Hulao Pass (5)
Without even a moment to catch her breath, Lü Bu was forced onto the back foot, sweat beading on her forehead as a relentless chain of attacks came howling at her.
She had long since lost count of how many exchanges had passed in her battered, exhausted mind.
Unlike the hollow pretenders she'd crossed blades with before—Yu She, Pan Feng, and Mu An'guo—these were genuine peerless generals. To trade fierce blows with warriors of this caliber had once been Lü Bu's fondest dream, back when she was a martial artist chasing honor and glory. Now, she felt nothing at all.
Under the ceaseless barrage, even attempting a counterattack was out of the question. The instant her focus wavered, the instant she let her tension slip, grievous injury would be inevitable.
The battle had become Zhang Fei and Ma Chao pushing Lü Bu back at will.
The weapons the peerless warriors swung had been pared down to pure efficiency—every wasted motion stripped away, each strike arriving with lethal intent—and Lü Bu was driven into a corner.
Her horse, too, was visibly worn to the bone, forced to endure the grinding fatigue of prolonged combat and the bone-shaking impacts of blocking blow after blow.
WHOOONG!!
With a vicious hiss of cleaved air, the long, serpentine Serpent Spear came lashing toward Lü Bu, and she deflected its tip with nothing but minimal movement and raw strength.
She had to conserve every ounce of motion, because she knew another attack was already on its heels.
KWAANG!!
When Ma Chao's spear—a weapon the master smiths of Liangzhou had poured their finest craft into—came plunging down toward her head, Lü Bu whipped the Sky-Piercing Halberd up into a vertical guard, meeting it with all the strength she could muster.
The halberd bowed ever so slightly under the crushing pressure—a testament to how masterful a smith had forged it.
With her spirit already in tatters, blocking even one attacker was a struggle—and all the while another assault came surging in from her flank, the punishing cycle repeating without end.
FSHHK!!
"...Kgh!!"
Ma Chao seized an opening and thrust her spear in, and with no strength left to swing her weapon, Lü Bu could only wrench her head aside and barely slip past it.
But her exhausted body was slowing to react, and a raw, vivid red gash bloomed across her face.
Facing two peerless generals without Red Hare, her mind and body already worn ragged, was a trial close to torment.
Worse, Ma Chao had apparently grown accustomed to Zhang Fei's movements, and was increasingly attempting to synchronize her attacks with them.
Weapons hurtling in from separate directions narrowed the angles of attack, and an extreme mental fatigue began to pile up on Lü Bu.
There's no gap to escape through... I think this is where it ends.
Each of them was more than capable of trading dozens of exchanges with her, no contest. If this were the old days, her combative nature would have flared, her fighting spirit surging as she rose to savor the battle. But after everything that had happened in Luoyang, with both body and mind ground down, it only grew heavier by the moment.
Ma Chao's spear cleaved through the air in a rushing arc, and Lü Bu caught it with a strength-laden Sky-Piercing Halberd.
KAGAGAK!!
The two locked into a contest of pure strength, each shoving against the other's weapon with all their might.
"...What's wrong with you? Are you even fighting for real?"
"..."
Ma Chao asked why the spirit and raw power Lü Bu had shown at Luoyang seemed diminished, why her fighting edge was so dulled—but Lü Bu answered only with silence.
That silence only stoked Ma Chao's irritation all the more.
"You don't get it—do you know how long I've waited to settle this!!"
TUENG!!
"...Kuhk!!"
Shoving the Sky-Piercing Halberd aside, Ma Chao gripped her spear in a straight line and drove it in again and again, raining down lightning-quick strikes like a sudden downpour.
A storm of brilliant technique, dazzling enough to bewitch the eyes of ordinary men, came pouring down on Lü Bu.
Each thrust was so fast that to an ordinary observer, it wouldn't have looked like afterimages at all—it looked as if a dozen spears were impaling her simultaneously.
Ma Chao had sharpened herself to the bone for this reckoning, and her jade-green eyes burned with a ferocious fighting spirit, blazing like fire in polished gemstones.
Lü Bu, drained in mind and body alike, could do little more than scramble to parry each blow.
The moment she had barely deflected them all, a weapon came flying at her from behind.
-SWISH!!
"...Kugh!!"
"What, you can't even dodge that? Are you really the Unrivaled Under Heaven?"
Zhang Fei's Serpent Spear carved across Lü Bu's back, the blade splitting skin open, blood welling from the wound.
It might have looked like cowardice, so many ganging up on one—but this was no duel of honor fought by generals. It was war, and there was nothing to be done about it.
The searing pain succeeded in dulling Lü Bu's movements.
Rousing herself from her daze and snapping back to reality, Lü Bu swung the Sky-Piercing Halberd in desperate resistance—only for Zhang Fei to batter it aside with a full-powered strike, and Ma Chao's blade to bite into her shoulder.
The wound sat in nearly the same place as the injury she had dealt Lü Bu back at Luoyang.
And into that unguarded gap, Zhang Fei's spear came surging in, slicing across Lü Bu's side.
"Krehk!!"
A death-cry tore from Lü Bu's throat under the accumulating wounds, her body swaying unsteadily.
Bright red blood streamed down from her injuries.
None of it struck a vital point, but by the sheer weight of the lacerations and the severity of the deep wounds alone, it would have been fair to call them mortal.
Gripping the Sky-Piercing Halberd in her right hand—her left shoulder was wounded—she swung it in one massive arc to shake Ma Chao off.
But with one arm already useless, the outcome of the battle was, in truth, already decided.
"Haah... haah..."
She had taken lacerations even mid-duel, and now wounds serious enough to count as grave injuries on top of them.
Zhang Fei, who loved nothing more than crossing blades with strong opponents, didn't feel particularly satisfied.
Had it not been for the General Who Pacifies the West's request, she would have fought her alone—but Lü Bu's martial prowess simply didn't feel as terrifying as the rumors made it out to be.
Ma Chao, for her part, nursed a personal grudge against Lü Bu, and her expression was sullen and unsatisfied at having won without doing it on her own strength alone.
Given the choice, she would have preferred to defeat her properly, one on one, someday.
"Lady Fengxian!!"
Gao Shun and the Trapped Camp had punched through Xu Huang's stalwart battle line, and now Zhang Liao and several hundred cavalry tore through the encirclement, racing toward Lü Bu.
"Stay away from—"
Ma Chao and Zhang Fei, who had been about to finish Lü Bu, raised their weapons to meet the charging Zhang Liao.
"Now!! Advance! Seize Lü Bu!!"
Just then, Yuan Shu's commander Chun Zheng burst into the fray with the troops under his command.
They had crept out to obstruct the two women's path, slyly getting in their way—all to steal the credit for themselves.
"What the—?"
"What is the meaning of this!?"
Nothing like this had been discussed beforehand, and Zhang Fei and Ma Chao had no choice but to freeze for a moment.
The two of them knew Yuan Shu's temperament—how, at the front lines, unable to stomach watching Sun Jian earn glory, he had cut off his grain supplies. But never had they imagined he would stoop to hijacking another's battlefield achievements.
"Enemy commander! Lü Bu! I am Chun Zheng, mighty general of the Yuan Shu army! Offer up your head this instant!!"
Convinced this was his chance to claim the head of a wounded, utterly defenseless Lü Bu, Chun Zheng charged in ferociously, spear in hand.
But even wounded, the woman called the Unrivaled Under Heaven had the mighty general Zhang Liao at her side.
"Out of the way!!"
In this era, Zhang Liao's name was still overshadowed by Lü Bu's, and Chun Zheng dismissed her as nothing more than some minor rabble-officer, shouting at the top of his lungs.
Zhang Liao's face went cold as ice as she swept the Azure Dragon Halberd in her hand horizontally.
SWSHHK—!!
One swing of the halberd, and the head of the aggressively charging Chun Zheng went flying into the air.
"HIIIK!! General Chun Zheng has fallen!!"
The moment their commander was cut down with a single stroke, the Yuan Shu soldiers—who had advanced so boldly—collapsed into panic at Zhang Liao's martial prowess and began to flee.
"Move!! You idiots!!"
Yuan Shu's soldiers blocking the path of their horses bought Ma Chao and Zhang Fei only a moment's pause.
Zhang Liao frowned as she took in Lü Bu's condition. By any measure of her wounds, she was already gravely injured.
"Zhang Liao..."
"Lady Fengxian!! Endure just a little longer!!"
Abandoning her own warhorse, exhausted from the melee, Zhang Liao lifted Lü Bu up onto her mount behind her.
Lü Bu might have wished for death here—might have thrown her off—but she had already spent her strength to the last, and whether from sheer exhaustion or the volume of blood she'd lost, she slipped into unconsciousness.
As Ma Chao and Zhang Fei came charging toward Zhang Liao through the obstructing Yuan Shu forces, more than a hundred soldiers of the Lü Bu army—led by the two officers Zhao Shu and Li Zou—moved to block their path.
"Go, quickly, General!!"
"For Lady Lü—!!"
"...Forgive us."
Zhao Shu and Li Zou stood no chance against the two peerless generals who had brought down Lü Bu. Their sacrifice was nothing more than time bought for an escape.
Barely moments after they lunged, both men were knocked from their saddles by savage blows and fell from their horses.
Gao Shun and Wei Xu, too, were waging a fierce exchange with Xu Huang in order to buy Zhang Liao her escape.
Even knowing they would be captured, the devoted Gao Shun and the soldiers of the Trapped Camp stayed behind to buy time, so that Lü Bu could be spirited away to Hulao Pass.
Of an army numbering nearly twenty thousand, only a few thousand remained to follow Zhang Liao with Lü Bu carried behind her.
"We have to hurry back and shore up the defenses—"
"General!! Hulao Pass is on fire!!"
"What did you say—!?"
Having barely escaped with Lü Bu thanks to the meddling of Yuan Shu's glory-hungry army, Zhang Liao whipped her gaze toward the direction of Hulao Pass.
A column of black smoke was rising from the pass.
And atop the walls, a white-haired woman wielding a crescent-bladed glaive painted with an azure dragon was cutting the soldiers down where they stood.
The gate that should have been sealed shut like an iron wall hung wide open, welcoming the coalition's soldiers inside.
What in the world is—
While Zhang Liao's attention had been consumed with Lü Bu's rescue, Hulao Pass had fallen. The shock struck her like a blow, and she felt her mind go blank.