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A hundred and more Demonic Cult warriors came running down on them, and the sight of it made the flesh creep.
The elite of the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps looked at the scholar standing at their head to command them, and snorted a laugh. By rights the phoenix’s head was a hard post, the place where the Corps Chief took the first collision on himself, and only a man of real ability could hold it.
But the corps knew this scholar was no ordinary scholar. They had watched him toy with Wang Sim, a first-rate master, on the sparring platform, which put him at first-rate standing himself at the very least. And when not even the Elders inside their own sect could lay a hand on Mak Ji-mong, this scholar handled the man as though he were a disciple, so his depth of calculation must be well out of the common run as well.
A scholar the Supreme invited in himself. There is a rumor he has some connection with the Supreme.
Evidence to bear the rumor out was coming to light one piece after another, and one of them was Mak Jin-yul. She stood at the very peak of hellion-kind, a hellion even Mak Ji-mong the utter hellion kept clear of, the Supreme’s own golden branch and jade leaf, whom nobody could so much as reprove whatever she got up to. A scholar who struck her and reproved her could be no ordinary man.
So the scholar’s long robe, fluttering in the night wind, came to feel to them rather like a stout shield spread overhead.
“Have no fear! We shall sweep these Demonic Cult fellows away!”
Strangely, not one of them doubted it.
“Wings Off!”
At Cheon Tae-san’s word the ten of the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps spread apart at once and raised their hidden-weapon tubes.
“Hold! The wind has not turned!”
The night wind was blowing their way, so the tubes could not be fired. The Scorpion-Tail Rainburst Tube threw fine needles as thin as the hair of an ox, and wind told upon a hidden weapon of that kind.
The wind would not turn and become theirs, so Cheon Tae-san went over the flow of the water qi. There was a cool edge to the night wind, which suggested a night mist coming up little by little.
If I fuse internal qi and spirit energy, might I not be able to change this flow of water qi?
When the Demonic Cult’s martial artists came within five hundred feet, Cheon Tae-san made up his mind and drew from his waist the fan he always carried.
The bear-like bulk of Gong Chun, the Demonic Cult’s Iron-Bear Ring Saber, went over the ground light and quick.
“It seems the fellows know of our attack.”
The words came from the Demonic Cult martial artist beside him, the one who had been assaulting the Hohyeon Estate all this while, and Gong Chun took them up as a thing of no consequence.
“And what of it? Look at the fellows waiting for us — thirty men at the outside. What is there to fear! We are a hundred of the Sacred Heaven Iron-Blood Corps!”
The Iron-Bear Ring Saber made to draw the great saber slung at his back, and then took his hand away. The man standing at their head was a scholar at a glance, and even by moonlight the slender build could not be told for a woman’s or a man’s.
“My prized saber would be wasted on a fellow like that. However short they are of men to fight, do they put a student out in front?”
The Iron-Bear Ring Saber was dumbfounded. So when the distance to the scholar had come down to close on two hundred feet, he gathered up in his arms a rock the size of a carriage wheel that lay by the roadside.
“Unngh!”
Even running with the rock in his arms, his speed did not fall off.
“He is our Cult’s foremost strongman and no mistake.”
The Twelfth Pavilion Master’s own warriors let out cries of wonder.
“When it comes to reckoning strength in our Cult, they name the Iron-Bear Ring Saber and the Blood Lion — but reckon pure strength alone and it is the Iron-Bear Ring Saber by far.”
Another warrior chimed in. In the Demonic Cult there were two famed for strength, and the Iron-Bear Ring Saber and the Blood Lion were forever the ones named.
“Heave-ho!”
When the Iron-Bear Ring Saber had closed with the scholar, he raised the rock in both hands and flung it.
— Whoom!
Trained as he was in a special external art, the Iron-Bear Ring Saber sent a rock the size of a carriage wheel out of his hands with ease.
“When they see that scholar fellow crushed dead under it, the enemy will be scattered out of their wits!”
The Iron-Bear Ring Saber broke into a broad smile and only then drew his great saber.
Watching that bear of a fellow throw a rock from far off, a warrior of the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps shouted.
“Master Scholar! A rock is coming! Get clear!”
The rock came flying in a curve, dead on for the scholar, who only gazed at it blankly while a warrior standing behind him shouted. There was distance enough for him to get clear, had he meant to.
“If we dodge a thing like this, how shall we call ourselves the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps!”
Cheon Tae-san said his piece, full of bluster, and raised one hand toward the sky. In the moment the rock came falling on his head the corps thought to strike it away with sword qi. However great a master a man might be, there was no call to take a rock that defenselessly, for even a master strong in internal force takes hurt when a rock of that weight strikes him.
“…!”
And yet the rock that was to have struck the scholar’s head stopped in mid-air. The corps started and flinched. The rock heaved, and then rose little by little.
“It cannot be!”
A cry of amazement burst from one warrior’s mouth. The scholar was bearing the rock up on one hand and lifting it.
“Madness!”
The sound burst from all ten of the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps at once.
“He is lifting that? With one hand?”
Cheon Tae-san set the three spirit energies turning and brought his strength to its height. Rocks of this order he had lifted several times over already at the Namgung Clan; once the spirit energy fused with his internal force, one hand carried them comfortably.
He held the rock up and muttered.
“Yes, a rock — that is a good idea. Watch closely. A rock wants throwing like this if it is to be worth anything.”
He threw it one-handed, as though stamping it down, and as the huge thing flew off in a straight line, a corps member whistled in astonishment.
“Whoa! The rock has turned into a pebble.”
It came to Cheon Tae-san that throwing rocks was a fairly good stratagem, and he set about taking up the rocks that lay by the roadside and hurling them off.
— Whung!
A rock larger than the last flew straight at the Demonic Cult fellows, and three or four more went the same way. The corps looked at him as at some monster. He was pulling up rocks the size of cartwheels the way a man pulls up a radish and flinging them off, so there was no wondering at it.
The Iron-Bear Ring Saber screwed up his face. The scholar had caught the rock he threw as lightly as that and sent it back in a straight line, and the speed of the thing coming at him was no joke. He bit his lip and shouted.
“Get clear!”
At the word the men behind him scattered. But no sooner were the words out than they heard the sound of flesh being torn.
— Thock-thock-thock-thock!
The men who had scattered were struck by a rock out of nowhere and crushed to pulp.
“Kuaaargh!”
When a man whose lower body was gone screamed, a martial artist standing near took his comrade’s neck off.
— Thock-thock-thock!
Another rock came flying in and swept on through them. Nobody had thought a rock would come at them in a straight line, so it took them just as they stood.
A rock even I have to raise in both hands and throw high — and he throws it flat? So the scholar fellow has trained in an external art.
The Iron-Bear Ring Saber, reckoning he had been taken in by the scholar’s look, shouted.
“You son of a dog! You wait right there!”
A warrior standing behind Cheon Tae-san spoke.
“Master Scholar, the wind will not change its quarter.”
“I shall see about changing the wind’s direction.”
The words were pure nonsense, and yet the warrior strangely trusted them. Perhaps it was having watched him fling rocks about so easily; it seemed he really might.
Cheon Tae-san spread his fan and set the three spirit energies turning. On top of that he drew in the energy that internal qi and spirit energy had fused into, felt for the flow of the water qi, and unfolded the Kunlun Sect’s Cool Breeze Fan. Spirit energy carries the energy of vibration by its nature, so he applied it the same way the Void Shattering Palm did, breathing that same principle into the Cool Breeze Fan.
He sprang about this way and that as though dancing, plying the fan, and at first glance it looked rather comical.
Hohyeon Byeok, at the rear, muttered.
“As if fanning would change the wind’s quarter. Tae-san is up to something absurd.”
He took it that Tae-san was carrying on so out of vexation that the hidden-weapon tubes, got ready at such pains, had gone to waste. The moment he let out a sigh, a voice reached him.
“The wind has turned about!”
At the sound Hohyeon Byeok was left bewildered.
“The wind’s quarter changed by fanning?”
He wet his forefinger and held it up in the air, and sure enough the wind was running the other way.
“This can be done? Who does he think he is, Zhuge Liang?1”
The wind’s quarter needed only to change for a single moment, long enough to fire the Scorpion-Tail Rainburst Tubes and no longer.
“Fire!”
— Ba-ba-ba-ba-boom!
From here and there came a sound like firecrackers, and with it a sound like falling rain.
The Iron-Bear Ring Saber heard it and shouted.
“Hidden weapons! Get down!”
But it was already too late.
“Aaaargh!”
“Guuuagh!”
“Kyaaaargh!”
Demonic Cult warriors spat out weird sounds that were not even screams, twisted about, and went down. Unable to master the momentum of their running, they drove into the ground head first.
Cheon Tae-san drew a sheet of paper out of his breast. Seeing the scholar bring out white paper this time, they all thought it a queer business. He was no sorcerer, so was he going to write out a talisman? That was the thought running through them.
It was Hohyeon Byeok who said it out loud.
“What is this! Surely to goodness it is not a talisman?”
Watching Cheon Tae-san tear the paper and fling it wildly forward, Hohyeon Byeok wondered inwardly whether his friend had gone mad. What help to a battle could tearing paper and throwing it be?
“Agh!”
“Urk!”
And yet the white paper lodged in the foreheads of the Demonic Cult fellows.
“What? The Plucked-Leaf Flying Blade?”
Hohyeon Byeok saw it and could not believe it.
“Is not the Plucked-Leaf Flying Blade only possible for a transcendent-peak master? Can a first-rate do it too?”
Wondering whether he had it wrong himself, he asked the house’s first-rate master standing beside him.
“I have come close to transcendent-first-rate myself, and I should not dare so much as to think of it.”
And then the warrior added a word.
“This fight — we have a chance of winning it. With a master like that on our side.”
They had come out to this battle with annihilation reckoned on. And yet with a master at their head whose martial standing could not be measured, victory took shape in their minds.
When a hundred and more of their fellows, running high and confident, fell dead in rows in the front rank, the charging Demonic Cult warriors faltered for an instant.
“Do not stop — run! Simply sweep them away!”
That scholar fellow threw something, and were his men not dropping one after another?
“Paper?”
Looking at the man beside him dead with a white scrap of paper lodged in his forehead, the Iron-Bear Ring Saber grasped how serious it was. The Iron-Bear Ring Saber poured killing intent at that scholar fellow tearing and throwing paper, and the scholar looked back at him and grinned.
For the first time in a long while, Gong Chun felt every muscle in his body draw taut.
Gong Chun had not thought he would be bringing out the weapon he kept in reserve so soon.
“Poison warriors, forward.”
Warriors who had kept to the rear until now sprang out to the front, every one of them wearing black leather gloves. The Demonic Cult had raised them against the day it fought powers that used poison, such as the Dang Sect of Sichuan, and they went by the name of poison warriors. They came forward and scattered poison.
At once some of the warriors of the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps, the Ilji Sect and the Hohyeon Estate breathed the poison in and screamed.
“Uwaaaagh!”
“Poison!”
Ten and more fell dead in an instant, and the men who had been pressing the attack gave ground.
Cheon Tae-san knew for a fact that the Demonic Cult made good use of poison, and knew too that poison warriors who handled it were posted to every armed body. Xinjiang was thick with insects and animals carrying deadly poison, so they knew how to use it.
Which is why I made the poison men ready.
When the poison martial artists appeared, Cheon Tae-san gave an order.
“Throw the coffins!”
At the word the warriors threw the coffins they carried in the poison warriors’ direction. Two coffins flew through the air, struck the ground and burst to pieces.
— Ka-krrrunch!
“What is this!”
The coffins broke apart, and the poison men inside them writhed and got to their feet.
“A jiangshi?2”
One of the poison warriors shouted in astonishment as a man writhed and rose to his feet in ground thick with poison qi. The poison man stretched out a hand and threw out palm force, and the poison warrior died on the spot.
Taking it that he had died of the palm force, another poison warrior shouted.
“It is no jiangshi! Spread the poison! So long as it is human, it dies if it breathes poison in!”
Close on twenty poison warriors spread poison all together, and one muttered in triumph.
“With poison as thick as this, not even the Daluo Immortal could live if he came.3”
But the poison men walked out of that poison-thick place bold as brass, and only then did they grasp what these things were.
“Don’t tell me! P-poison men!”
For nothing but a poison man takes no hurt at all from poison of that order.
“Why in the world are there poison men here?”
As the poison warriors shrank back, Gong Chun shouted.
“Why should anything so precious as a poison man be here! Do not be taken in — fight. Do not fall back; kill those fellows!”
But that was the losing move. Poison warriors could not stand against poison men, and pulling them back would sooner have preserved his strength. The poison warriors who labored to kill the poison men were poisoned by the poison men’s own poison and wiped out in an instant.
Zhuge Liang, the Three Kingdoms strategist, is said in Romance of the Three Kingdoms to have called up the southeast wind that carried the fire attack onto Cao Cao's fleet at Red Cliffs. ↩️
A jiangshi is a corpse reanimated and driven by a Daoist priest, stiff-limbed enough that it moves by hopping. ↩️
In the Daoist ranking of immortals the Daluo stands at the summit, past even the Golden Immortal, beyond the reach of life and death. ↩️
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