Songlim Garden in Chuzhou (8)
"Commander Gongsun!"
Jin Myeong had been gazing down at Yu Jin, Headmaster of Songrimwon, with cool disdain — then his voice cracked out like a thunderbolt. As if that shout were the signal they had been waiting for, every arrow trained on the shrine loosed at once.
Sssseeeeek! Shik! Shishik!
Arrowheads surged toward their mark, and the collision of steel with the bitter winter air tore a savage howl from the sky.
That was when Gongsun Dajing moved.
"Into the shrine!"
Tak! Thuuung!
He bellowed at the company even as his hand seized the edge of the great round table. His right foot slammed down.
Nine Dragons Grand Luo True Qi uncoiled from his dantian and sheathed both legs in a sheath of power —
Thuuung!
— and that stomp, amplified by the art's inner force, became a thousand-catty weight that struck the earth's axis itself.
Woooong!
The ground heaved. The massive table leapt into the air on the rebound. Gongsun Dajing's planted foot snapped straight, kicking the table upward; the tabletop spun on the kick's recoil and swung around to cover the entire front of the shrine.
Kuuuung! Crack-crack-crack!
The spinning table crashed back to the floor and the earth shuddered a second time. The polished blue-stone flagstones split like a paddy field in drought, gaping open in jagged seams.
A colossal shield now stood between the company and the storm.
Ssssek! Sssseeeeek! Thuk-thuk-thuk-thuk-thuk!
Arrows screaming toward the shrine's facade buried themselves in the thick tabletop. The slab was as deep as a grown man's palm, and it took the barrage as if it could swallow worse. Hundreds of shafts thunked home — yet not a single point showed through the far side.
"Fine work!"
Jin Myeong was not content to admire the stroke. The instant Gongsun Dajing kicked the table skyward, he had already drawn the teacups from its surface with Empty-Air Object Manipulation.
He raised his Isin True Qi and split the Yin-Yang Dual Energy apart. Opposed lights flared in his eyes — an ice blossom in the right pupil, a tongue of flame in the left.
A mist of white frost-qi bloomed as Peak Realm divine power rolled through him. Pale green teacups drifted in that mist, hanging weightless in the air.
"Go."
He plucked one cup and hurled it toward the compound walls to either side.
Kwakwakwakwa-kwa!
The cup spun at a screaming pitch, whipping a cyclone from the ground to the heavens, and that wind seized the incoming arrows and wound them into its coil. Shafts caught in the waterspout were dragged skyward and scattered to the four winds.
Puk-pupupupuk!
The cup was not finished. Even after flinging dozens of arrows aside it had not lost its spin. It flew on and smashed into the assassins lining the walls.
Puk-pupupupuk!
Like a skipping stone across a river, it struck down a dozen killers in sequence —
Pupupupu-puk!
— and the skulls of every man it touched burst apart, one after another.
The windows and the roof, however, were another matter. Golden Nine Dragons Grand Luo blade-energy, the upended table, and the plastered walls had stopped the arrows cold — but the windows and the roof were punched through as if they were paper.
"Yu Jin!"
Even as he loosed the cups, Jin Myeong had read the field. He snatched Yu Jin by the collar and kicked his legs out from under him.
Pakak!
The impact drove in like a mason's chisel splitting rock. Yu Jin's shinbone, caught utterly unprepared, spiderwebbed with fractures beneath the flesh. The bone had not broken clean through the skin, so the wound was not catastrophic —
"Khhrk!"
— but a leg in that condition would cripple any footwork, martial artist or no. Yu Jin's movement had been sufficiently constrained. Jin Myeong needed the man alive, and he could not afford to lose him. The same held for the scholars who had sat at the table: they were reserves, kept on hand against any unforeseen turn involving Yu Jin.
"You will live. You will go to Yingtianfu alive."
Tutuk.
Jin Myeong struck the paralysis points of Yu Jin and the scholars alike, then sat them in a row at the innermost wall of the shrine, beneath the hanging portraits of Confucius and Mencius. He swept the field again, fast as a blade-stroke.
Gongsun Dajing held the left front, centered on the table that sealed the entrance. Jeong Myeong-su held the right. Golden Nine Dragons Grand Luo protective qi blazed against the deep-blue dark of a sunken night, lighting the shrine like a second dawn. Wherever the golden saber passed, a streak of gold flared — and every arrow that met that radiance shattered to splinters.
Zhuge Chaosheng and his siblings had their iron fans open as well, batting aside the shafts that poured through the roof and the windows. With the front sealed by the table and the Nine Dragons Grand Luo saber-art, the enemy had concentrated everything on the roof and the window-slits.
Sssseeeeek! Tak! Da-da-da-dang!
Arrows punching through the roof-tiles buried themselves in the portraits of Confucius and Mencius — a grown man's arm's length from the seated scholars' heads.
Sssseeeeek! Tak!
Jin Myeong snatched an arrow out of the air an instant before it would have punched through Yu Jin's skull.
The roof. He had to hold the roof. Until the time came. Until they arrived.
"Gang Su! Deok Heum!"
"Aye!"
"Protect Yu Jin."
"Aye!"
Kyaaaaaaah!
A ghost's shriek tore the air. Gang Su and Deok Heum took station on either flank of Yu Jin and the scholars, the eighth stage of the Sun and Moon Claw coiled in both hands. Blood-red light dripped from twenty nails.
Jin Myeong nodded to the two eunuchs he trusted, then found Zhuge Chaosheng.
"Young Clan Head. I trust you don't mean to sit here and enjoy the view. You will take the roof with me. The rest of you will guard the Headmaster and the scholars. If they die, the responsibility is yours."
The Zhuge Clan might well be tied to Suchengye and Songrimwon. If they were, they would try to kill Yu Jin and the scholars and bury the evidence with the bodies. So Jin Myeong split Zhuge Chaosheng — the party's commander and decision-maker — from the remaining siblings, and laid the lives of Yu Jin and the scholars on those who stayed behind. A warning, in other words, not to try anything stupid.
"…Understood. Let us go."
"This one shall go as well!"
Zhuge Chaosheng had no grounds to refuse, and was already moving to follow — when someone cut in.
The eldest daughter of the Zhuge Clan. Third of the five siblings. Zhuge Suxiang.
A rising star of one of the Five Great Clans — a gifted woman and a beauty. Skin so white the fine veins showed beneath it; long black hair combed smoothly over one shoulder. She was twenty-four. In both intellect and martial skill she outstripped Zhuge Yisheng, two years her senior, and the Clan Head cherished her nearly as much as he did Zhuge Chaosheng himself.
"Suxiang! Hold your posi—"
"Fine. You as well. Both of you, follow me!"
Jin Myeong cut Zhuge Chaosheng off mid-rebuke and kicked off from the floor. Brother and sister locked eyes.
Suxiang. If you go too, what becomes of this place?
Brother Yisheng and the younger ones can manage that much. I have to protect you. It's too dangerous alone. There's no telling what that eunuch might do.
Going up to the roof at all ran against Zhuge Chaosheng's plan — and Suxiang joining him ran against it twice over. He had intended, if the moment presented itself, to dispose of Yu Jin and the scholars as if by accident. They might not betray the clan even under threat of death… but he could not swear to it. No one knew how a man facing the grave might change his mind. Dead men tell no tales. Killing them was the simplest, safest course.
With himself forced onto the roof, he had counted on Suxiang — the most reliable of the siblings — remaining behind to see the matter handled cleanly. Her volunteering, and Jin Myeong's order, had reduced that hope to foam. And with Jin Myeong already gone, there was no time to think further.
Yisheng. Handle it if the moment comes. You must.
Zhuge Chaosheng sent the thought to Zhuge Yisheng, and with a faintly unsettled heart kicked off after Jin Myeong. Zhuge Suxiang clung to his heels.
Jin Myeong punched through a window already shredded by arrows, spun his body in midair, and soared onto the roof.
Charrrrrr.
In that same turn the Cheonyang Biyeon slid free of his waist. Released from its narrow scabbard, the serpent blade uncoiled and began to dance through the deep-blue night sky.
He stood at the center of the eaves and swept the world with his gaze. His mouth opened.
In the dead of night his eye-light thickened until it looked like wandering ghost-fire. As that low voice fell, the eight-chi serpent blade — nearly eight feet of living steel — stretched and began to swim, and two-tenths of the shrine roof's front face fell inside its killing range.
Kaga-gang! Ti-ti-ting!
Dozens of arrows screaming toward the roof struck something invisible and stopped dead, as if they had hit a wall. Had they been shafts loosed by the late Gong Jeong-mun, it might have been another matter. No amount of inner force loaded into ordinary arrows could harm the Cheonyang Biyeon when it drank Isin blade-energy.
Sunflower Manual — the strongest wide-area defensive form among the eighteen postures of the Bright Sky Hand. The same technique that had swept the Blood Bow Division from Mount Baohua. A net of heaven and earth from which there is no escape.
The Cheonyang Biyeon, borrowing the destructive force of Isin blade-energy and the forms and divine speed of the Bright Sky Hand, melted into the night sky until it could not be seen. All that remained was an invisible wall of blade-energy sixteen chi wide and sixteen chi high. Jin Myeong's body drifted through a dance of liquid, effortless grace — only the hand that held the Cheonyang Biyeon, and the blade itself riding that divine speed, had vanished from sight.
It was a scene like a painting. And that scene drove itself into the eyes of Zhuge Suxiang, stationed on the flank of the roof.
The Sunflower Manual. The martial art of eunuchs…
She had known eunuchs only as strange, perverse, uncanny creatures. She had never imagined their martial arts could be this fluid. This beautiful.
Then it came.
Kuwaaaaaah!
In the sliver of an instant that Zhuge Suxiang's mind had wandered into the Sunflower Manual, a tearing of the air arrived that was nothing like what had come before — and with it, a vast black mass came crashing in.
It was — it was —
"Xiang-ah!"
Zhuge Chaosheng heard that monstrous howl and spun toward his younger sister on pure instinct. The sound was coming from her side. There was no mistake.
Kuwaaaaaah!
The thing that had ripped the air apart was the iron bows of Songrimwon's assassins — hurled with every ounce of blade-energy and true qi they could pour into them.
Kuwaaaaaah!
Dozens of iron bows, each half again the size of an ordinary bow, came spinning in at killing speed. One alone would have been no great threat. Thrown together in a single coordinated motion, they fused into a single body — a tidal wave of blade-energy.
Even if Zhuge Chaosheng stood at the threshold of the Intermediate Peak Realm, even though Zhuge Suxiang had entered the Initial Peak Realm — this was a killing stroke neither of them could possibly stop. And it was crashing down on Zhuge Suxiang.
"Hah!"
Charrrrk!
Sensing death at her throat, Zhuge Suxiang snapped her iron fan open with a sharp, jade-clear cry. Jin Myeong stood at the center of the roof; Zhuge Chaosheng was beyond him. There would be no help from her brother. On this flank of the shrine, the only one who could meet that oncoming strike was herself.
The rubies set at the tips of the twelve fan-ribs drank Heavenly Star True Qi and blazed crimson. Then they began to paint lines of red light across the air in front of her — a cross turning inward upon itself, line becoming plane. The signature killing art of the Zhuge Clan.
The Heavenly Shadow Hundred-Eight Fan Art — a cruciform veil of crimson blade-energy, spinning from without to within, sealing the space before its wielder.
"Xiang——!"
The wall of blade-energy woven by Cross Heavenly Shadow met the tide of iron bows.
The first wave.
KWA-AANG!
Crack! A single collision hairlined the blade-energy veil of the Heavenly Shadow Hundred-Eight Fan.
The second wave, hard upon it.
KWA-AAANG!
Splinter-crack! The second wave gouged ravines through the entire veil, crumpled the iron fan as if it were a sheet of paper, and the shock, taken full in the arms, flung Zhuge Suxiang's limbs back as though they had been ripped from their sockets.
"Hhuk!"
The fan gone, the veil gone. The waves were not. A third, a fourth, and more beyond them.
How can they have this kind of—
Zhuge Chaosheng had not expected it either, but Zhuge Suxiang had never dreamed Songrimwon possessed this kind of strength. Of course, she had never dreamed Jin Myeong would uncover the link between Songrimwon and Suchengye in the first place — so they had not withdrawn in time, and failing to withdraw had swept them into Songrimwon's death-embrace. Accident piled on ill omen, and the result was this.
Despair settled into Zhuge Suxiang's pupils as she understood that her world was ending for nothing.
"Brother…!"
Having surrendered everything, she turned her head, searching for Zhuge Chaosheng as he came running. His face was there, three zhang away.
"Xiang…!"
Zhuge Chaosheng wrung every last drop of true qi from his life and ran, and in his eyes he saw the black tide of iron bows crashing in behind his sister. A groan of grief soaked into his gaze. If he lost her and went home — with what face could he look upon their father?
But there was one strange thing.
Jin Myeong was gone. The man who had been standing between them.
!!!!!!
The instant both of them registered it —
Zzzzzzt! Urrrrng! Kwarrrng!
Thunder. The sound of a lightning bolt splitting the sky. Thunder and lightning, in the dead of a midwinter night? The siblings, the assassins on the surrounding rooftops and compound walls — every soul within earshot doubted their own hearing, wondering if it were a phantom of the ears.
Zzzzzzt! Urrrrng! Kwarrrng!
It came again. Louder. Louder still. A sound as fierce as real thunder and real lightning tearing the heavens — because it was real. The shock of it was more than the roof-tiles could bear. They shuddered, fractured, and burst apart.
Chalgrak! Ttak! Crack-crack-crack!
"…ni!"
"…ah!"
The siblings' desperate voices were just finding each other again when —
"Hup!"
— Jin Myeong appeared at Zhuge Suxiang's side in a flash of lightning and snatched her into his arms.
!!!!!!
Her brown eyes met his — eye-light pouring red from one pupil and blue from the other. For a heartbeat her heart lurched, confronted by a face too beautiful to belong to a man and by those clashing lights within it —
"You're quite the handful, aren't you."
Jin Myeong opened his mouth. And then the source of the thunder and the lightning — the killing form of Extreme Heaven Palm, the foremost palm art under heaven, Extreme Heaven Thunderclap —
And then —
Kwarrrng! Kwagwagwagwang!
A detonation vast enough to split heaven and earth echoed across the whole of Chuzhou.