The spear surged forward, thrusting straight at the girl’s back.
The figure that had suddenly appeared from the darkness at the roadside moved with astonishing speed, the spear tip lancing forward—only for a sharp clang to ring out in the air, as the girl abruptly twisted her body, seeming almost to swing the great blade behind her without looking. Spear tip met blade edge, and immediately after came several more buzzing clashes of steel on steel.
This attacker’s spear strikes came fast, yet each blow stopped the instant it landed, controlled and precise, striking always at the gaps in her defense—in the blink of an eye, he had Liu Dabiao’s stance rocking unsteadily, unable to fully open up her attacks.
The blade techniques of the Overlord Blade Battalion had never really been suited to a woman’s build, but Liu Xigua was clever, and had found her own path around this, pairing the style with internal cultivation methods to discover an extreme, alternative way of generating force. The problem was that this power of hers relied on building momentum through sheer accumulated inertia—and anything built on inertia would always carry certain weaknesses when it came to sudden changes of direction. The way she had found to compensate for this relied on her own natural talent, along with the martial experience she had inherited from her father. But once someone actually set her up as their intended target, the first thing anyone would naturally think to exploit was exactly this weakness—after all, not everyone had monstrous raw strength like Chen Fan, able to trade blows with this woman head-on.
That she had made a name for herself with a single great blade, earning her current standing within Fang La’s ranks, already showed that even her weakest point, in her hands, surpassed what most others could call their strength. But if her momentum could genuinely be checked and contained, that meant her terrifying blade technique could, in fact, be broken.
The Qi family clearly understood this principle. The one who had lain in ambush and now suddenly struck was the Qi family’s third son, Qi Xinyi. His spear technique was not as forceful as his second brother’s, but rather agile and cunning, striking like a hawk’s dive or a swallow’s peck—each blow never spent to its fullest, aimed instead precisely at whichever direction Liu Dabiao might rush toward, blocking off the girl’s paths of retreat and advance.
The girl, of course, was not so easily left unable to respond. Caught off guard, she dragged that massive blade along, her body and footwork swaying and shifting as though drunk, using only one hand to control the hilt, using that great blade to block every incoming strike. But Qi Xinyi’s spear followed her movements exactly, clinging to her like a bone-deep affliction, and it proved no easy matter for her to pull away and open up distance in so short a time. Meanwhile, Qi Xinyong had already recovered his breath and came charging in with his spear from another direction. Liu Dabiao gripped the blade’s hilt with both hands and spun sharply, dragging the blade around in a wide arc that carved a deep, half-circular groove into the ground; Qi Xinyong’s steel spear struck against the blade’s edge and slid straight down its length, trailing a long streak of sparks through the darkness.
That massive blade was not easy to swing freely within such a confined space, and with the two brothers now closing in together, the girl’s responses had already grown less swift and forceful than before. Dodging and parrying, her blade tip no longer left the ground even for a moment, each swing and thrust scraping a great grinding screech against the flagstones beneath. Sparks scattered through the air, yet neither Qi Xinyong nor Qi Xinyi could break through the girl’s defense—it looked, for the moment, as though their spear tips were merely hammering uselessly against that great blade, again and again.
At his current level of martial skill, Ning Liheng found it difficult to clearly judge how this fight might turn out. As far as he could tell, Liu Dabiao’s side still had room to spare, at least for now—but over on Lou Jingzhi’s side, the situation was steadily worsening. The skill of the three men surrounding him plainly exceeded that of his few remaining household guards, and with the attackers fighting in a state of complete recklessness, another guard soon had his skull crushed by the big man’s three-section rod.
By now only four men remained guarding Lou Jingzhi. He himself had some skill in martial arts, but under these circumstances, it counted for little. With the three attackers closing in, he instinctively backed away with his sword raised, retreating toward the other side of the fight. The distance between the two battles narrowed swiftly. One of his guards, sensing something was wrong, called out, “Young master, don’t go that way!” Lou Jingzhi froze for a moment, uncertain now where to go—as he saw it, over where Liu Dabiao was fighting the Qi family’s second and third sons, she still seemed to hold the upper hand. On the other side, Qi Xinhan swung his long spear, once again drenched in blood, charging to break through the defense of the four remaining guards.
At that moment, Qi Xinyong and Qi Xinyi, who had been locked in combat with Liu Dabiao, suddenly withdrew their spears, their bodies shifting, and thrust straight toward Lou Jingzhi instead.
With a crash, Qi Xinhan collided head-on with the guard blocking his path, his body then hurtling toward where Liu Dabiao stood.
It was in this instant that the situation shifted.
The arrangement on the field had originally been Qi Xinyong and Qi Xinyi encircling Liu Dabiao, while Qi Xinhan, with two household retainers, went after Lou Jingzhi—with Lou Jingzhi’s four remaining guards holding him at the rear. But in this one instant, Qi Xinyong and Qi Xinyi withdrew their attack and rushed straight toward Lou Jingzhi, and in that brief span, it became five men attacking Lou Jingzhi all at once. On this side, Liu Dabiao abruptly raised her great blade—and then, the situation shifted once more.
Qi Xinhan lunged fiercely at her, while Qi Xinyong and Qi Xinyi feinted once more and rushed again toward Liu Dabiao. Of the two Qi family retainers, one hurled his spear—it whistled past Lou Jingzhi’s side and shot straight for the girl. This was the Qi family’s most prized throwing technique, the Soul-Seeking Spear.
Feigning an attack on Lou Jingzhi before suddenly converging on Liu Dabiao was not, in itself, a particularly brilliant strategy—but for something improvised in the heat of the moment, it unfolded as smoothly as if it had been rehearsed countless times. The coordination among the Qi family’s men was remarkable; though a few among the Lou family’s guards had sensed something might go wrong, they were already too hard-pressed themselves to offer any real help. As the three Qi brothers surged forward together, the only sound in the air was the girl’s soft “Ha—” of a laugh.
Blades and spears crossed, and in that single instant, everything tangled together with a screech of metal. The clash of spear and blade rang out thunderously; from where Ning Liheng watched, in the span of just a second or two, that great blade’s sweeping arcs somehow forced back the combined assault of all three Qi brothers at their absolute peak, sending the thrown spear flying up into the air, while Qi Xinyong and Qi Xinyi were both driven back a step or two in the ensuing exchange. In a gap between the flickering figures, the girl’s eyes turned cold, and she swung the great blade back to its fullest extent, coiled tight as a drawn bowstring. Then came a single horizontal sweep.
The great blade whistled through the air, slipped free of her grasp, and went spinning off in flight. Qi Xinyong and Qi Xinyi leapt aside; along the blade’s flying path, even the big man attacking Lou Jingzhi from behind, having blocked it once, nearly lost his grip on his three-section rod. The blade flew toward the wall on the other side of the street and buried itself into it with a resounding crash. And it was right after this that the girl staggered back several steps—her hands now empty, and before she could even steady herself, a powerful gust of force came bearing down on her from ahead.
Qi Xinhan struck with brutal force. And behind him, Qi Xinyong and Qi Xinyi seized the opening, pressing their assault forward with everything they had.
This was their one and only chance…
Whether it was Qi Xinhan, or Qi Xinyong and Qi Xinyi, all of them told themselves the very same thing in that instant.
For a long time now, no one had ever seen what happened once Liu Dabiao’s great blade left her hand. As she herself had said, she had never truly walked the paths of the martial world—over these past years, whatever people had seen of her in action had come either on the battlefield, or in front of Fang La’s camp, on those occasions when the Overlord Blade Battalion had no patience for reasoning things out and simply drew blades to cut a man down without another word. No one had ever doubted the sheer ferocity of the blade technique in her hands. Especially amid the slaughter of battle, wherever her blade struck, it was said, one against a hundred, sweeping all before it.
But now, without a weapon in hand, everything seemed to turn on a dime.
Under the astonished gazes of Lou Jingzhi and even the watching Ning Liheng, the Qi brothers’ assault came on with terrifying force, like a great wall bearing down; in the blink of an eye, the four of them had pushed forward more than ten meters, spears thrusting and slashing in a tangle of blades, the small, delicate figure of the girl seemingly swallowed whole by that surging tide of attacks.
From where they stood, it was impossible to make out clearly what was happening—but plainly, the girl now found herself at a complete disadvantage. And yet, it was only now, in this very moment, that the three men closing in on her began to sense that something was strange, something wrong.
Just as the girl’s figure reeled backward, her sleeves and skirt whipping wildly, a faint rush of cutting wind began to close in around their attacks—and then, Qi Xinhan took a blow to the shin, pain shooting straight to the bone. An instant later, as he turned his face aside to dodge another gust of wind, the force of the passing sleeve raked painfully across his cheek, and in the corner of his eye, gone almost as soon as it appeared, was a small, pale, delicate… fist.
This was only the beginning.
At the center of the three, Qi Xinyong’s spear shaft was suddenly seized and yanked, dragging him forward; the girl slipped past him like a ghost, and a fist crashed into Qi Xinyi beside him. Qi Xinyi barely managed to dodge in time, only for a sudden, searing pain to erupt in his abdomen—the unexpected blow left his stomach in violent, twisting spasms. A moment later, a sharp jab landed on his thigh, pain shooting to the bone; then a second kick struck his chest, followed by another to the shoulder, and then—rising in a flash, the girl’s body flipped through the air, and in the next instant, sank back down among the three of them once more.
In the blink of an eye, Qi Xinhan took two more blows to the head; Qi Xinyong’s arm was struck again and again until his long spear was sent flying from his grip entirely. All three brothers stumbled, trying desperately to regroup and reform their formation, and only now did they realize that the girl’s hands were moving like the wind, performing what appeared to be a genuine set of fist forms—her movements swift, her strikes flashing like lightning, and every single blow struck with a force that seemed to reach the bone, all coupled with joint-locking grapples that left the three of them caught, in that brief span, as though swept into the eye of a storm, stumbling and scrambling to counter, utterly disheveled. No one could have imagined that, having lost her weapon, the girl would prove even more terrifying than when she’d had it.
These three, after all, were men who had clawed their way through real battlefields; even caught off guard, they scrambled to reorganize their assault and put up a desperate defense. Qi Xinhan, taking a punch, managed to spit out, “Ha… cough… you must be joking…”
The girl slammed a fist into Qi Xinyong’s shoulder, then struck at his wrist, her expression cold, her words just as flat. “I told you already—I’ve never walked the paths of the rivers and lakes…”
Qi Xinyi thrust his spear at her; she sidestepped it, and in the same instant unleashed five strikes at the three of them, seizing the shaft of Qi Xinyi’s spear and wrenching it away, sending both man and weapon stumbling to one side. “On the battlefield, the heavier your blade or spear, the greater your advantage. But in a proper contest between fighters of the martial world—clearly, that’s not how it works…”
She lunged forward in a bow stance, fist swinging with a whistling rush of wind, an elbow strike following through and crashing down into Qi Xinhan’s chest. The young man staggered backward, spitting up a mouthful of blood. “This Little Vajra Continuous-Strike Fist—I’ve practiced it since I was a child, and never once had reason to use it. Did you really think that losing my blade would leave me, Liu Dabiao, entirely helpless?”
Her voice was clear and sharp; though it had started out mild, by now it carried a faint note of anger and reproach. Earlier, wielding her great blade against them, she had, in truth, still had strength to spare—it seemed clear now that, if not for having to protect the inconvenient presence of Lou Jingzhi, she likely would never have thrown her weapon aside in the first place, from start to finish.
The gap in strength between the two sides was now like heaven and earth. With so many troops still out there searching for the remnants of the Qi family’s rebels, it was starting to look as though this blood feud would never be avenged. Qi Xinyong suddenly let out a roar like a tiger’s. “Now—!”
Bang— A tremendous explosion rang out, splitting the night sky.
The battle had already been fierce, weapons clashing, blood spilling on both sides; though the three Qi brothers had fallen into a losing position, they remained fierce and unyielding, fighting on without retreat. When Qi Xinyong suddenly shouted this way, everyone present sharpened their guard at once—but no one had expected that this particular sound would follow. Even Liu Dabiao herself was startled, for in that instant she realized: it was a gunshot.
She had heard that particular sound once before, on the night at Taiping Lane, and had come to understand it well in the time since. Had Ning Liheng fired that shot at her just now, she might well have wondered, for a moment, whether she herself had been struck. But in the next instant, everyone found themselves equally taken aback, as a figure came tumbling wildly to the ground in the wake of that gunshot, rolling over and over several times in a row.
Everyone froze.
It was the owner of that shop from earlier.
The instant Qi Xinyong had let out his roaring command, the man had sprung from his hiding place like a lion that had lain in wait for a long time, silent and swift—only to land, quite literally, right in the path of that gunshot, blood spraying across the sky as his body rolled and tumbled away.
The sheer intensity of the man’s leap, contrasted with how it all ended, made for a jarring, almost absurd difference. Qi Xinyong and the others had, in truth, already run out of options—the very roar he’d let out a moment before had been meant to draw on every last reserve of strength for one final, all-out effort. With the man’s sudden, senseless death, that carefully gathered momentum simply had nowhere left to go. As for Liu Dabiao, she too had been startled by the enemy’s abrupt shout, and had already braced herself in response as a formidable martial artist would—but this sudden turn of events left even the punch she’d been winding up unable to land. Everyone stood there, stunned, and the whole scene settled into an awkward, deflated silence.
The body rolled and rolled, and finally came to a stop, blood pooling out from it. Ning Liheng looked at the corpse, blinked a few times, and after a moment, cupped his hands slightly. “Ahem. This one is the Bloody-Handed Butcher, Ning…”
Before he could finish, Qi Xinyong took a step back and said, “Let’s go.” Without another word, the remaining men turned and fled, vanishing into the darkness in the blink of an eye.
Ning Liheng stood there, equally dumbfounded. The wind blew past, and he felt a chill; he reached up and scratched at his hair. “Uh… why does it always turn out like this…”
He hadn’t meant to do it, either. It had simply been reflex…