Prince Yu’s mind held only one thought now: no matter what the cost, no matter what the consequences, Luo Jing would be reduced to pieces.
“Yu Juling!”
Prince Yu shouted.
Nearby, a giant of a man named Yu Juling was holding a Tiger-and-Leopard cavalryman in each hand; he looked toward Prince Yu at the call, gave an acknowledgment, and brought the two soldiers’ heads together with a crack. Both were dead before they hit the ground.
“Go kill him!”
Prince Yu pointed at Luo Jing.
Yu Juling walked toward Luo Jing in long, heavy strides. He wore full heavy armor, like an iron shell fitted over his entire body; each step he took seemed to make the earth tremble beneath him.
Seeing the giant advance, a number of Tiger-and-Leopard cavalrymen raised their repeating crossbows and loosed bolt after bolt at Yu Juling. The quarrels struck his heavy armor with a rapid rattling sound — and not a single one punched through.
The feeling of utter helplessness this produced was complete. Bolts striking Yu Juling were like raindrops striking stone.
Yu Juling had no fondness for weapons; his hands were his weapons. A single open-palm slap could shatter a stone stele. To further amplify his combat effectiveness, Prince Yu had even commissioned a pair of iron claws for him — fitted over his hands, when he swept them through the air he looked even more like a great bear.
Finding arrows useless, the Tiger-and-Leopard cavalrymen switched to spears and drove them into Yu Juling — but spears were useless as well. One spear thrust into the man’s chest produced nothing but a shower of sparks and a scratch mark on that solid iron breastplate.
Yu Juling swatted downward with one palm and caved in a cavalryman’s skull, nearly driving the man’s head into his own chest.
Six or seven men charged in together, all driving their spears into Yu Juling at once, then braced and shoved with everything they had to push him back. But the combined force of six or seven seasoned soldiers was not enough to stop Yu Juling from continuing to walk forward.
He advanced against six or seven men at once, the soldiers shouting with the effort, their feet sliding backward across the stones, their spear shafts bending more and more. Then, one after another, they snapped.
Captain Luo Zhijie saw the giant coming and immediately called out: “Strongmen — forward!”
The Tiger-and-Leopard cavalry’s dozen or so strongmen were each of extraordinary size, tall and immensely powerful, carrying long-handled battle axes — great heavy weapons with massive heads. These were the men who had just demolished the gates of the young lord’s residence. Each of them stood at least half a head taller than the ordinary cavalry soldiers, and those soldiers looked almost like children by comparison.
But before Yu Juling, even those strongmen looked like children.
Two strongmen charged in from the front, heaving their long-handled axes up together and bringing them down simultaneously toward Yu Juling’s two shoulders. The massive axes carved the air as they fell — between the two of them, it seemed they could cleave open a great river, split a mountain peak.
Yet they could not split the man before them.
Yu Juling extended both hands, one to each side, and caught both axe handles — as casually as if catching two dandelions drifting in the breeze.
Both weapons stopped dead. It gave the impression, for that instant, that they had been frozen in place by some spell.
Both strongmen were stunned. They knew perfectly well how much force had been behind that combined blow — and now someone had simply caught it with bare hands.
Yu Juling gave a casual pull backward. Both axes tore free; the force was so sudden and so great that both strongmen’s palms were scraped raw against the handles as they were ripped away, the skin of their inner hands stripped and bleeding.
Yu Juling gave a push forward with both hands, and the two axe handles smashed into the two strongmen’s bodies.
These strongmen disliked wearing armor — their muscles were so developed that armor impeded their movement, so they wore only their military tunics.
Axe handles became spear points; before absolute force, everything seems capable of becoming something sharp and piercing.
Two dull thuds — the handles drove through the chests of both strongmen.
Yu Juling lowered his gaze, apparently finding the two battle axes mildly interesting, and took a step forward, reversed both axes in his hands, and continued hacking his way forward.
A third strongman charged into close range from behind, brought his battle axe crashing down in a mighty blow against Yu Juling’s shoulder — a strike of enormous force and violence — yet it could not cut through the shoulder armor. One could only imagine how thick that iron shoulder plate must have been.
Yu Juling was visibly angered. He flung the two captured axes spinning outward, killing several men, then spun around and seized the third strongman by the head.
That great hand gripped the man’s skull and hoisted him off the ground as if palming a ball.
He held the strongman aloft by the head in his left hand, pressed his right palm against the man’s chest — and shoved.
A dull thud.
The head remained in his hand. The body was blasted away.
He had snapped the man’s neck clean through with pure force. No technique, no skill — just the raw, unbridgeable gap between one human body and another.
—
On the fourth floor of Shengde Tavern.
Li Chi was watching through the brass telescope at exactly that moment, and could not suppress a sharp cry of shock. Such an action genuinely defied imagination and defied all ordinary limits.
“You saw that too?”
Tang Pidi asked from beside him.
Li Chi nodded. “That man — is there any solution to him?”
Tang Pidi said: “For Luo Jing’s men, probably no solution exists. But if Luo Jing himself stepped in, it shouldn’t be especially difficult — though the folk saying goes that overwhelming force defeats all technique, the word ‘technique’ depends on how you define it. When it comes to Luo Jing’s ‘technique,’ that could fairly be called the pinnacle of the fighting arts.”
Military Governor Zeng Ling sighed. “What a waste, these two brave fighters. Yu Juling has the strength of a god — a man like that on any battlefield could hold off a hundred men single-handedly, and would make any enemy’s blood run cold.”
“The other one is Yu Jianwan. He’s slimmer than Yu Juling, doesn’t look so imposing — but when it comes to killing, he’s even more terrifying.”
Zeng Ling paused, then continued: “Let’s watch and see how Luo Jing manages.”
All three had taken up the finest vantage point available, and occasionally exchanged a few words as they watched. When Yu Juling tore a man apart, all three winced at the same moment.
The blood was truly excessive.
Yu Juling slapped another man to death. He was now not far from Luo Jing.
At that point Luo Jing was still fighting — several jianghu fighters of considerable ability had surrounded him, and their coordination was enough to keep him occupied; though they could not kill him, he could not break free to aid his soldiers.
“Get out of the way!”
Yu Juling rumbled in his low, reverberant voice, and swung a slap toward Luo Jing. The force of it drove even his own allies stumbling back.
Luo Jing felt a massive dark shape arrive before him — and then the wind — and immediately bent at the waist to dodge.
That palm swept past just above his head. The pressure of it, unless felt firsthand, was impossible to understand.
Luo Jing half-crouched, both hands gripping his spear shaft, using it to brace his body; then his feet drove hard into Yu Juling’s knees.
Yu Juling let out a shout of pain and instinctively brought both fists smashing downward.
Luo Jing slipped aside, and his spear swept along the ground like an oar, his body skimming across the stones as he shifted laterally away. He cleared the heavy blow, then drove the spear forward.
The spear’s head cut precisely through both of Yu Juling’s Achilles tendons. Yu Juling lost the ability to stand; he crashed to his knees on the ground with a tremendous impact.
He wore heavy armor — but not at the ankle.
Luo Jing let out a cold snort. Facing such a ferocious and powerful opponent, his gaze remained contemptuous, as if in his eyes Yu Juling was not even worthy of being considered a real adversary.
Both tendons severed, Yu Juling could not rise, but he snarled like a beast and wrenched himself around with savage force, sweeping both fists in a horizontal arc.
Luo Jing planted his spear in the ground, thrust upward off it, and leapt onto Yu Juling’s shoulders. His feet planted there as firmly as if they had taken root. One hand hooked the edge of Yu Juling’s great iron helmet and wrenched it outward; the other hand drew the short blade from his hip.
In the instant the helmet left Yu Juling’s head, the blade arrived.
The knife drove into Yu Juling’s eye socket with a thud. In and out — in the span of a single breath, Luo Jing stabbed the same spot six times.
Yu Juling reflexively reached up to grab Luo Jing’s foot — perhaps nothing more than the body’s delayed last movement. Luo Jing was already leaping from his shoulders, and as he departed he drove a kick — not into the man, but into the knife handle.
The short blade was still embedded in Yu Juling’s eye socket. That kick sent it in to the hilt.
The immense body toppled backward, convulsing in rhythmic spasms, the face covered entirely in blood.
Luo Jing did not spare it a second glance. He snatched up his heavy spear and was about to surge forward again when a blade arrived at close range.
It was too fast, and too long.
Yu Jianwan arrived in full iron armor, wielding a blade of unusual length. He had assumed Yu Juling alone would be enough to tear Luo Jing apart — and had been entirely wrong. By the time he registered Yu Juling falling, he had not been able to come to his aid in time.
The moment he saw Yu Juling topple, he let out a howl barely distinguishable from an animal’s roar — and without waiting for Prince Yu’s word, he drew his blade and charged for Luo Jing.
His blade was four and a half feet long.
The standard saber carried by Dachu garrison soldiers measured just over three feet; a four-and-a-half foot edge was something no ordinary person could wield with any fluency.
In Yu Jianwan’s hands, that oversized blade was the deadliest weapon imaginable.
Luo Jing retreated sharply. He brought both hands up and the spear shaft caught the blow — and in that fraction of a second, Luo Jing read exactly how much force was in that cut. His spear shaft might not survive it.
Unwilling to lose his spear, he threw both arms into a forceful press, bowing the spear shaft under the blow, absorbing part of the blade’s momentum; then his wrist rotated, flicking the curved flex of the shaft outward and forward — the spear shaft rebounded, driving into Yu Jianwan’s chest.
Yu Jianwan was knocked back two steps. Luo Jing was already upon him, a kick landing in his midsection — two consecutive impacts, and Yu Jianwan retreated four steps.
Yu Jianwan roared and swung the blade in a wide horizontal sweep. Luo Jing had already shifted position; the spear tip rose and deflected the blade sideways.
Luo Jing stepped back — but only his body stepped back. The spear stayed where it was, extended at full arm’s length. He gripped the shaft near the very end, drawing the distance between them to the maximum and using every inch of the weapon’s reach.
Yu Jianwan’s blade was long — but could it be longer than Luo Jing’s spear?
“Strike!”
With Luo Jing’s single battle shout, the spear drove into Yu Jianwan’s left shoulder.
Gripping that long, heavy spear one-handed and landing the thrust, Luo Jing’s wrist torqued sharply; the spear head rotated half a turn, and Yu Jianwan’s left arm was stripped away.
“Strike again!”
He drew the spear back and thrust forward once more into Yu Jianwan’s right shoulder — the same wrist rotation, the same half-turn — and Yu Jianwan’s right arm fell away.
Both arms gone, Yu Jianwan looked oddly wrong, somehow grotesque.
“Before me, you are not worthy to wear iron armor.”
Luo Jing’s voice was cold with disdain. The spear drove forward a third time, entering the right side of Yu Jianwan’s throat; the head rotated once more, and a head flew free.
Yu Jianwan’s stripped torso continued to gush blood. Luo Jing stood in arrogant silence.
—