The Gentry of Jing Province (13)
The gentry had prepared plenty of schemes in advance for the General-in-Chief's visit.
If the poisoning attempt was discovered, they would set the entire estate ablaze and burn him alive. While the bandits they had bought off swarmed and clung to the General-in-Chief, they would bury him along with the mansion itself.
And how many of their own men would die at the hands of the general guarding him in the process? How many more would fail to escape in time and be crushed to death alongside him?
But not a single one of them troubled himself over such questions.
The gentry only needed to slip away safely under the protection of their guards, and the bandits reasoned that whoever fell beside them simply meant a bigger share of the spoils for the survivors.
It was a reckless, careless attitude — but the number of bandits gathered at Jiangling Castle was so staggering that this was the extent of their wit.
Yet the plan to burn down the estate had begun creaking from the very start.
"Huh. You guys are seriously weak."
From deep inside the building, a woman wielding a spear of monstrous length spoke up. All around her, bandits lay sprawled in every conceivable pose, each one long past breathing.
What was even more remarkable was the state of the building's interior. Everything that had once furnished the room had been smashed beyond recognition, and even the wooden walls hung in tatters, as though some wild beast had torn them apart with its claws.
The man whom his subordinates had called their boss broke into a cold sweat at the sight.
How could he put this delicately.
The one who had reduced this building to such a state was the woman standing right in front of him.
Long polearms like spears have a fundamental flaw: they are nearly impossible to wield inside a building. Every object in the room becomes an obstacle in the weapon's path, and even the pillars and walls that hold the structure up interfere with every swing — so what exactly was he supposed to say to that?
This mansion was admittedly larger than most, but it was hardly the kind of space where one could swing a polearm around the way that woman did. And a spear that long? Even less so.
But the woman, as if to ask what any of that mattered, whirled her weapon — a good one zhang and eight chi in length, roughly four meters — with wild abandon. Anything caught on that serpent-like blade was sliced apart without discrimination, and a human being was no exception.
The man did his utmost not to let his eyes drift toward the dismembered corpses scattered around the room.
The general with black hair tied to one side, her blood-red eyes gleaming, spoke.
"So you're the last one left."
"……"
"Come here. I want to finish up quick and go home."
The woman trudged toward him, step by heavy step. The man, having lost every last one of his men and no longer a boss of anything, opened his mouth with remarkable speed.
"W-wait a moment!"
"Hm? What?"
The instant the words left his mouth, the spear that had been swinging for his throat froze to a halt mere inches away. Blood still dripped from the weapon, and the sheer menace of it wrung another cold sweat from him.
When he held his silence for a moment, the woman narrowed one eye.
"If you've got something to say, say it all. Why'd you call out to me?"
She tapped the side of his neck lightly with the spear. The cold, razor-sharp touch raised gooseflesh along his skin, but he could hardly afford to complain.
Pouring every ounce of his will to survive into his voice, the man shouted.
"I have information!"
"What kind of information?"
"I know where the gentry plan to flee to!"
"Hmm?"
The woman tilted her head briefly as she listened.
"Everyone here knows the General-in-Chief intends to deal with the corrupt gentry!"
"So? What's your point?"
"Don't you think men like that would have prepared an escape route in case things went wrong? That's what I'm saying!"
"……"
The woman fell into thought for a moment, then asked him,
"So you're saying that if I spare your life, you'll tell me where and how the gentry plan to run?"
"That's right!"
"Don't need it."
"……Wha—"
Shk!
The man's head left his body, the vacant expression still frozen on his face. The headless corpse swayed for a moment, then crumpled to the floor with a heavy thud.
"I already got my orders from Sister Xuande, see."
The woman rested her weapon across her shoulder.
"…Probably not the thing to say in front of a dead man, though."
Zhang Fei, the youngest of Liu Bei's sworn sisters, shrugged and turned on her heel.
What exactly had Sister Xuande said, again? Something about ignoring anyone who tried to strike a strange bargain — offering information on the gentry's whereabouts and the like. That it was far more important to eliminate future trouble cleanly than to spare someone on the strength of vague, half-trusted information.
───You're not just telling me to kill them because you're annoyed, right?
───Hmm… a little?
───Sister??
That incomprehensible exchange had passed between them once, too.
Liu Bei had smiled faintly and said,
───You don't like Yide any better than I do, do you.
───……
───Brats who run their mouths without knowing their place need to be taught a proper lesson, don't they?
───I suppose so?
Simple-hearted as she was, Zhang Fei had nodded, finding her sister's argument perfectly sound.
She was right, after all. These bores couldn't even serve as entertainment — who did they think they were, glaring at her?
As Zhang Fei left the corpse-strewn mansion behind and started down the road, a familiar sound reached her ears.
─Clang! Kaang!
─DIE!!
The ring of weapons striking weapons, and battle cries thick with killing intent. Whatever way you listened to it, the noise was unmistakably people going at each other in earnest, and Zhang Fei frowned.
"What the hell is going on over there?"
That direction was, without question, where their own unit was stationed.
Quickening her pace, Zhang Fei arrived at the scene of the fighting — and stopped short.
There was Sister Yunchang, mounted on horseback, carving through the enemy.
─Neigh!
Every time her horse snorted and surged forward, Guan Yu's Green Dragon Crescent Blade swept out, and five or six men lost their lives at a stroke.
"GYAAAH!"
The bandits, armed with nothing better than crude blades, didn't even dare try to stop Guan Yu as she tore across the battlefield, and the gentry's personal soldiers — trained to some degree, at least — died without offering so much as a token resistance.
Strategists through the ages have said that once cavalry breaks an army's formation, that battle is as good as lost.
And right now, a general hailed as a Match for Ten Thousand — a warrior capable of facing ten thousand men alone — was churning through the enemy's ranks.
Witnessing the scene, Zhang Fei muttered in displeasure.
"Seriously? Sister Yunchang's running wild all by herself!"
So muttering, she tensed her legs and broke into a sprint.
"Yide. There you are."
Liu Bei, who had been directing the soldiers and urging them on, flashed her a smile when she saw Zhang Fei arrive.
Zhang Fei shouted as she ran.
"Sister Xuande! I'll be right back!"
"Off you go."
With a tone as light as if she were heading out for a stroll, Liu Bei nodded. The moment her approval fell, Zhang Fei sprang from the ground and landed atop the courtyard wall.
Watching her crouch up there, the bandits murmured among themselves.
"Wh-what is that?"
"I've got a bad feeling about this…"
Before the murmur had even finished, Zhang Fei launched herself from the wall.
Just as Guan Yu had done, the instant her feet touched the earth she swept her Serpent Spear in a full circle.
"Gwak!"
The Serpent Spear cleaved through the air as if slicing empty space, cutting every enemy within its reach clean in half.
A general felling multiple men at once with a weapon of overwhelming length. Zhang Fei drove the spear's shaft into the ground and bellowed.
"Zhang Fei of Yan stands here! Is there a single man among you with the guts to face me?!"
"……"
"You cowards! Fine — if you won't come, I'm coming to you!"
Apparently even waiting was a waste of time, Zhang Fei began rampaging through the heart of the enemy formation without so much as a horse beneath her.
Call it what you will — she alone possessed the power to turn an entire battlefield on its head.
Guan Yu and Zhang Fei.
At the sight of the two of them throwing his army's center into chaos, the gentry commander's eyes nearly bulged out of his skull.
"L-Lü Bu was said to be attending the banquet, was she not? Who in the world are these women?!"
The aide attending the commander cried out in a voice tight with urgency.
"They are the generals said to have joined forces at Hulao Pass and driven Lü Bu back!"
"Generals who drove back Lü Bu?!"
He had never heard any such thing!
All he had been told was to break through the General-in-Chief's guards. Never had he imagined there existed warriors who could repel that Peerless Under Heaven at Hulao Pass.
No — come to think of it, if they had driven Lü Bu back at Hulao Pass, they should have been her enemies. So how did any of this make sense?!
"……"
"Even a scarecrow would fight better than you lot! Is that all you've got?!"
Guan Yu silently thinned the enemy's numbers while Zhang Fei moved in a deafening uproar, drawing every eye in the vicinity. Whatever was wrong with those two, they showed not the slightest sign of fatigue, swinging their weapons on and on without pause.
Even in that very moment, the gentry commander watched his men die in droves, and a thought took root in his mind.
Then what in the world is the Peerless Under Heaven?
Lü Bu — the woman those monsters had supposedly joined forces to drive back — just what manner of strength did she possess?
A single question bloomed in the commander's mind, and he felt his whole body go cold to the bone.