Hainan Sect, The Banquet of Yingtian (11)

A killing whisper of thread-thin filaments shrieked through the air.

The ninth-star Sun Moon Blood Light Claw Technique crashed down upon the warriors of the Sucheon-gye all at once. Hardened claw-qi, flushed a vivid scarlet where the evening light caught it, punched into bodies and then — with a wet, ripping burst — tore them apart. Every man the blood-claws had marked was split clean in two.

"Gyaaaaah!"

Screams tore through the avenue from every direction. Blood and scraps of flesh that had geysered into the air came down in a rain, and the slaughterhouse stink of blood and raw meat shook the street from end to end. In a single breath the boulevard had become a hellscape, and terror washed over every commoner's face. Some simply fainted where they stood.

The shops along the avenue, however, had seen this sort of thing before. Doors and shutters slammed shut in a rolling crash — and the instant they did, as if by some unspoken pact, the bloodbath fell into a brief, taut lull.

"Hah...! My lady! This humble one will open the path!"

Nam Woo-jeong slanted his spear across his front and barred the way. The weapon was over seven chi of dull, dark iron, solid as a gate-bar. Forged as a single piece from blade to butt, it would have weighed a good twenty jin — some twelve kilograms. A spear of pure iron was no popular weapon; the mass of it made the thing nearly unmanageable in ordinary hands.

Ninth-star Sun Moon Claws... eunuchs about to die. Ten of them. An ill-omened day, more curse than fortune.

Six of his men had gone down in a heartbeat. Seven remained. Counting the Strategist he was bound to protect with his life, his side numbered nine; theirs, eleven. Eunuchs of that caliber would be Intermediate Peak Realm at the very least. Flight was the only sane course — and flight meant opening distance.

They stood locked in a brief, measuring standoff, reading each other's killing intent, when Zheng He stepped forward.

"Ohong...! What is the name of this traitorous rabble that dares, without a shred of fear, to plot the murder of an imperial attendant?"

"Keh-heh-heh... Ma Sanbao. Who does this cheap castrate think he's calling a pack of traitors?"

Nam Woo-jeong had recognized him. The name he had thrown — Ma Sanbao — was Zheng He's own, from the years before the palace.

"Kiiyaaat! How dare you!"

The one who shrieked and came on like a thunderbolt was Yi Gwak, Senior Superintendent of the Directorate of Ceremonial. He was a man who would take second place to no one in the defense of his own. Let someone heap the insult of "cheap castrate" upon the head of his people, and there was not a eunuch beneath that head who would stand still for it.

Yi Gwak closed the gap in an instant and drove a blood-claw, curled like a tiger's talon, straight at the man's heart. He had reached such extreme speed that even the sound of splitting air was gone from it — the Sun Moon Claw, perfected to the tenth star. It was a strike worthy of a nod and the words as expected of Yi Gwak. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Nam Woo-jeong, however, was no lesser man.

Barely past forty, he was a master to rival Zheng He himself. Just as the Jinyiwei had raised Gongsun Dajing, the Sucheon-gye had poured its lifeblood into forging this one — and the gifts he had inherited from his bloodline were formidable in their own right.

Nam Woo-jeong twisted the spear that barred his front and stabbed through the incoming claw's palm.

A ringing crash. The iron spear, thrust with no preparatory motion at all, met the blood-claw in empty air. Dark-gleaming spearhead and the claw that had seized it locked in a contest of pure strength. Muscle and vein stood out along Nam Woo-jeong's forearm where it showed past his robe. In raw power, the younger, unblemished man held every advantage — and he had trained specifically to wield an iron spear as a weapon. Yi Gwak could not hold him.

"Get back, eunuch!"

With a heavy boom, Nam Woo-jeong stabbed again, snapping the locked spear forward as if to shear the claw clean off. Yi Gwak took the force and sprang back, returning to his original ground. There was no real damage done.

And then—

"Strategist — now!"

At Nam Woo-jeong's signal, Yi Yugyeong and her warriors broke from the field and ran.

"After them!"

Zheng He and the eunuchs opposite only snorted. To flee — now, in front of them? In the speed of a body-lightening art, their side had no equal ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠under heaven.

But Yi Yugyeong and the warriors of the Sucheon-gye had prepared for exactly this.

Nam Woo-jeong and the men who had stayed behind hurled spheres the size of a child's fist. Anything thrown to cover a retreat against practitioners of the Sunflower Manual was bound to be no ordinary hidden weapon.

"Kiiyaaat!"

Fearing poison, the eunuchs scattered with a warning cry. Poison, of all things, was fatal if it landed even once.

The small spheres detonated in a rolling crash of thunder.

"Flying Thunder Bombs!"

The eunuchs who recognized the weapons shouted it aloud. Not poison, fortunately — Flying Thunder Bombs. In the martial world, any fire-charge small enough to sit in the palm was called by that name, and they were vanishingly rare. Gunpowder was of such enormous military value that its formula ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was guarded with iron control; without that formula, neither the stability of so volatile a compound nor any consistency of performance could be guaranteed.

In the blink of an eye, Yi Yugyeong's party had pulled away. Their lengthening figures fled down the dusk-fallen avenue, dragging long shadows behind them.

A full-speed pursuit would have caught them, of course — but Nam Woo-jeong's skill had proven unexpectedly serious. Scatter to chase, and a single misstep could cost someone dearly.

"Grand Director."

The eunuchs turned as one toward Zheng He. Their faces, against every expectation, held neither dismay nor regret. There was no urgency in them at all. They looked almost at ease.

"Enough. This far will do. Still — if we give up too soon it'll show, so make a show of chasing them! We gather at Shicheng Gate!"

"Yes, Gonggong!"

There were several reasons Zheng He and the eunuchs broke off the hunt. The first was that they had a plan. The second was Hyundo, the Wudang Palm King.

A short while later, on the banks of the Yangtze outside Shicheng Gate, west of the imperial palace.

The walls of Yingtianfu were a fourfold ring — the Imperial City, the Palace City, the Capital City, and the Outer City. Along a stretch of the western side, Capital and Outer walls did not exist at all; the city met the riverbank directly. Palace and Capital had been held to their ordinary watch, just as the eunuchs had arranged, and Yi Yugyeong's party, disguised as common folk, passed through without trouble. They had prepared for this contingency as well.

"Strategist."

"General Nam."

Nam Woo-jeong, his iron spear broken down and slung as a pack, met Yi Yugyeong again. For her, it was a mercy beyond price. Without a Peak Realm master of the Late Stage at her side, she would almost certainly have died or been taken in the clash just behind them.

"Strategist. General."

The surviving escorts filtered in one after another. Even in flight, the party had changed every stitch of their clothing; the planning and the thoroughness ran that deep. The single unforeseen variable — the single unanswered question — was how an eunuch named Jang Jinmyeong had recognized them and come hunting in the first place. That, and nothing else.

"We should hurry. The Jinyiwei have eyes beyond the capital as well."

"Let us cross the river at once."

Yi Yugyeong had hidden three boats in separate places against exactly this kind of night. There was no knowing which way a flight might have to run. Using a known ferry and a known boatman was a risk in itself; any boatman might be an outside informant of the Jinyiwei.

"Yes. Let's go."

The wooden hull creaked as Yi Yugyeong led Nam Woo-jeong and the escorts aboard and they began to cast off the lines.

That was when it came.

"You shall not simply leave."

A low voice fell from the empty air behind them. The Yangtze bank, already darkening with the set of the sun, flared bright in an instant, and a wave of force rolled through the air — a wave that, even felt in the rough, was wild and violent beyond measure.

"Row! Strategist — go on ahead!"

The movement was pure instinct. Nam Woo-jeong, grasping at once that this was a crisis of the first order, kicked the boat away; the hull heaved hard under the force of his leap.

In the direction of that leap, bolts of pure white silk ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠unfurled across the evening sky, one panel after another, lighting the dusk as they came.

The killing power folded into those drifting, paper-thin panels of silk was first under heaven. This was Wudang's proudest peak art — the unprecedented martial study a certain Daoist of Wudang had favored some ten-odd years ago. The Ten-Step Brocade: the utmost peak of the world's soft-palm arts and air-piercing palm techniques.

"Aye. These are but the paltry hems of a Daoist's robe."

The Ten-Step Brocade that came screaming toward the wooden boat held a power as different from the one Hyundo had once shown Jin Myeong as heaven from earth. The panels of silk drifted as they flew — and were terrifyingly fast. To those who knew the might of a fully perfected Ten-Step Brocade, there was no greater terror in the world.

"Tah-hat!"

Nam Woo-jeong, still in the air, tore open the pack at his back. There was no time left to assemble the spear; he seized whatever came to hand and swung. The three separated lengths of iron spear began to spin in his palms like a mill-wheel, and with a deep, tearing roar of wind he raised a wall of hardened qi before him.

Hyundo, a martial obsessive who had lived through eighty seasons of the world, recognized the method at once.

"Hoh... Asterism Dense Barrier! Fine work!"

A method rare enough that young martial artists would scarcely know it by sight. It was the stuff of spear legend — the Meteor Spear Technique, also called the Zilong Spear Technique — and of all its forms, the one named the strongest defense: the Asterism Dense Barrier. White hardened qi upon the spear shone like the stars of the night sky and wove itself into a membrane of light.

"However, this Wudang's paltry robe-hems are rather tough, I should think."

And then the Ten-Step Brocade and the Asterism Dense Barrier collided.

Five panels of silk hammered the stellar membrane in succession. Twice. Three times.

"Kh—! Hahp!"

Four—!

The fourth panel of silk shattered the Asterism Dense Barrier to pieces. And the fifth, hard upon it, smashed into the iron spear and into Nam Woo-jeong himself.

"Keuhk!"

"General!"

Yi Yugyeong and the escorts cried out in horror as Nam Woo-jeong, who had stood against the Ten-Step Brocade, plunged straight down into the black water. The iron spear, forged of a single metal, had been reduced to powder. His left arm, where the hardened qi of the Ten-Step Brocade had scythed through, was gone from the elbow down. Scarlet blood poured from him like a waterfall.

The wall that stood between Peak Realm — Late Stage and the Transcendent Realm was a high one.

"The crime of using wicked arts upon Cheongjin is worthy of death. Yet Cheongjin did not die, and so this Daoist shall not kill you either."

Hyundo, standing on the bank with his hands clasped behind him, put out his right hand once more. This time a single panel of silk cut the air. It flew true, smashed into the bow, and reduced the warrior who had thrown his body in its path to powder — and still it had force enough left to crash down upon Yi Yugyeong and her escorts and shatter the wooden boat to kindling.

"Ghhhk—!"

"Aah—!"

At the same hour, before the vast Jubao Gate on the southern side of the imperial palace, the Hainan disciples who had received Yi Yugyeong's message and tried to flee Yingtianfu stood ringed by hundreds of Jinyiwei warriors and eunuchs. When Jang Jinmyeong and the eunuchs had cut off Yi Yugyeong's party, Sa Hapji and the Jinyiwei had gone after Hainan.

Yi Yugyeong and Nam Woo-jeong — those two, already...

Jang Jinmyeong watched Zheng He and Sa Hapji interrogate the Hainan party and sank into thought. There was no mistaking them. Yi Yugyeong and Nam Woo-jeong, in the years of their youth. Yi Yugyeong, of the blood of founding meritorious minister Yi Seonjang. Nam Woo-jeong, of the blood of founding meritorious minister Nam Ok, in just the same way. Both Yi Seonjang and Nam Ok had lost their heads for the crime of treason; they had been men who set the whole realm talking in their day. The emperor then had been Taizu, Zhu Yuanzhang.

So those remnants were already active at this time.

Before the regression, he had not learned of it until he was well into middle age. Strictly speaking, they had been caught in the Eastern Depot's intelligence net. And yet here they were, already at work. Which meant the Sucheon-gye had already been formed, and was already moving in the dark — and that was no small matter.

The attack on the Crown Prince not long ago was the Sucheon-gye's doing as well, then.

At the fifth Yingtian Banquet of his previous life, no incident like this one had occurred. He had been a fifth-grade wooden-token attendant of the Imperial Stables Directorate then, and had not seen it himself — but he had been hungry for news of martial arts and the jianghu, and he had heard the reports. There had been no particular accident.

The variable is me.

Only one thing had changed. From the standpoint of the world under heaven, there was only a single variable: the man who had returned. The Hainan affair, and this affair too, had happened because of him.

That the Grand Director is Zheng Gonggong is a mercy, at least.

Zheng He was no fool. He was a man who had risen from a captured page-boy of twelve to Grand Director of the Directorate of Ceremonial. That career was the man. And that Zheng He had, without being told, cut off the very danger Jang Jinmyeong had not spoken of. Not a matter of plucking a few leaves and being done — the roots and the stem had to be seized. So he had let Yi Yugyeong and Nam Woo-jeong go.

Yi Yugyeong and Nam Woo-jeong must not be taken. Not now.

That was precisely the measure he had wanted. He did not know how much strength the Sucheon-gye had already gathered at this point in time — and it was because he did not know that the Strategist, Yi Yugyeong, and her protector, Nam Woo-jeong, had to be left alive. If everything began to unravel because of him, the consequences might be more than anyone could bear.

Take one example: the Blood Death Archery Corps. Men who used giant regulation bows of over half a zhang — some five feet four — with arrowheads weighing six liang, every last one of them a terrifying archery master who could load qi into a shaft. Even before the regression their whereabouts had never been pinned down, and they too were of the Sucheon-gye.

And if that incident does not occur on schedule?

Jang Jinmyeong remembered, with perfect clarity, the event and the date on which the Blood Death Archery Corps had first appeared. How could he forget? Jianghu outlaws, in a body, launching a surprise assault on the Yongle Emperor, the Crown Prince, and the vassal princes — a catastrophe of that scale. And that was the heart of his fear: that because of the variable called himself, the great historical events would run differently from the life he had already lived. If the Sucheon-gye changed its plans, if some unforeseen incident erupted, and three generations of emperors from Yongle through Xuande were murdered entire — what then? The realm would drown in blood. The remnants of the Northern Yuan and the barbarians of the frontier might rise. It was a thing that could not be permitted. They would only make his own life harder.

A thousand mercies that woman stopped at the Gungga Tea House.

Put simply, the Gungga Tea House was the house in front; the Gongga Inn was the house next door. Meaning he and they knew each other well. Yi Yugyeong would have been careful — but the pages and attendants of the Gungga Tea House were no ordinary hands. Children, yes, but martial artists who walked the dust of the jianghu all the same. In any case, even Yi Yugyeong, who before the regression had been a hundred-year-old vixen, was still human. There were days her luck ran sour, and times she made mistakes.

That vixen of a woman. She'll have been smashed to pieces by now.

The outcome of this affair was a joint work: Jang Jinmyeong's information and connections, the rank of Zheng He and the eunuchs, and Hyundo's martial power.

Meanwhile, Sa Hapji stood face to face with Geum Jong-mu.

"Geum Jong-mu. Have you anything to say?"

"Have you evidence? What, exactly, is the reason you persecute this Hainan so?"

"Evidence? It overflows. Not evidence — a witness. A man who heard, word for word, your talk of conspiring with a traitorous cabal to assassinate eunuchs. Two of them, in fact."

"Slander! There is no such—"

"Silence! Will you still say so when I drag before you one of the traitors you plotted with?"

When Geum Jong-mu clung to denial and tried to brazen it out, Zheng He, who had arrived later, stepped in.

"Commander, this official will speak, if you will permit."

"Please do, Grand Director."

"Sect Leader Geum. We lowly eunuchs, at the very least, do not lay hands on common folk as we please. Officials, now — that may be another matter."

A faint smile sat on Zheng He's face, and his voice was gentle. Had one not heard the words, one might have mistaken him for a man in an excellent mood.

"Grand Director, this is slander. We were on the road home, our household's lives preserved by the grace of the Death-Exemption Iron Token bestowed by His Majesty Taizu. What more could Hainan possibly want?"

"Euhong...! You don't seem to understand what I'm saying. Sect Leader Geum. Two elders. The head disciple, Nam Yeonghak. Those four must die. That has already become unchangeable history. I have already written it so, with this hand."

"Ah—!"

Zheng He lifted a long, slender finger and gave it a slight, almost idle crook, and the ninety-nine Hainan disciples fell into a despair they could not endure.

"Those four who sat in the same place as a pack of traitors will be beheaded. No exceptions. If you wish to preserve even the lives of the remaining disciples, go quietly. If you do not..."

A swallow ran through the throats of Jinyiwei warriors and Hainan disciples alike as Zheng He let the sentence trail. No one could say what Zheng He and the eunuchs — provoked not once but twice — might do.

And then:

The moment the words ended, the smile that had sat upon Zheng He's face was gone.

The next morning, before Xi'an Gate.

The Yongle Emperor's decision came down like a falling blade. The ninety-nine Hainan disciples were made to kneel in the center of the ground before the gate, Jinyiwei warriors on either side with sabers drawn and leveled. Upon the gate-tower, Sa Hapji of the Jinyiwei unrolled the judgment.

The judgment held the fate of Hainan. A wretched fate.