Yongle Year 18 (8)

A face white as falling snow. Eyes blazing a furious crimson. From ten outstretched fingers, a brilliant scarlet blood-light plunged like a meteor toward the Blood Death Archery Corps.

The tremendous speed of the Divine Step Scripture, compounded by the Sun Moon Blood Light Claw Technique.

Mount Baohua, where the rain of Blood Death Arrows had fallen still, began to groan once more beneath the sonic ruptures the claws tore through the air.

From the eighth form onward, the Sun Moon Blood Light Claw Technique entered the Initial Peak Realm. The blood-claws that had merely carried Sun Moon True Qi transformed into energy-claws sheathed in blade-force, and the crimson haze that had shimmered around the nails thickened into a fog dense enough to swallow those pale hands whole.

The ninth form was a death-whisper, faint as a scattering of silk threads. And then the tenth — perfect silence. The air itself could not keep pace with claws of that speed. No shockwave. No sound. Nothing.

A wet, strangled cry. Ten energy-claws, riding the Divine Step Scripture's impossible swiftness, slammed into the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠archers' bodies.

They punched through bone and meat. They shattered. They tore. Human flesh and bone stood no chance against the savage, destructive wildness of the Sun Moon Claws. Lengthwise. Crosswise. In an instant, dozens of bodies split clean in two, went limp, and crashed to the earth.

The opening belonged entirely to the Blood Death Archery Corps, and they were being overrun. Not only had a thousand martial eunuchs achieved a true ambush — they moved with such phantom speed that the archers could neither nock nor aim. The Blood Death Archery Corps were Peak Realm bowmen, as infamous for close-quarters archery as for their name, but the Sunflower Manual was fast. Too fast.

The answer would have been to pre-aim the lanes of approach and loose the instant a eunuch appeared or passed through. But the eunuchs were no fools. They were never going to allow that.

Another war cry ripped through the trees. Dark-blue figures tore without restraint through falling snow and evergreen forest, in every direction at once. Dark-blue afterimages and the rupturing shriek of Sun Moon Claws packed the woods in a dense, chaotic storm.

And yet every last man of the Blood Death Archery Corps was a master of the Initial Peak Realm or higher. To stand in the Peak Realm did not mean merely the ability to form blade-energy from true qi. The eye that reads form, the speed of reaction, the quality of judgment — the gulf between First-Rate and Peak in every faculty beyond the mere handling of internal force was bottomless.

The archers closed to melee, iron bows and iron arrows serving as weapons. In their hands, Blood Death Arrows became blades. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠massive iron bows became shields.

A wet punch of impact. Eunuchs began to fall — clubbed by swinging iron bows, run through by Blood Death Arrows. A dozen eunuch corpses had piled atop the Blood Death archers already heaped in the snow when a voice cut across the slaughter.

"You gelded dogs!"

The voice of Zheng He, supreme commander of Great Ming's ten thousand eunuchs.

Aye! Aye! Aye!

The martial eunuchs' voices rolled through the forest in echoing waves — and faster than the sound itself, they broke off combat and vanished. The dark-blue figures that had filled the air slammed into the earth as if driven into the ground.

Gong Jeong-mun and the Blood Death Archery Corps stared, bewildered, with no idea what was happening.

Then the atmosphere itself seemed to seethe and boil.

Alone in midair, at the very center of the archers, one eunuch remained: Zheng He, Grand Director of the Directorate of Ceremonial, Superintendent of the Eastern Depot.

Flame erupted from both palms as he flung his hands wide.

Among the thousand martial eunuchs, Zheng He was the one who — along with Jin Myeong — had never practiced the counterfeit Sunflower Manual. This was the supreme art that was his very name: the Three Yang Divine Art. The divine skill of a vanished Islamic temple north of Tianshan, ranked among the foremost yang-aspected martial arts under heaven.

Archers caught inside the radius of flame hit the ground already charred black, then crumbled to ash. From trees reduced to black, skeletal timber came the crackle of burning firewood.

No whole man could cultivate the Three Yang Divine Art. The yang qi generated within the body, added to yang qi drawn from without, ran too easily to catastrophic overload. Only a eunuch could learn it — and even then, the constraints were severe. Castration left the inner source of yang qi far too depleted; for the art to display its true power, a man had to do as Zheng He did, and consume yang-natured spiritual elixirs until the day he died.

A shrieking war cry. The moment the flames receded, the blood-lit slaughterhouse opened once more. Sun Moon Claws surged up to hunt the stunned archers, and the massacre began again.

The snowfield had already become a river of hot blood. That blood met charcoal still pregnant with Three Yang fire, boiled, and flashed to vapor.

Near Zheng He came the sound of watermelons bursting — the skulls of eunuchs shattering under Cheong Hak's iron bow. Cheong Hak, a master at the very edge of the Intermediate Peak Realm, was weaving past the grand eunuchs to butcher the younger ones.

"Commander!"

Locked in combat with the eunuchs, Cheong Hak called for Gong Jeong-mun. He had no idea where the man was, and no time to look — but the voice would carry.

"The great cause!"

Meanwhile, in that hell of screaming and slaughter, Gong Jeong-mun had been driven west without realizing it.

"Cheong Hak!"

Spotting Cheong Hak still swinging his iron bow in a frenzy, Gong Jeong-mun understood. The reason Cheong Hak had just cried out the great cause was this: escape was already too late — they would shatter like jade rather than yield. Hold the line. Buy time. Take the death squad and go for the Yongle Emperor.

There will be no returning alive. That Zhu Di bastard came prepared.

The dense forest made a proper count impossible, but he could already feel that three or four hundred of his men had departed this world. Most of the eunuchs were First-Rate or Peak; if the melee dragged on, their losses would not be light either. The problem was that the Sunflower Manual was the worst possible matchup for his side. Worse still, they had come in earnest — hundreds among the eunuchs were Intermediate Peak Realm, and dozens of those looked to be Peak Realm, Late Stage. Getting out of this alive had been a lost cause from the start.

"First Company and the Reserve — with me! We go to Zhu Di!"

Gong Jeong-mun had made his decision. Come what may, he would drag the Yongle Emperor down with him.

"Second and Third Companies — hold the eunuchs here!"

"By your command!"

Most of the dead archers had been Third Company, which had held the eastern vanguard. Most of the living were First Company and the Reserve, the latter composed almost entirely of Intermediate Peak Realm masters and above. Some four hundred men of First Company and the Reserve tore free at once and charged west, toward the Yongle Emperor.

They knew fifteen hundred Jinyiwei stood in the way. But the Jinyiwei's Divine Step Scripture was sluggish as molasses beside the Sunflower Manual — and inside eighty paces, the great majority of those guards would not be able to stop a Blood Death Arrow. It was a fight they could win.

Gong Jeong-mun and the death squad had just turned when a voice tore from behind them.

"Commander—! Ghk!"

Cheong Hak's cry, which had been pouring out in a savage roar, cut off. Gong Jeong-mun's head snapped around on reflex — and the scene that filled his vision was this:

Zheng He, watching them, laughing so the mountains and rivers themselves might flee.

"Ohohohoh!"

Hoh-hoh-hoh!

And Cheong Hak, his throat locked in Zheng He's grip.

"C-Comma— the gr—eat cau—se…!"

Cheong Hak's breath came crushed and thin, his neck twisted in a hand as white and slender as a woman's. Gong Jeong-mun, who had spent decades with this man, who had already sensed his death and was now watching it happen, wrenched out a scream that was barely a human sound.

"Cheong Haaak!"

Flame roared up. Cheong Hak's body was swallowed whole. Inside the vermillion fire, a figure burning black as coal dipped its head in a nod.

Gong Jeong-mun and the death squad understood exactly what that nod meant.

"Nock and draw!"

"By your command! Kh—!"

At Gong Jeong-mun's order, the death squad, choking on rage, drew their bowstrings to the breaking point. The survivors of Second and Third Companies, who knew precisely what Gong Jeong-mun and the death squad intended, called out blessings for their fortune in battle.

"Commander! Go with care!"

Then:

"Loose!"

At Gong Jeong-mun's command, hundreds of Blood Death Arrows screamed toward the air where Second Company, Third Company, and the eunuchs were tangled together.

The sound of hundreds of Blood Death Arrows tearing through human bone and meat, then burying themselves in trees, was enough to raise the hair on the neck. No one could bear to keep their eyes open.

Most of the eunuchs dropped fast and twisted aside, but dozens who could not extract themselves in time were cut down — because Blood Death archers, already resolved to die, had seized them and held on. Blood Death Arrows loosed at point-blank range punched through the archer's own body and through the eunuch's as well. A suicide assault, raw and absolute.

"Tear them apart!"

"Aye!"

Zheng He and the eunuchs, wild with fury, threw everything they had at the surviving Second and Third Companies. Gong Jeong-mun and the death squad could be left to the Jinyiwei to delay. Right now, sweeping away the Blood Death archers who remained here came first.

At the same moment, behind the Yongle Emperor's imperial tent.

A Blood Death Arrow came screaming in — and stopped in a eunuch's hand.

The middle-aged eunuch who had caught that terrifying shaft as if it were nothing was Hyundo, the Wudang Palm King.

"Blood Death Arrows… so they were Suchengye's dogs, were they?"

Hyundo reduced the arrow in his grip to powder, leaving only the head, and sank into thought. The Blood Death Arrow: the demon's shaft that only a man who had mastered blade-energy could stop. In eighty years of roaming the Jianghu, Hyundo knew that silhouette well.

"The nation's prowess is astonishing."

He was impressed, even moved. The enemy assault had come exactly as Jin Myeong and the Directorate of Ceremonial had sworn it would — and the attackers were the Blood Death Archery Corps, a name wrapped in secrecy and ruinous fame.

"As I thought. Jianghu is no rival to contend with."

Court and martial world shall not encroach upon each other? The government and the Wulin do not trespass on one another's ground? Nonsense. If Great Ming put its mind to it, the Central Plains martial world would be a wasteland. Information this precise, a thousand martial eunuchs, twenty thousand Jinyiwei, and a million-strong army armed with cannon — who under heaven could stand against that alliance? Even if the entire martial world closed ranks as one, it would not be enough.

One of the Eighteen Brigades of the Evil Path: the Blood Death Archery Corps. A thousand Peak Realm archers would leave their bones in Mount Baohua today. That much was certain.

"Has their commander come as well, I wonder? If the bastard shows, I might step out for a look."

The grand eunuchs had all been committed. The Jinyiwei leadership had deployed in full, leaving only the men required to hold the imperial city. The senior officers of the Central Military Commission were here as well, Zhang Fu the Left Commander-in-Chief among them. They could handle this and more. He would step in only if things turned truly dangerous.

A pact had to be kept. The pact to protect the Son of Heaven and no one else. Whether a few Jinyiwei and eunuchs died, whether someone of the imperial blood died — none of that was his concern.

Except Princess Ju Jeong-won.

"And Cheoneum is inside as well."

Besides, a fellow member of the Carefree Pavilion was in the tent. There was nothing to worry about. Worry was a luxury.

"Heh heh…! That eunuch brat's putting on airs he was never born to wear."

At the tail of his admiration, there was Jin Myeong as well. Hyundo had felt it from here — the dragon-spout Jin Myeong had summoned moments ago, and the sword-dance that followed.

"I'll be ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠damned. The young one has an unholy sense for when to step in and when to step out."

The more he saw of the boy, the less ordinary he looked. Looking back on it, it was as if the child went hunting for places to earn merit — appearing always at the most dramatic possible moment, and every time putting on a performance that stopped the breath.

"A prodigy is a prodigy. If he weren't a eunuch, I'd have raised him as Wudang's own timber."

Hyundo clicked his tongue over a thought that Jin Myeong, had he known of it, would have dismissed as not worth half a copper — and in that instant, a sonic rupture unlike anything that had come before tore out of the northeast.

That was no ordinary Blood Death Arrow. It was the sound of air being split by a monstrous reverse-draw loaded onto a blunt, axe-bladed arrowhead. Not the shafts they had been weathering until now.

"The commander's here!"

It had to be. Blood Death Arrows loosed by the corps leader himself.

Hyundo, who had sensed Gong Jeong-mun's arrival as clearly as if he had seen it, vanished without a sound.

Moments earlier, in front of the tent.

"The arrows come again! Stand ready!"

"Ha!"

Five hundred Jinyiwei guards answered in chorus to the Qianhu who had taken command in Gongsun Dajing's absence. The Qianhu and his five hundred had felt it all — the figures closing from far off, and the Blood Death Arrows with them. They had felt every inch of that desperate blood-fight: first when the eunuchs had clashed with the enemy in the distance, then when the Jinyiwei waiting in the forest had met them head-on.

Some among the guards swallowed dry. The Blood Death Archery Corps had never been this close. The tension of that shrinking distance sat in the throat like a stone.

Blood Death Arrows loosed by Gong Jeong-mun and the death squad began to arrive in earnest. The tremendous reverse-force loaded on shafts fired from inside eighty paces kicked the guards' sabers aside. There were no screams — but dozens of lives went out as Blood Death Arrows either knocked golden sabers wide or punched straight through them.

"Build a human wall!"

"Ha!"

The Jinyiwei did not so much as blink. They did not give a single step. Five hundred guards stacked themselves in overlapping walls of flesh, facing the direction the arrows were coming from.

Their lord was in that tent. The Son of Heaven. They would protect him.

Before that desperate will, even the monstrous force of the Blood Death Arrows dimmed. At best an arrow punched through one man, perhaps two, and that was the end of it.

Then a sonic rupture of an entirely different order came boring through the cluster of incoming shafts. By the sound of it, it was headed with perfect precision for the tent's entrance.

"Eunuch of the Realm!"

The Qianhu and five hundred guards, sensing a reverse-force that was wrong in their very bones, spun toward Jin Myeong.

That destructive sound tore past the head of the Jinyiwei line in a heartbeat and slammed toward the entrance Jin Myeong was blocking.

"Eunuch of the Reaalm!"

The mountains and rivers themselves seemed to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠join the guards' screaming cry — and in that instant:

The Blood Death Corps Leader.

Jin Myeong saw it with perfect clarity. Three Blood Death Arrows coming in on the points of a triangle. Two in front, one behind — and the heads of those three were different from every shaft until now: golden axe-blades.

Arrows loosed by the Blood Death Corps Leader. There was no question.

"Peerless under heaven!"

Jin Myeong drove Isin True Qi into the eight-chi black flood-dragon. Cheonyang Biyeon, granted the force of life, uncoiled its bent body and snapped straight, taking deadly aim at the incoming Blood Death Arrows. In his other hand, the Jeong-eum Divine Blade bared snow-white teeth in answer.

Then they met.

Gong Jeong-mun's Blood Death Arrows, Cheonyang Biyeon, and the Jeong-eum Divine Blade collided in midair. A grinding shriek of energy poured from two points of impact. The two leading arrowheads met the teeth of Cheonyang Biyeon and the Jeong-eum Divine Blade and locked, reverse-force against reverse-force. One side driving. One side holding.

The storms of qi born at those two collision points whipped up a cyclone.

"Sunflower Manual!"

In a single instant, the balance of the fight tipped. The two Blood Death Arrows were split down the middle as if measured by a ruler, Cheonyang Biyeon and the Jeong-eum Divine Blade doing the cutting — and then they crumbled to powder and were gone.

One shaft remained. That last arrow, flying dead-on for his forehead.

Jin Myeong, desperate, was about to drop the Jeong-eum Divine Blade and unfold the Peerless Heaven-Reaching Palm — and in that exact moment, a voice of pure jade rang through his mind.

Jin Myeong tipped his head back as if bewitched and folded at the knees, dropping as though he were lying down. It was a voice possessed of a magic that could not be refused.

Then, before his urgently upturned eyes, by a margin so fine it was nothing at all — a plaintive, mournful note of an erhu went keening past. That sound, packed to bursting with destructive force, collided head-on with the last Blood Death Arrow.