Hulao Pass (3)
Having sent Wang Kuang's forces into chaos, Lü Bu plunged straight into another unit camped nearby.
No unit anywhere could handle her, and so the coalition fled in blind panic wherever she went. Even as she cut down soldier after soldier without pause, Lü Bu kept scanning her surroundings.
Let's see. I've come this far, so at least one officer ought to show himself by now...
Just then, an officer on horseback caught her eye—and the moment he realized the Peerless Under Heaven was staring at him, his face drained of color.
"Hey! Get over here!"
She spurred Red Hare on, flinging aside anything that dared obstruct her path.
"Th-then there's nothing for it but to fight!"
Judging that he couldn't shake her off amid all the chaos, Mu Shun gripped his spear and charged to meet her head-on.
At that, Lü Bu whooped with delight.
"Way better than the bastards who bolt the second they see me!"
"Shut up!"
As the gap between them vanished, the two swung their weapons in the same breath.
CLANG!
Their horses brushed past each other head-on, and Lü Bu galloped on without so much as a glance back.
"..."
Mu Shun, the officer leading the unit, clutched his deeply gashed side, his face gone the color of ash.
"That... that woman's a monster..."
To dodge his spear and slip an attack into his ribs in the fleeting instant they crossed—could anyone in this world truly stand against such a warrior?
THUD!
Mu Shun glanced once at Lü Bu, already far away and still carving through men, then slid from his saddle.
"General Mu Shun has fallen—!"
"R-run! Run for your lives!"
Robbed of their commanding general, the soldiers shoved one another aside and scattered in every direction. On one flank, Zhang Liao's elite cavalry trampled everything beneath thunderous hooves; on the other, Lü Bu alone punched hole after hole through their formations, reaping the coalition single-handedly.
The cavalry was one thing—but for an entire army to be this helpless against a single person!
Unable to watch his allies swept away like autumn leaves, Wu Anguo hefted his enormous iron hammer and charged.
"You ignorant bitch! Leave the soldiers be and fight me yourself!"
"And who the hell are you supposed to be?"
At the brash, taunting voice, Lü Bu scrunched up her lovely face and reined Red Hare to a halt. She flicked the Sky Piercer Halberd to shake the blood from it, eyeing the hulking man bearing down on her.
"Another contest of brute strength, is it?"
"I'll grind you into the dirt!"
Lü Bu sneered at the man swinging a hammer so monstrous it was frightening to merely look at.
KA-CLANG!
"Ugh?!"
"Do these people have no capacity to learn?"
Knocking the hammer aside as though it were nothing, Lü Bu swung the Sky Piercer at his throat. Knowing that a failure to block meant death, Wu Anguo wrenched the deflected hammer back into position, feeling his muscles tear.
"Huh? What's this? About to die, and now you've achieved enlightenment?"
"Hooooh...!"
"Guys like that do pop up once in a while."
This time Lü Bu thrust for his chest.
"Urk!"
Once again, Wu Anguo blocked by a hair's breadth.
"But a weakling who's gotten a little stronger still can't beat me."
Between the brows. The philtrum. The Adam's apple. The solar plexus.
At a speed the eye couldn't follow, her strikes stabbed only at vital points, and Wu Anguo could barely keep them out by leaning on instinct alone.
"Still, you're holding up pretty well."
"..."
He had parried perhaps ten of her blows, yet his body trembled as though he'd parried a hundred times that. The instant fatigue blurred Wu Anguo's focus, Lü Bu seized the opening and swung.
"GYAAAAH—!"
"And he dodges that, too."
He twisted his body as far as it would go, but couldn't slip the blow entirely—one arm went spinning away.
"Now then, time to di—"
CLANG!
Mid-word, Lü Bu recalled the halberd she'd been about to swing and turned it to stop a spear lunging at her from behind.
"...Did you think I wouldn't notice?"
"Tch!"
The general who'd ambushed her clicked his tongue, visibly disappointed.
"Th-thank you kindly!"
Wu Anguo offered his thanks to the general who'd saved him and scurried off as fast as his legs would carry him. Lü Bu turned away from the one-armed man fleeing into the distance.
The general watching her asked, "Not going to chase him?"
"Why would I chase a man who's lost an arm?"
With his arm gone, that one was worthless as an officer now. It was a pity she couldn't take his head and claim the war credit, but Lü Bu could tell the general before her was a prize several times finer than the one she'd just let slip away.
A white horse that stood out even amid this dizzying chaos of a battlefield. A bow hanging at the horse's flank—skilled in archery too, it seemed. And horsemanship that was anything but ordinary, even at a glance.
Weighing every one of these factors, only a single figure surfaced in Lü Bu's mind.
"You're that White Horse General, aren't you?"
"An honor to be recognized by the Peerless Under Heaven herself!"
The nightmare of the northern tribes. The fierce general who had long guarded the frontier atop a snow-white steed at the head of the White Horse Volunteers now stood before Lü Bu.
"Come, then—let me measure the Peerless Under Heaven's martial arts with my own two hands!"
"Ha. You're hilarious. Who's measuring whom, exactly?"
Lü Bu tossed his words right back at him and stole a glance around. The coalition's relief forces, the White Horse Volunteers included, were beginning to emerge—it was about time to withdraw. No doubt Gongsun Zan himself was stalling for time while his men moved to surround her and either kill her or take her captive.
"Why aren't they closing in? Scared, perhaps?"
The way he so gingerly needled her temper suggested her guess was right. From where Lü Bu stood, it wasn't a bad plan.
Except that plan had one very, very serious flaw.
"Haha! So the Peerless Under Heaven isn't all she's cracked up to be after—HUH?!"
CLANG!
Gongsun Zan, who had been taunting her without pause, jolted in shock at her sudden charge and threw up a defense.
Hold out while the encirclement forms? And just how long did he think he could hold out?
"Wh-what the—! Charging with no warning at all! Why are you so savage!"
"Seems you've still got breath to spare for talking."
An unrelenting chain of strikes. Hounded without a moment even to breathe, Gongsun Zan could do little but parry in desperation. One clumsy attempt at a counterattack, and he would die.
SWOOOOSH—!
An attack came howling through the air, terrifying, as though intent on taking his head clean off. Without deliberating, Gongsun Zan folded himself as low as he could and evaded.
WHOOM—!
Had he tried to block that one, he'd have lost the contest of strength and gone flying into the empty air.
KANG!
"Ugh!"
Then he barely caught the thrust that came flashing in.
Normally, an attack with a motion that big should leave an opening, no? So how was it he couldn't even see her recover the weapon?!
Just as Lü Bu had said, the leisure for words was gone now, and cold sweat poured down Gongsun Zan. In the north, no one had ever come close to matching his martial arts—yet Lü Bu was driving this man to the wall with almost insulting ease.
So the title of Peerless Under Heaven was no empty boast! Only a man with a practiced eye for the martial arts, as Gongsun Zan was, could see it!
At this rate, encirclement or no, he'd be dead long before it formed! He needed to run, the sooner the better—but would Lü Bu simply let him go? Not a single opening showed; he couldn't find the moment to bolt. The instant he lost his nerve and turned his back, she would skewer it.
"Aigoo—! I'm going to die—!"
At Gongsun Zan's plea for help from anyone, anyone at all, Lü Bu's face twisted in disgust.
"The White Horse General, whining like some scared kid?!"
"I'm about to die—what does that matter!"
"Then just die!"
"GYAAAAH!"
I can't block this one!
Sensing death in the follow-up strike that came almost on the heels of the last, Gongsun Zan screamed and squeezed his eyes shut.
"...?"
But when the cold steel that should have pierced him never arrived, he slowly opened his eyes. A woman with jet-black hair tied in a side ponytail stood blocking the blow, red eyes gleaming exactly like Lü Bu's own.
"You are..."
At the familiar figure she had seen once before, long ago, Lü Bu's eyes flew wide.
Gongsun Zan, his own eyes open now, spoke in a stunned voice.
"Wait—isn't that Liu Bei's sworn little sister?"
SCREEEE!
The woman's sinuous serpent spear ground against Lü Bu's Sky Piercer Halberd, metal shrieking against metal.
Weapons still locked in a contest of strength, the woman said, "...Ngh. That's enough out of you—so hurry up and run already."
"Th-thank you! I won't forget this debt!"
Gongsun Zan bobbed his head and quickly put distance between them.
"Remember me? Because I remember you."
Still locked in a tense struggle of strength with Lü Bu, the woman waited until Gongsun Zan was safely away, then spoke.
"Big Sis told me to keep a low profile, but her senior fellow disciple was about to die."
"..."
"So this was completely, totally out of my hands. Yep."
The woman rationalized it to herself, nodding along with every word. Standing up to Lü Bu's strength looked like a bit of a strain, but she wasn't being driven back an inch.
"Now then—time to fight each other for real!"
Her blood must have been boiling, because her tone grew more and more worked up.
"Come at me!"
With those words, the grinning woman shoved Lü Bu back with all her strength and swung her beloved serpent spear in a wide arc.
"I, Zhang Yide of Yan, shall strike you down!"
With an inward sigh of annoyance, Lü Bu met the weapon of the woman bearing down on her with her own.