weapon that would cut spirit as readily as flesh.
He could fend it off, but found no openings to attack, until Zhang Sha made one. The older cultivator slit the throat of a yaoguai, then dashed up a column, his feet sticking to the stone where he stopped. His dagger disappeared, replaced by a bow, and he began launching arrows of pure dream qi.
It wasn't a technique Fushuai had ever seen him attempt before. The missiles were ephemeral, composed of more intent than reality, but the remnant treated them as true threats. He flitted away from Fushuai, deflecting one missile, dodging another. His rasping voice whispered a curse, and he would have flown at Zhang Sha had he not been forced to defend himself from a qi-infused gu-en.
Fushuai was full of Yin; he had drawn his fill from the levels below, but it wasn't pure. Void aura lingered in his dantian, and tainted his most recently braided threads. It had come to him so eagerly that he hadn't bothered to filter it as thoroughly as he would have aura of another element. It was already Yin, after all. But when he called on it, he could feel the difference.
The remnant hissed, rushing around him as he dodged another arrow, and flames sprang up behind the hem of his robes. Black flames, not so different than what Fushuai summoned whenever he channeled Yin through the fire-aspected core of his gu-en. Shang Tsung was trying to trap him, push him into a mistake. Lin cried out, surrounded by the yaoguai. Bai Tu barreled through them just as they both vanished behind a burning wall.
This technique wasn't so different from what was inscribed in his staff. He spun, drawing the flames with him, and chased the remnant, dragging a black pyre behind him.
"This is not your power!" The remnant cried. "It belongs to my master."
In the depths of Moonstep, Fushuai was like a phantom himself. They flashed together, then apart, their weapons clashing as more arrows fell. Shang Tsung hissed in rage, and countless tendrils of Yin rose from his back, striking out in all directions. Threads of Still Night, Fushuai met them with his own. Then came the Circle of Mist, and the remnant cried out in frustration as it realized the domain empowered them both equally.
This creature practiced the techniques of the Legacy of the Void. If he had possessed others once, in his true body, they were long forgotten. His spear lifted, calling to the flames they dragged behind them, and the mass of burning darkness lifted like the head of a great worm. Fushuai activated Hunger's Lure as that black mass crashed down, rushing forward to meet the remnant shoulder to chest.
There was no Yang in the technique, but it still knew hunger, chasing the spiral that led to his core. All qi shared certain properties, and like water, would flow down the path of least resistance unless acted upon by a force sufficient to oust it. An arrow of pure light punched through the remnant's leg, and he stumbled, only inches away from Fushuai. Then he was consumed by a fire of his own making.
The hall fell silent as the yaoguai fled, leaving their dead behind. There was hardly anything left of the remnant of Shang Tsung. Ash, echoes, and a shard of crystal no larger than a thumbnail. It was neither core nor dao seed. He had not been a beast. But it radiated the same mixed aura that had given life to the phantom.
Lin had a cut across her cheek, but she was otherwise unharmed. Bai Tu's jaws were dark with blood, and he panted with apparent satisfaction. Lao was holding a stubby sword, recovered from one of the humanoid beasts he had slain.
"I take it we're finished here." Zhang Sha slid down the column he had been clinging too. "We've had enough surprises for one day." Moving closer to Fushuai, he murmured a few words that were meant only for him.
"My qi is fouling. I'll need your help soon."
He nodded. The strange natures of the energies in these ruins couldn't have been good for a cultivator with a twisted root. Since they began traveling together, Zhang Sha's energy had not required purification as often as they'd originally assumed, but it wasn't a condition that could be allowed to fester.
Still wary of the yaoguai, they clustered together as they stepped out of the hall. Only Bai Tu remained a pace behind, still growling at the creatures receding into the tunnels. Fushuai sent the sliver of crystal he'd recovered into his storage ring, taking the first step down from the palace entrance toward the long and buried road. Looking up, he saw a figure waiting for them, a woman in robes of black and red, fifty paces down the cobblestones.
Chink.
It was the sound of a seal being broken. A sword unsheathed.
A blue-white crescent erupted from its edge. Bright ice, shimmering with Yang. He barely had time to raise his gu-en. The razor edge of the crescent struck the dark, metal shaft, still marked with the prints of his fingers from when it had been molded, and shattered. The technique split, fragments of the crescent spiraling to either side of him, even as the gu-en cracked through its middle with a sound like an ancient tree being broken in a storm.
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He heard a gasp, a cry, a grunt.
Lao was on the ground, as still as the ice that had pierced his chest. Zhang Sha was standing with his hands raised, palms out, both bloodied. His robes gaped open, and a red gash grinned crosswise from his chest to his belly. Lin was behind him.
The woman was nearly upon them.
He leapt down from the steps, one half of his gu-en in each hand. The formations that had allowed him to command the elements by channeling Yin along its length were broken, but it was still a thing forged of five metals and five cores. Her jian was silent, even as its edge kissed one of his rods, and so were her feet as she danced away from him, preparing for another lunge.
His spiritual sense was fully extended, and yet, he had not recognized her presence until his eyes had found her waiting for them. The remnant too, had hidden from him, and those whisps. As far as he had come, he still could not trust his discernment. All his senses told him now was that Lao was dead, Zhang Sha was seriously wounded, and this woman intended to kill him.
Her will fell upon him like the point of a spear.
"I am Han Luo," she said. "Foundation stage disciple of the Ash Eater Sect, and student of the Path of Winter's Spring. You killed my Brothers, prepare to die."
"You came hunting me!" This woman had been one of the three to chase them out of Ashen City. She'd escaped, and instead of returning to her sect in defeat, followed them all this time. Fushuai wanted to scream. Did she blame him for defending himself? He was not Xiao Sheng; he had not struck a blow against the empire. Any honor to be gained from killing him was misplaced. Though he could understand the incentive, there was no justice in it.
"You are an enemy of the empire." Her words were toneless, as even as her hand as she turned over her blade. "The heavens have decreed that you shall die."
"It was the heavens that sentenced Wang Yinjing to death."
She didn't falter. Nothing he could say would breach that resolve. "The words of a rogue are ashes on the wind."
Her style was unfamiliar, but her intent was clear, and he blocked the series of strikes that followed her pronouncement. Still, this was not the same opponent he had faced months ago. She had taken another step down her Path of Ascension, already ahead of him to begin with. Her movements seemed hardly to be movement at all. She was still, and then her position changed, still all the same. He had never seen anything quite like it.
At another time, he might have been fascinated. This was an opportunity to learn from an alternative style. But in that moment, he did not want to learn. He was too angry.
Ao Lao was dead. In the grand scheme of heaven, it was hardly worth mentioning. Cultivators didn't die as often as mortals, but their lives, whether extended for a year or a millennium, were a perpetual race against death. But he had taken the younger man as a disciple. Accepted responsibility for his life and the potential for his mistakes, believing he could teach him another way.
There was no other way in a world where lives could be snuffed out in a blink.
What a fool he had been.
Frost formed along the twin lengths of his sundered staff. As the cold sank into the muscles of his forearms, stiffened the tendons in his hand, he barely avoided having his throat opened from one side of his jaw to the other, instead suffering only a thin cut along his chin. Somehow, this cold had nothing of Yin in it. There was a mystery there he had no time to contemplate as they circled each other within the confines of the road.
But was it a mystery? After all, there had been no Yang in the heat of the remnant's black flames. The rod in his right hand was knocked out of his grip, so he was forced to fight on with half a gu-en. Hunger's Lure could not help him, Han Luo's power had already touched him. To activate the lure now would only draw it into his center.
If he had still carried Circle of Mist in his dantian, he might have been able to overpower her aura with his own. They were of the same stage, and though her advancement was greater than his, he had other advantages.
But he had abandoned that technique, and attempting to use it without an inscription would have required more concentration and time than he could spare.
She drove him back toward the wall of the tunnel. Bai Tu rushed in, and the fox would have died in that same instant if Zhang Sha had not come with him. Her blade was turned aside by a skinning knife, allowing the silver-furred beast to latch onto her leg. She spun, scattering more crescents of ice. They were hardly echoes compared to the first. Still enough to drive away the fox, and force Zhang Sha to focus on defending himself. Blood poured from the wound in his stomach, and his hands trembled, fighting his every desire.
In the sudden spurt of chaos, he was able to land a blow, cracking his half-staff against her elbow. Han Luo retreated, switching her grip to her other hand.
"No one else needs to die," Fushuai said. "You are serving a lie. And if you have any honor, you must stop to listen."
Her eyes narrowed. A sharp face that, in other circumstances, might have been beautiful. "Take your pretty words to hell with you."
She lunged, driving with her jian, and it was Zhang Sha who met her. Han Luo turned over, a sparrow in flight, and her blade severed his hand at the wrist. But his sacrifice had turned her aside, if only for a breath.
Anger rose in Fushuai's belly. He felt nothing of the excitement that usually accompanied a challenging battle. Frustration, despair. Resignation.
There was a dragon waiting at the end of all things, and he wasn't strong enough to stop it. He wasn't strong enough to save a single life, let alone change the world. It was less a revelation than acceptance, and with it, a pattern formed in his mind. A structure he had seen in the making of his now broken staff, as well as in the techniques of the remnant of a disciple of Xie Gui.
There was no time left for contemplation. Han Luo surged forward again, and he let the rod fall from his hand. The sound that rose from his throat was a cry of denial, but that denial was a lie.
He had already answered the goddess's question once.
If death devours death, is there not that much less death left in the world?
Yes.
Dark called to dark, and cold to cold. He had taken Zhang Sha's madness into himself, and balanced the imbalance by setting it against the disharmony of his own root. He could devour sickness, and thereby cure it. But Han Luo was not sick. She suffered only from a difference of opinion. She was, in this moment, an instrument of death. One had already fallen to her blade, and four more would shortly follow.
If he killed her, there would be that much less death in the world.
It wasn't the answer he wanted. It was an answer he hated. But he could see no farther than the bright point of steel aiming for his eye. And that, too, was gone when black flame blossomed from his core to consume them both.