Luo Jing waited until his three hundred cavalry had arrived, then donned his iron armor and took up his heavy spear, roaring off toward the young lord’s residence.
The young lord’s residence and Prince Yu’s manor stood on the same street. Young Lord Yang Zhuo had originally wanted to run straight to the manor and take shelter there, but the young lord’s residence lay between him and the manor — and he feared Luo Jing would run him down. Out in the open street, with nothing to hide behind, what chance would men on foot have against cavalry?
Yang Zhuo had barely made it back to the young lord’s residence when the shrieking of warhorses rose up outside. At the sound, Yang Zhuo gave an involuntary shudder.
He knew Luo Jing was a formidable warrior — he had simply not known just how formidable.
In the chaos of a battle with thousands of men and hundreds of horses crashing together, it was impossible to gauge exactly what any one man was capable of. And in Yang Zhuo’s understanding of the world, no matter how skilled a man was, could a single person really overpower hundreds? That defied all common sense.
Besides, just now, Luo Jing had been bare-handed and without armor, while his own several hundred attendants were every one of them men who styled themselves as jianghu masters.
Yang Zhuo’s confidence in killing Luo Jing was not unrelated to having been thoroughly misled by those very attendants. In daily life they boasted endlessly of their prowess, and to squeeze money from the young lord, there was no trick they would not resort to.
The stone locks arranged in the courtyard of the young lord’s residence, for instance — many of the larger ones were fakes. Not stone at all, but objects painted to look like stone; the one labeled a hundred and twenty catties weighed barely twenty.
Before the young lord, these men had hoisted those hundred-odd catty locks as if they weighed nothing, and Young Lord Yang Zhuo had sincerely believed them to be men of extraordinary strength.
Then there was the pair of iron hammers on the weapon rack — larger than watermelons by two sizes and supposedly weighing two hundred catties each — which had been fabricated by one Zheng Liucheng. He had swung them in front of the young lord like a whirlwind and left Yang Zhuo slack-jawed with admiration, convinced this was a man who could hold his own against even Luo Jing on the battlefield.
Zheng Liucheng himself had boasted that Luo Jing was nothing — with these two great hammers, he could flatten little Luo Jings one by one.
But the moment actual fighting started, the limits of all these men’s abilities were laid bare for all to see. On the open street, every man who stood in Luo Jing’s path crumpled before a single punch.
Now they had fled back to the young lord’s residence, gates sealed, braced with beams — and still no one dared breathe easy. Each man tried to hide behind someone else, and that someone else had no idea who to hide behind.
Young Lord Yang Zhuo crouched in the main hall behind a table, peering out from behind it as if the table had become the most impregnable fortress in the world.
“Hold the line for me — it won’t be long before my father arrives with a great army. When he does, we’ll charge out together and cut Luo Jing to pieces!”
Yang Zhuo shouted this through chattering teeth — ostensibly to bolster the courage of his attendants, but in truth to comfort himself.
Outside the young lord’s gates, Captain Luo Zhijie looked at Luo Jing, and after a moment’s silence said: “Young general — if we withdraw now, the matter can still be managed. If we don’t withdraw now, we’ll have to see it through to the end.”
His meaning could not have been plainer. If they did not kill the young lord, Prince Yu would not necessarily dare to move against Luo Jing outright — the prince did not have many troops at his disposal. The jianghu fighters he relied upon would still require an opportunity to strike at Luo Jing, and right now, with three hundred Tiger-and-Leopard cavalry already engaged, what was there to fear? If they were not going to stop, then they might as well finish what they had started — killing the son was one killing, killing the father was another, and at least that left no loose ends.
Luo Jing thought for a brief moment, then leveled his heavy spear at the gates of the young lord’s residence.
“Break them down.”
Luo Zhijie understood at once. He roared: “Follow me — break through!” He leapt from his horse and charged the gates with the soldiers at his back. They threw themselves against the doors, only to find them braced solid.
Finding the doors impossible to push open, Luo Zhijie stepped back and called out: “Where are the strongmen?”
Among Luo Jing’s personal soldiers there were a dozen or so men of extraordinary build and tremendous physical strength, who carried not sabers but great axes.
These dozen came forward and began hewing at the doors with their axes. The gates of the young lord’s residence were thick and solid, but they could not withstand the relentless chopping of such powerful men. Wood chips flew in sprays; before long the doors were split with lines of cracks. Once a breach appeared, breaking through became far easier. Those heavy axes fell with crushing force; the gates swayed and shook, cracks widened into gaps, gaps widened into openings.
“Loose!”
On Luo Zhijie’s command, the soldiers brought out their repeating crossbows and fired through the breaches into the courtyard. The attendants who had been bracing the door-beams from the inside were swept away in moments.
One strongman swung his battle-axe sideways and smashed the breach wide open, then doubled over and plunged through it into the courtyard. The attendants instinctively surged forward to plug the gap; arrows and bolts flew at the strongman from every direction. The powerful soldier took dozens of shafts, and before he fell he swept away the final door-beam with one last stroke of his axe.
That massive body pitched forward to the ground, white-feathered arrows covering it from head to foot.
The gates broken open, Luo Zhijie led his soldiers pouring into the young lord’s residence. They had come in too much haste to bring infantry shields. Inside, the attendants and guards still numbered in the hundreds; arrows rained down densely from the direction of the main hall, and a good number of those battle-hardened soldiers were shot and brought down.
Another strongman rushed forward and wrenched half a gate panel free from its hinges with sheer force, then charged ahead several paces, wheeled around, and sent the panel spinning horizontally through the air. It crashed through the crowd with a thunderous impact and flattened no small number of men.
That strongman too was cut down by a volley of arrows. His powerful body swayed a few times and pitched forward, and beneath it, blood slowly spread.
The men up front broke the gates; the soldiers coming behind dismounted, took up their bows, and held the entrance while returning fire toward the main hall’s defenders. The shooting of the Tiger-and-Leopard cavalrymen was far more accurate, and their tactics far superior — those attendants were no match for them.
After a spell of this, some of the more faint-hearted attendants began to scatter toward the inner courtyard, and the defense at the front gates grew thin.
By now Luo Jing’s entire cavalry force had entered the courtyard of the young lord’s residence, forming a fan-shaped array that continued to suppress the attendants. Among the defenders, he could see that a handful of men genuinely possessed skill — their archery in particular was quite precise.
He drove his heavy spear into the ground; a sharp crack rang out as the shaft punched through the flagstones and drove itself into the earth beneath.
“Spear.”
A nearby soldier handed him a long spear. Luo Jing gripped it in his right hand, took a brief aim, and hurled it.
In the lamplight, the spear was a bolt of lightning cutting sideways through the air — arriving in an instant, driving clean through the chest of one of the more skilled archers among the attendants.
The spear punched through his heart and knocked him backward; the head buried itself in the ground, and the corpse slid slowly down the shaft, settling onto the earth while the spear remained upright, the shaft drenched red where the body had passed.
“Another.”
Luo Jing extended his hand again.
A second spear was passed to him. Moments later it flew toward the main hall — faster by far than any arrow. Countless arrows and bolts were like a tangle of snakes, but that single spear was the great python that cut through the swarm in the opposite direction.
This throw struck a defender between the eyes. The spear plunged into the man’s skull; the force behind it kept it moving, dragging the corpse along the ground for a short distance before the point buried itself in a pillar behind him.
After these two kills, every one of the young lord’s attendants lost the last of their nerve. Not a man dared stand in the light; they scrambled into shadows and corners.
Luo Jing was passed a third spear. He spotted someone hiding beneath a table in the main hall — impossible to make out the face, but reason told him it was Young Lord Yang Zhuo. He sent the third spear toward that position.
The spear came with the wind of a rupturing sky behind it, so fast that one attendant caught a glimpse of it — and had no time to dodge. The spear skimmed past below the man’s ribs; he did not even register pain until moments later, by which point the weapon was already past him, and it was only then that his robe split open and a faint trace of blood appeared.
The spear struck a table leg with a sharp crack, snapping it, and the point drove on into Yang Zhuo’s shoulder. Fortunately the table leg had absorbed most of the force; otherwise the throw would have run him through entirely.
Even so, Yang Zhuo shrieked in agony. As the pain arrived, he scrambled backward on all fours, dragging the spear with him, blood pouring freely from the wound.
That cry of pain from the young lord drained away the very last shred of courage from his attendants. Those who remained dropped their weapons and ran; those who could not bring themselves to run simply knelt on the spot and begged for mercy.
The young lord caught sight of Zheng Liucheng among the men still before him and called out hoarsely: “Zheng Liucheng, go and stop that savage — kill him, and I’ll give you ten thousand taels of gold!”
Zheng Liucheng instinctively glanced at that pair of iron hammers in the corner, clenched his jaw — and then turned and fled. His own private thought: *you may not know what I’m really made of, but I certainly do.*
But his flight drew Luo Jing’s attention. Luo Jing was handed another spear; moments later it was sent out like a streak of dark shadow.
A dull thud — the spear entered Zheng Liucheng through the back. He stiffened, and mid-stride his feet simply stopped. He had seen something exit from his own body and couldn’t quite account for it, so his legs came to a halt.
The force behind the throw was such that the spear punched clear through Zheng Liucheng and traveled some distance further, striking — of all the things it could have hit — Zheng Liucheng’s iron hammer, and shattering it.
Young Lord Yang Zhuo gritted his teeth and pulled the spear from his shoulder, blood jetting out in surges. He could worry about that later — with difficulty he hauled himself upright and tried to flee.
Luo Jing took a repeating crossbow from a soldier and trained it on the young lord. A bolt punched through Yang Zhuo’s knee, and Yang Zhuo crashed to his knees on the ground.
Luo Jing tossed the crossbow back to his soldier and walked forward in long strides. No one dared impede him. Attendants who had managed to flee had fled; those who could not simply huddled where they were and trembled.
Luo Jing walked through the crowd into the main hall, bent down, and hoisted Yang Zhuo off the ground. He carried him out single-handed.
Outside the main hall doorway, he raised Yang Zhuo in one arm, high overhead.
“Victory!”
“Victory!”
“Victory!”
Several hundred Tiger-and-Leopard personal soldiers raised their fists and shouted in unison.
Luo Jing tilted his head back to look at Yang Zhuo. The young lord’s blood ran down his arm, staining his armor red.
Luo Jing said with utter contempt: “Worthless wretch — what gave you the nerve to try to kill me?”
Yang Zhuo was by now too terrified to function and had lost far too much blood besides. He was barely conscious, and couldn’t form a single word.
At that very moment, the gate outside the young lord’s residence erupted into uproar — a mass of men came charging through from behind the Tiger-and-Leopard cavalry. Prince Yu had arrived with his rescue force.
A crowd pressed through the gates. Prince Yu strode in urgently, and in an instant his eyes fell on Luo Jing holding his son aloft with one arm.
In that moment Prince Yu’s eyes flew open wide, and in the next instant the whites of them were shot through with red.
“Luo Jing!”
Prince Yu shouted, his voice raw.
Luo Jing glanced sideways toward the gate. His eyes held nothing but contempt.
“Put my son down!” Prince Yu roared.
“Why?” Luo Jing replied.
“You dare lay hands on my son?!” Prince Yu bellowed. “If anything happens to him, I will cut you to pieces!”
Luo Jing let out a great laugh and looked at Prince Yu. “Your son Yang Zhuo tried to kill me, so I am killing him. You are his father, and you would kill me for it — and if my father heard about that, would he not march every soldier in Youzhou here to kill you?”
He paused, then spoke with a sweeping, imperious gaze: “But unlike Yang Zhuo, I have no need to involve my father. Under this sky, there is no one I wish to kill whom I cannot kill.”
The moment he finished speaking, he threw Yang Zhuo down, then brought his foot down on Yang Zhuo’s skull.
The force of that single stomp was enough to cave it in. As it split apart, a thick pale matter sprayed out across the ground.
Luo Jing looked at Prince Yu.
“I killed him. What can you do to me?”
—