Bing Province (2)
I came home from leading the troops on patrol earlier than usual, but my mother paid that no mind whatsoever, greeting me warmly outside the building.
"Son! You're back!"
"Mother, I've told you time and again—there's really no need to come all the way outside for me."
"Of course, of course! I know my son's heart inside and out! Now, are you hurt anywhere?"
Perhaps it came from living in a rough frontier land like Bing Province, but my mother showed precious little concern for etiquette or ceremony—she was as easygoing as they came.
She had been beaming at me, but the moment her eyes landed on Lü Bu standing at my side, a puzzled look crossed her face.
And as my mother's gaze settled on her, Lü Bu went rigid with tension.
"So who's this one, then?"
"I picked her up on patrol. She drove the nomadic tribes out all on her own."
"Really, now?"
My mother looked Lü Bu over slowly, up and down, then nodded several times.
"Her name?"
"Lü Bu. My courtesy name is Fengxian!"
"Mm. My son tells me you're quite the remarkable one, hmm?"
"I'm really not that remarkable, ma'am!"
She evidently had no illusions about being entitled to speak casually with the mother of the man who held the high office of Governor of Bing Province, because she answered my mother's every question with crisp, snappy deference.
A born soldier, of all things?
"You drove off the tribes all by yourself, did you? Then remarkable is exactly what you are."
"Thank you, ma'am!"
"My son wouldn't lie to me, but still..."
My mother let the words hang for a moment before breaking into a smile.
"Just to be on the safe side, why don't we have a little look at your skills?"
And so a sparring match erupted out of nowhere, right in the middle of the training grounds.
As the old saying goes, the only spectacle more entertaining than a fire is a fight.
The soldiers raised a deafening racket at the surprise event, shouting loud enough to blast the whole village off its foundations, and even the men of some standing watched the unfolding drama with undisguised glee.
At the very center of the dust-churning training yard stood the star of the day: Lü Bu, spear in hand, working the stiffness out of her limbs.
"Missy, I caught that little scuffle of yours earlier. Mighty impressive stuff. Heh heh—looking forward to it."
"...Likewise."
The man with the scar running in a clean line across his cheek grinned ear to ear as he looked her over.
Lü Bu's opponent was one of our more seasoned veterans. And in Bing Province, where men fought the tribes day in and day out, being called 'seasoned' meant you'd been battered across more battlefields than you could count.
Which was why I'd allowed myself to think the man might at least hold out a little while, and yet—
"Gwak!"
"......"
I shook my head as I watched the soldier crumple unconscious from a single swing.
The men who'd been watching were just as stunned—evidently they hadn't predicted this outcome either.
"Youngshik, down in one hit!"
Youngshik, was it? Now that's a real down-home, old-fashioned name.
"I'll avenge you, brother! I'm next!"
The moment Youngshik lost consciousness, a muscular soldier burst from the crowd and hurled himself at Lü Bu.
"Gwek—!"
And with a sound like a pig at the slaughterhouse, he too dropped in a single blow.
"A master that good?! I can't just stand here!"
"Somebody let her take a swing at me, just once!"
"A brawl? Then count me in!"
When even the musclebound one fell in one blow, something like a switch flipped—a portion of the onlooking soldiers began spouting pure nonsense and charged at Lü Bu in a mob.
Had they spent so long battling the monsters called nomads that they'd turned into monsters themselves?
I swallowed back tears at the sorry, pitiful sight.
At the wave of battle-hardened soldiers rushing her all at once, Lü Bu's eyes naturally sharpened into genuine seriousness.
WHOOOOSH!
A whirlwind tore through the yard, and when the dust finally settled, every last soldier lay sprawled across the ground in every pose imaginable.
Watching Lü Bu stand there as fresh as if she'd just woken from a nap, my mother muttered flatly to me.
"...Where on earth do you keep finding these children?"
"There won't be any more from now on."
Probably.
Having completed her grand initiation, Lü Bu was promptly put to leading troops as an officer.
Her strategy once she took command was simplicity itself.
She split the road open at the very front herself, and the soldiers streamed in behind her, trampling everything she left in her wake.
Simple, but devastating—under that strategy, the nomads and bandits were swept away like dead leaves in an autumn gale.
Even so, there were days when Lü Bu came home from the battlefield wounded, and every single time, I seized her by force and made her get treated.
"Wounds like this heal fine if you just leave 'em alone..."
"And what if it festers? I'll get the salve on you, and you can go see a physician after."
This time her arm had taken a slice.
If even a nick from paper hurt like that, what on earth must a spear or a sword feel like?
Sighing, I took her arm in my hands, dabbed medicine over the shallow cut, and wound a bandage around it.
"You let that scar, and all that pretty skin of yours goes to ruin. Then people will start fearing you, won't they?"
"And would you?"
Lü Bu turned those blood-red eyes of hers on me as she asked it.
"Would you hate it too, if I got scarred?"
"Oh, so that's what all this was about."
I huffed a laugh and deliberately scrubbed her hair rough, putting a bit of extra muscle into it.
"Augh! Hey! What do you think you're doing!"
Lü Bu kicked up a mighty fuss, though perhaps out of consideration for me, she didn't thrash about nearly as wildly as she could have.
"Of course I'd hate it. Who on earth would be happy, watching someone dear to them get hurt badly enough to scar?"
"...Someone dear?"
"That's what I said. Or was I the only one who thought we were?"
Because that would be mortifying.
Lü Bu shook her head so hard it whipped up a breeze.
"If it weren't for you just now, I'd have snapped that man's arm clean in two!"
"Well then. Much obliged."
Still, snapping the man's arm would've been a bit much, no?
In any case, my answer had clearly pleased her, because she stood there grinning to herself in plain delight.
"......"
Oblivious to all of it, Seo Yeo stood watch over me nearby, as she always did.
For always grinding the tribes to dust at the head of the charge, people took to calling Lü Bu the Flying General.
The Flying General—so swift and nimble it was as though she soared across the very sky.
Think of it as the sort of name you earn by being strong, quick, and a dead shot with a bow from horseback.
It was the very epithet inherited from Li Guang, the storied general of Emperor Wu's reign in the Former Han.
And Lü Bu's renown climbed and climbed, until if you asked anyone under heaven who the strongest among them was, nine out of ten would speak her name.
Peerless Under Heaven.
No soul beneath the sky who could stand as her equal.
As a man, doesn't that ring in the chest like a war drum? Never mind that Lü Bu was a woman.
So what, you ask, was this Peerless Under Heaven doing at this very moment?
"Hey! Let's you and me have a go!"
She was leveling her beloved Sky Piercer Halberd at Seo Yeo, picking a fight.
At this bolt-from-the-blue challenge to a duel, I buried my face in my hands.
"......"
Seo Yeo simply ignored her, focusing on my guard as though nothing at all had been said.
When a livid Lü Bu looked about to fly into a proper rage, I held her back and asked what on earth had gotten into her.
"I've been curious for a while now. You call yourself his bodyguard, don't you? Then don't I have the right to see for myself whether you're actually strong enough to keep him safe?"
"So in the end, this is all because you're worried about me?"
"...It is not!"
Scarlet to the ears, Lü Bu whipped her head away.
I stroked my chin and gave it some thought.
It was true that Lü Bu had never once seen Seo Yeo fight.
Ever since the day Seo Yeo had first taken up the martial arts and turned our entire household upside down, not a soul had dared raise questions about her strength.
Every time Seo Yeo had shielded me from those who came for my life, Lü Bu simply hadn't been there.
Though to be fair, they'd only had the gall to come for me in the first place because Lü Bu was absent.
And since I was hardly a formidable fighter myself, it stood to reason that from where Lü Bu stood—never having witnessed Seo Yeo's power—my safety would weigh on her.
I'd been schooled and drilled with the blade in my own fashion, so I could manage the fundamentals, but beyond that, not so much. Against a veteran rolled hard on real battlefields, I'd be cutting it dangerously close.
I nodded and spoke to Lü Bu.
"So all you want is to see how well Seo Yeo can fight. That it?"
"That's right!"
At her answer I turned around—and there was Seo Yeo, staring at me with a face of perfect blankness.
"Might I ask this one favor of you?"
"......But."
Her face was as unreadable as ever, but gazing into those lovely chestnut eyes of hers, I could tell.
Right now, Seo Yeo's longing to grant my request and her sworn duty to keep me safe were locked in open combat inside her.
Watching her waver back and forth, I offered one more line.
"I'll be fine."
At that, Seo Yeo closed her eyes, then took a single step forward.
"Understood."
Since I had no wish to stir up an unnecessary ruckus over this, I decided to spectate from a quiet stretch of forest where hardly a soul ever passed.
Seo Yeo, of course, would have her hands full guarding me while the duel was underway, so against any unforeseen situation, I'd roped in one of my more conspicuous officers.
The plain-faced woman at my side heaved a world-weary sigh.
"And it was my first day off in ages, too..."
"I'll speak to my mother later and have today's pay added on top for you."
"I shall do my utmost, my lord."
Wei Xu.
She was one of the generals known as the Eight Champions in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms—a title that sounded grand, but meant nothing more than the eight officers who served under Lü Bu.
"Whatever you see today stays a secret. Understood?"
"Of course, my lord. I won't breathe a word of it to anyone."
With Wei Xu's firm pledge secured, I nodded and addressed the two who now faced each other in their ready stances.
"The rules are simple. Yield, or lose consciousness, and it's over. And this goes without saying, but if things get too heated, I'm calling it off on the spot."
Lü Bu and Seo Yeo said nothing, each simply tightening her grip on her weapon.
"Begin!"
With the signal, the wind itself erupted.
BANG!
A thunderclap rolled across the clearing—a sound no sane mind could accept as sword meeting halberd.
I'd have sworn a bomb had gone off. Can a sound really carry like that?
After Lü Bu's opening strike, the melee that followed was simply beyond my eyes to follow.
Common sense protested—how could a man fail to see people swinging weapons the size of a grown person?
All I could catch were the afterimages of steel, the sparks scattering where the weapons met, and the roar thundering out in their wake.
So this is what the very pinnacle of Three Kingdoms martial might looks like. My chest feels fit to burst.
"Against Lü Bu of all people, she... They say the world is a wide place. I see now that it truly is..."
At the impossible spectacle, even Wei Xu had lost the ability to close her mouth.
Then again—what in the world is Seo Yeo, trading blows with Lü Bu like that?
It seems I'd gone and brought home yet another jackpot beyond all reason.
Lü Bu had struck first, and the sight of Seo Yeo brushing her blow aside with ease twisted her expression into a scowl.
What is she?
Everyone who had ever been on the receiving end of her attacks had shown one of only two reactions.
Either they were knocked back wearing faces of naked shock, or they went flying before shock even had time to register.
But this girl had taken her full strike with that same blank expression and hadn't budged a hair's breadth.
Lü Bu set her teeth and brought the Sky Piercer Halberd down again, and again, and again.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
From the way the metal rang on impact, there was no question of Seo Yeo deflecting those blows because she was losing the contest of strength.
She was answering force with force, exactly as Lü Bu was.
When Lü Bu wrenched the halberd off-course mid-swing, stabbing from an angle no weapon should reach, Seo Yeo countered it in kind, every time.
When she hooked the halberd low to sweep her legs out from under her, a kick came screaming back at her instead.
When she tried to hold her distance, the girl slipped inside her reach before she knew it, leaving her no room to swing freely.
What stoked her fury most of all was that even in the thick of the fight, those eyes kept drifting somewhere else entirely.
Toward him—there, the one she was meant to protect.
Which meant this woman had composure to spare, enough to mind something else entirely while trading blows with her.
...Just what in the hell is this woman?
Lü Bu couldn't hide her bewilderment at the strongest foe she had ever faced in her life.
She was the Flying General, and more and more people were starting to whisper "Peerless Under Heaven" about her besides.
Naturally, her pride had swelled along with the title—and who could have foreseen that this was the very monster she would run into?
It felt like squaring up against an unclimbable wall for the first time in her life.
.......
But this is interesting.
And didn't that mean she, too, could climb even higher than this?
To somewhere greater still.
Lü Bu severed every stray thought and poured her whole being into the opponent before her eyes.
Even if she couldn't win, she would land a single blow—that resolve, and nothing else, filled her mind.
And it felt as though her speed had ticked up just a fraction faster.
"That's enough!"
Both women froze where they stood.
A full hour with their weapons locked together, and still no sign of an end—I finally shouted the duel to a halt.
I had half-feared neither would listen, but mercifully, the two of them stopped the instant the words left my mouth.
As Lü Bu lowered her weapon with a weary look, Seo Yeo sheathed her sword with the same blank expression as ever and came to take up her post at my side.
I turned to Lü Bu.
"So? How was she?"
Lü Bu nodded slowly at my question.
"...Yeah. At least now I know you'll never come to harm."
Then she trudged over and passed right by me.
"I'm wiped. I'm going to rest for the rest of the day."
"Ah..."
Lü Bu had never once admitted to being tired so openly before, and I found myself at a loss for words.
She was the girl who stayed bright-eyed even after fighting dawn to dusk—and she was spent after just one hour?
I turned my gaze to Seo Yeo beside me.
As always, Seo Yeo stood at my side without having shed so much as a single drop of sweat.