Pear Blossom Axe Before the Chu Heaven Sword
Liu Du had tried to do away with me using zhen poison—the kind of legendary venom straight out of a wuxia novel—but Hua Tuo's meddling had blown the assassination attempt wide open.
I had smiled and held the poisoned cup back out to him, and Liu Du, unable to hold out against my threat, ended up draining the poisoned wine himself instead. Dead on the spot. With the situation turned on its head like that, the pleasant banquet could only come to an end.
"Jeong Reung, you bastard──!! I'll avenge the Grand Administrator myself!"
The first officer to step forward bellowed at the top of his lungs. He stood taller than me, his waist thick as a bound log, and the forearms gripping his enormous axe rippled as though they could fold a grown man in half without effort.
Just look at how vicious the man was. He had the kind of face that wouldn't feel out of place in a fighting manga.
The faces of the magnates watching him positively beamed.
"It's General Xing Daorong!"
Xing Daorong? It wasn't a name entirely foreign to me, which meant I had definitely heard it somewhere before.
Xing Daorong, evidently pleased by the reaction around him, flashed a grin.
"That's right! I am the Fierce General hailed as the foremost of the Four Commanderies of Jingnan—Xing Daorong!"
Ah. Now I remembered. Isn't he the guy who tried to backstab Liu Bei, got seen straight through by Zhuge Liang, and died at Zhao Yun's hands? He'd actually put up a decent fight—trading blows with Zhang Fei for several exchanges, making good his escape, even smashing his way out of the encirclement around him—but unfortunately for him, his opponents had been Liu Bei's forces, so...
For all that he never accomplished much, his name was distinctive enough that it had stayed with me. Most names in Three Kingdoms wrap up at two characters. But his ran to three, so he'd lodged himself in my head without my even trying.
"Lü Bu."
"Hm?"
Still ignoring Xing Daorong, who remained wholly preoccupied with announcing his own presence, I spoke to Lü Bu.
"Forget that guy over there. Kill the magnates first."
"Got it."
Lü Bu nodded and moved from her spot at once.
A magnate who noticed her cried out:
"G-General Xing Daorong! Look out! Lü Bu is coming!"
"Hahahaha! Let her come and try! My Pear Blossom Mountain-Cleaving Axe stands ready!"
And what on earth was a Pear Blossom Mountain-Cleaving Axe supposed to be? Don't tell me he'd actually gone and named the axe he was carrying. What was that even meant to mean? The "axe" at the end was self-explanatory, and "pear blossom" was simply the flower of the pear tree... while "mountain-cleaving," bizarrely enough, was a Buddhist term for founding a temple. I genuinely couldn't tell whether he'd just strung together whatever characters looked impressive, or whether some hidden meaning actually lay buried in there.
Xing Daorong, having readjusted his grip on his giant axe—that is to say, the Pear Blossom Mountain-Cleaving Axe—shouted with supreme confidence.
"Do you truly believe you can withstand my axe—a mighty sixty geun of it!"
So it weighed a whole sixty geun—roughly fourteen kilograms by Han measures. Guan Yu swings eighty-two geun (about nineteen kilograms) around like it's nothing, so he falls a bit short of her.
Even as I sank into thought, Lü Bu trudged steadily forward, while Xing Daorong guarded against her approach with tense, jerky movements.
Lü Bu gave his stance a quick once-over, then began to move in earnest.
She coiled power into her legs and shot out like a beam of light, blurring straight past Xing Daorong.
"...?"
Xing Daorong, whose grasp of the situation hadn't caught up yet, put on a thoroughly dopey expression.
Having written Xing Daorong off, Lü Bu swung her weapon at a magnate trying to slip away from his seat, exactly as I'd told her.
"Guaaaagh──!!"
...Man, she's fast. So fast that even the officers guarding the magnates couldn't react.
Having cut down one magnate with a single swing, Lü Bu moved on again, her expression utterly unbothered.
"Uwagh!"
As two more magnates dropped in succession, one quick enough to catch on shrieked out at once:
"Wh-what are you doing! Can't you see Lü Bu is picking off the magnates one by one! Protect us this instant!!"
"Yes, sir!"
Weapons drawn, the officers scrambled into motion and began forming a defensive line around the magnates.
"Hmph."
Having noted the formation, Lü Bu gave a derisive snort and moved again.
"Uwah?!"
"Wh-what kind of monster...!"
Every time the Sky Piercer Halberd came around, the officers who barely managed to turn it aside went tumbling every which way. Judging by how they could block even one of Lü Bu's strikes, they were certainly skilled enough to be called proper officers, but...
"Kehk!"
Every time the officers went sprawling, Lü Bu snuffed out another magnate.
The interior of the banquet hall was already a shambles, officers launched by Lü Bu crashing and rolling every which way. One glance was enough to tell those were fabulously expensive dishes—and it looked like we wouldn't be eating them after all.
The magnates were hardly few in number, but neither were they so many that clearing them out would take any great length of time.
"Lü Bu──! How dare you ignore me──!"
Xing Daorong, apparently having finally finished taking stock of the situation, roared at her.
I addressed Xing Daorong, who was huffing and seething, quite unable to contain his fury.
"Xing Daorong, was it?"
"Mmh?!"
"If you swear yourself to my side even now, I can look favorably upon the question of your treatment."
Between that intimidating frame of his and his billing as the finest fighting general in the Four Commanderies of Jingnan, there was bound to be some use for him somehow.
But at my offer, Xing Daorong went red in the face and shouted.
"You dare doubt my devotion?!"
"..."
"I may die here and now, but I will never scheme with the enemy who slew my lord!"
What was with that loyalty?
After an endless parade of men who came crawling to surrender the moment an opening appeared, meeting an officer like this felt strangely refreshing.
Come to think of it—hadn't that guy died after faking a surrender or something?
I turned the memory over once more and nodded. That's right. Xing Daorong was a man who died holding his loyalty to his lord to the very end.
His heart, at least, deserved credit. It was a loyalty you could call downright foolish, depending on how you looked at it—and yet that very brand of devotion was precisely what the world holds in the highest esteem. Surely it was part of why Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang are revered as greatly as they are.
Xing Daorong bellowed to the officers under his command.
"You men! Follow me!"
"Yes, sir!"
Giant axe in hand, Xing Daorong glared at me through gritted teeth.
"I'll make you pay for daring to provoke me!"
"..."
He seemed intent on doing away with me by any means necessary, seizing on the brief window while Lü Bu was away.
I looked at Seo Yeo, who still stood rooted to the same spot, and opened my mouth again.
"Coming after me is not a wise choice."
"Haha! Scared, are you? What a spineless thing to say!"
Did he not realize Lü Bu could be back at my side this very instant if she so much as wished it? Or had his eyes simply been darkened by his thirst for vengeance against his lord's killer?
Lü Bu, for her part, had read the situation as well, glancing this way at intervals, poised to come running to me at a moment's notice.
Xing Daorong roared.
"Charge them down in one stroke! Those guard officers are all glitter and no substance!"
"..."
I sighed inwardly. I had, after all, given him fair warning. He was the one who hadn't listened.
"Die──!!"
Xing Daorong swung his prized Pear Blossom Mountain-Cleaving Axe at Seo Yeo, and—
CLANG!
"Gwahk!"
CRASH-CLATTER─!
In a single exchange, he was smashed into the corner of the banquet hall.
Wow. He actually blocked that.
Perhaps some grim premonition had seized him, for Xing Daorong had cut his swing short mid-arc and raised the long haft to catch Seo Yeo's Chu Heaven Sword. True, he had failed to overcome her strength and gone whizzing off to slam into the corner of the hall—but simply turning aside one of Seo Yeo's strikes and living through it was an achievement worth a lifetime of pride.
So this is the strongest warrior of the Four Commanderies of Jingnan...?
Xing Daorong, at the very head of the charge, had succeeded(?) in turning Seo Yeo's blow, but for the ordinary officers trailing behind him, matters went rather differently.
THUD!
An officer whose head left his shoulders in a single stroke crumpled where he stood, bewilderment still frozen on his face.
"...Khh."
Another, his weapon torn from his grip by a strength he could not hope to match, clutched at the wound she had opened in him, gasping, his face drained white.
"..."
Seo Yeo, who had knocked every last officer except Xing Daorong out of the fight, had not moved so much as a single step from where she stood.
"Ugh... one block, and my bones are still ringing."
Xing Daorong, sprawled across the banquet hall and covered head to toe in overturned delicacies, rasped:
"How the hell did it come to this... with women like these for enemies..."
Muttering so, he seemed about to push himself upright—then slumped back against the wall instead. He was still breathing, so he wasn't dead; it looked as though he had simply blacked out for a moment.
The magnates who had watched it all unfold spoke up, shock written across their faces.
"General Xing Daorong... in a single exchange...?"
"U... uuuuh! Run! We have to run!"
The magnates of Jingzhou, finally unable to master their terror, turned their backs and fled.
"Hey! Where do you think you're going!"
Their sudden stampede left the officers guarding them flustered, and Lü Bu shouted after the fleeing men in sheer disbelief. Worse still, they scattered in every direction, each man for himself so long as it wasn't him who got caught—it was enough to drive a person mad.
I rose from my seat.
"Time we moved."
"..."
"Let's go. We should catch at least one more."
"Yes."
Hearing me, Seo Yeo nodded, then picked up a spear lying nearby—the spear of the officer whose head she had taken off with a single stroke mere moments before.
At her abrupt move, I watched for a moment, wondering what she was up to.
Seo Yeo promptly hurled the spear she had seized.
"Gahk!"
The thrown spear punched clean through the chest of Xing Daorong, still slumped unconscious against the wall. With a single strangled cry, he breathed his last.
...What the hell.
"..."
"..."
I blinked at Seo Yeo, and Seo Yeo, as if to ask what the matter was, blinked right back at me, and our eyes met.