When the gleaming blade tip punched up through a plank of the bridge, Xiao Nanhui’s thoughts drifted for a brief, unmoored moment.

That blade — it suited tonight’s moon perfectly.

A waning crescent.

Curved. Sharp.

With a tremendous crack, the pierced plank shattered into fragments, and two dark figures burst upward through the gap in the bridge. Why that particular plank? Because its position fell precisely between Ding Weixiang and Zhongli Jing — splitting the two apart in an instant.

The choice of breach point was truly cunning. Xiao Nanhui thought this, watching through the rain of falling wood splinters as Ding Weixiang’s face shifted slowly into growing alarm and shock — and somehow, she almost wanted to laugh.

Zhongli Jing’s body tilted off balance to one side, and the attacker’s blade followed after him like a silver fish leaping clear of the water.

Xiao Nanhui breathed a quiet, resigned sigh.

Well then — after everything they had been through together on this journey, they had come to count on each other. She could not truly stand by and watch someone die.

A powerful force struck Zhongli Jing from the side at his waist. Fine, scattered droplets of mist mingled with the stars above him and tumbled through his sight, and the ink-black night sky spun and wheeled before finally coming to rest. The man’s pitch-black pupils gave a faint tremor, then at last brought their unfocused gaze to rest on the strands of hair drifting before his eyes.

A woman’s arm — like a cord of supple steel wrapped in softness — locked firmly around his waist. A voice, steady and carrying a hint of exhilaration, sounded beside his ear.

“Hold on tight.”

The attacker had been a fraction away from success when his quarry vanished before his eyes. The next instant, a black shape came crashing down toward him from above. He thrust his blade up to meet it and slashed down hard — only for a cascade of ginseng roots and lingzhi mushrooms to come tumbling down over his head and face.

“What a waste!” Xiao Nanhui cried out in pained protest, though her hands never stopped moving — one arm keeping hold of Zhongli Jing, she launched a flying kick that caught the attacker squarely before he could dodge, sending him sprawling.

On the other side, the attacker locked in combat with Ding Weixiang heard the commotion and glanced back, just in time for his falling comrade to come crashing into him. Distracted for a split second, he took a blade across his arm.

The sudden eruption of fighting had the entire suspension bridge lurching and teetering on the edge of collapse. Of the four chains that had been anchoring both ends, two had already snapped. The remaining two were barely holding.

If this dragged on any longer, they would all die here.

Xiao Nanhui hauled Zhongli Jing up and broke into a run toward the far bank. While the attacker was still scrambling to his feet, she planted a foot squarely on him and trampled straight over.

Ding Weixiang saw her and immediately launched himself after them. The two attackers were right behind, hurling curved blades one after another.

A fierce rush of wind bore down on the back of Xiao Nanhui’s head. With both hands occupied, she bellowed at Ding Weixiang: “Block it!”

Ding Weixiang’s entire attention was on Zhongli Jing in that woman’s arms. Without drawing his blade, he threw his hand back to deflect the attack — but the curved blade skewed wide and sliced off half of Xiao Nanhui’s hair with a sibilant hiss.

Xiao Nanhui was incandescent with fury, but this was a life-or-death sprint, and she simply had no time to settle the matter with him.

With a sharp crack, another chain snapped. The entire bridge lurched and tilted catastrophically to one side. Xiao Nanhui looked back and watched as the wooden planks of the bridge tore away like dead leaves in a gale, section by section, plunging into the raging river in the gorge below. The collapsing bridge came rushing toward her. She flung Zhongli Jing toward Ding Weixiang.

“Your person — catch him!”

Ding Weixiang scrambled to catch the man, found his footing, and leapt toward the end of the bridge.

At the bridgehead, Bolao stared at the collapsing bridge, the world spinning around her, and could only shriek at the top of her lungs: “Hurry! The bridge is going down!”

Xiao Nanhui, still fleeing for her life and ducking the blades whipping past her head, screamed back in fury: “You think I don’t know?! A rope! Throw a rope!”

Bolao wheeled around and dug through the luggage to find a length of rope used for lashing cargo, channeled all her strength into it, and threw.

Ding Weixiang, closest to the bank, cut in and snatched the rope first, using Bolao’s pull to carry Zhongli Jing safely to the far side.

Bolao reeled in the rope and threw it out again toward Xiao Nanhui — but midway through the air, the rope was sliced clean in two by one of the attacker’s curved blades. This happened again and again, and with each attempt the rope grew shorter. Xiao Nanhui wheeled around and swore: “Damn you!”

The attackers answered with two blades apiece. Now all three of them were balanced on only a single remaining chain. Whether it was the attackers’ strikes or Xiao Nanhui’s own evasive moves, they all performed like acrobats in a troupe — and that last chain could not hold much longer either.

The attackers seemed resolved to drag at least one person down with them, and simply would not relent. Xiao Nanhui seized an opening, spun around, and yelled at Bolao: “Cut the chain!”

Bolao hesitated and did not move at once. Xiao Nanhui urged again: “Cut it — now!”

Before the words had fully left her mouth, Ding Weixiang had already drawn his blade in a flash. The air rang with a sharp, metallic shriek — and the last iron chain of the suspension bridge snapped clean in two. All three figures on it plunged at once into the mist below.

Bolao’s eyes went wild. She whirled on Ding Weixiang: “I told you to cut it and you actually cut it?!”

Ding Weixiang pressed his lips shut and said nothing, grabbed Bolao before she could throw herself off the cliff, and gestured for her to look toward where the bridge had fallen.

All three of them at the bridgehead held their breath and looked down — and then, cutting through the mist, a silver streak of light shot out.

Three crisp, rapid sounds: crack, crack, crack.

In an instant the silver light expanded to several times its original length, driving into the cliff face like a bolt of lightning.

Rocks and pebbles tumbled free. The mist, fine as gauze, parted on either side — and there, revealed by the moonlight, was a gleaming silver spear.

An instant later, a pair of hands followed it — and Xiao Nanhui seized the spear’s shaft with both hands. Her plummeting body stopped dead in midair.

Under the pull of gravity, the steel spear shaft bent into an impossible arc, throwing back the moonlight in a blaze of white — like the crescent moon, rising.

In the next breath, using the force of the shaft’s rebound, Xiao Nanhui vaulted upward from the cliff face, pulled the spear free from the rock with a backward sweep, and drove it into a higher point in the same motion. One recovery and one plunge later, her hands could reach the top of the cliff. Bolao and Ding Weixiang each grabbed an arm and hauled her up from below.

Xiao Nanhui lay on the ground heaving like a dead fish for a moment, then slowly pushed herself to her feet using the spear as a support.

“In all the days we traveled together, I never once saw Brother Yao’s weapon. Now that I have — it truly is extraordinary.”

Xiao Nanhui looked at the one who had engineered all this and put on that expression of theatrical admiration, and her anger surged. “And isn’t that entirely thanks to Brother Zhongli? If not for Brother Zhongli’s talent for drawing in all these black-clad friends, I wouldn’t have needed to resort to such a desperate move just to survive.”

Ding Weixiang, hearing this, immediately showed his usual true colors of fawning devotion. “If Brother Yao is so capable, then why, back in the swamp, did you need our lord to rescue you?”

Bolao reacted as though she had just heard the funniest thing in the world, making no effort whatsoever to conceal her disdain. “Your lord rescued her? He just wanted that wretched stone!”

This time, Ding Weixiang was genuinely enraged. The customarily pallid face actually flushed with a touch of color. “What nonsense are you spouting?! My lord had already known long before—”

“Wei Xiang.”

The rest of Ding Weixiang’s sentence cut off abruptly. The man who had spoken his name bore no visible anger on his face — but Ding Weixiang needed only one glance at those eyes to understand the warning contained within them.

Xiao Nanhui stared at the scene that had gone suddenly cold, bewildered. She closed the fingers of one hand in a slight motion — and the imposing silver spear, standing a full head taller than herself, immediately contracted back to less than three feet in length. When she slid it onto her back, it was no longer than a short sword. Whatever ingenious mechanism lay inside it was truly astonishing.

“There are less than two hours before dawn. If we stay here much longer, things could go wrong — but now we have no carriage to carry the luggage.”

“There is a carriage, actually.” Zhongli Jing drifted past Xiao Nanhui and walked straight to a concealed thicket of trees.

Xiao Nanhui was puzzled at first, then looked more carefully — and saw that behind those trees, there was a carriage, prepared in advance and waiting.

Ding Weixiang was already leading the horses over to hitch them up and repack the luggage. As he passed Xiao Nanhui, he gave a quiet snort: “Difficult roads call for preparation. If we hadn’t accounted for this from the beginning, we would never have chosen this route.”

Xiao Nanhui had a breath of anger that could go neither up nor down. Feeling entirely outmaneuvered by this pair, she simply gave up, flicked her sleeve, and got in the carriage first.

By the time Zhongli Jing entered the carriage, Xiao Nanhui was already wiping down the spear’s tip — having lodged it in the cliff face earlier, there was now a fair amount of mud on it. She was extremely fond of this spear that had accompanied her through life and death, and tonight it had saved her life once more.

Zhongli Jing lowered his gaze and sat down across from Xiao Nanhui, smoothing his robe as he settled.

“Brother Yao saved my life just now, and I was very moved.”

Xiao Nanhui’s hand paused in its movement.

His tone sounded entirely sincere — yet for some reason, every time Xiao Nanhui saw those pitch-black eyes, she felt an instinctive, slight unease. She had been about to reply with a casual “think nothing of it,” but the words reached her lips and went back down again.

Zhongli Jing seemed untroubled. His gaze slid to the silver spear.

“This spear is called Ping Xian, if I am correct?”

At those words, Xiao Nanhui looked up at him sharply.

There were many famous weapons in the world, but a spear that could extend and retract was singular. Everyone who had ever witnessed Ping Xian could not forget that quality — but the few who actually knew its name were something else entirely. Xiao Zhun had also once told her not to reveal this spear’s name to anyone. That was the only request made by the person who had forged it.

She had never expected that this man, who had no apparent connection whatsoever to the martial world, could speak that name aloud.

“How would I know what you’re thinking about that?” His voice was even, as though he were simply stating an unremarkable truth. “Some things are not known only to the Qinghuai Marquis. Besides — this spear was something he obtained from someone else in the first place.”

Zhongli Jing’s hand suddenly reached toward her. Xiao Nanhui was startled, then realized — he had only placed his hand on Ping Xian.

Where he rested his hand, the surface was somewhat uneven — carved with decorative patterns meant to conceal the positions of the mechanisms beneath. Those fair, slender fingertips that had clearly never touched anything rough passed lightly over the shaft of Ping Xian, as though beneath them lay not a length of cold, hard steel, but the warm, smooth skin of a beautiful woman.

“Xiao Nanhui — do you know the story behind this spear?”

Xiao Nanhui shivered almost reflexively.

Whenever this man spoke her name, she felt a twinge of unease. What exactly was she flinching from? He probably couldn’t even defeat a single one of her fingers.

At that thought, Xiao Nanhui’s expression hardened again.

“People like to compare husband and wife to the strings of a qin and a se — marital devotion, likened to the strings of an instrument. This spear is made for a woman. The name Ping Xian carries a metaphor — it proclaims to the world that women, too, may take up arms and go to battle, equal to men in every way.”

For a brief instant, a strange expression crossed Zhongli Jing’s face. His elegant mouth curved into a slight arc. Then the hand withdrew, and his face returned to its habitual composure.

“It seems you know only half the story. Whoever gave you this spear did not tell you very much.”

With that, he closed his eyes.

Outside, Bolao and Ding Weixiang were still arguing over which road to take. Xiao Nanhui found herself unable to take any of it in.

Even now, she still believed that when Xiao Zhun gave Ping Xian to her, it was out of hope that she would train in the martial arts and stand second to no man. Nothing more. No other interpretation.

She lowered her gaze to the silver spear that had accompanied her through every ordeal, and gripped it tight in her hands — as though only by holding it this firmly could the inexplicable unease in her heart be stilled.