In the instant after Ning Yi turned his head back, something happened in the crowd a dozen or so meters away—a sudden scene that gave every passerby no time to react.
The street already held large numbers of pedestrians at that hour; though the road, tens of meters wide, hadn’t reached the point of shoulder-to-shoulder crowding, the noise was genuinely a chaotic blend of sound. Children ran along both sides of the road, occasionally setting off a firecracker somewhere and dashing away, drawing laughing curses from nearby vendors and pedestrians. In the distance, the yellow dragon danced closer to the thunder of gongs and drums. Under such conditions, an ordinary sound would normally struggle to draw attention—but the sound that suddenly rang out was not merely loud; it was piercingly shrill.
It was a scream—”Ahh—!”—the cry of someone facing death, tearing through the wave of noise. Because he happened to have turned his head, what entered Ning Yi’s eyes, amid the countless festival lanterns, was a cold glint of metal flashing brilliantly—moving so fast it was like the blades of an electric fan, carving two ghostly circles in an instant. A spray of blood flew high over the heads of the crowd along with the scream, and a severed arm shot skyward.
The tide of confusion swept up everyone in that moment—those who understood what was happening and those who didn’t, those who had reacted and those who hadn’t.
“Yaaah—!”
Clang, clang, clang—clang—
Shouts and the clash of metal rippled outward through the crowd. A black-clad figure spun through the air above the pedestrians’ heads; another figure charged up from below with a battle cry, lost control, and was sent flying, crashing through a table and bench on the other side. Amid flying splinters of wood, it slammed into something several meters away with a thunderous crash—
A coal stove exploded on impact, sending soup pots and boiling water flying; burning coals bloomed outward like a peacock’s fan of sparks; diners scattered in panic. The black-clad figure dropped back down, weapon slashing; two nearby lanterns caught by the blow burst open, trails of flame stretching through the air.
It was all over in the span of a breath. Ning Yi himself might have counted among those who saw it happen but couldn’t process what they’d seen—he had no idea what was going on. Just a dozen meters away, an arm and a spray of blood shot upward; someone charged, shouting, at the one who had struck the blow. The attacker, when she leapt, rose barely more than two meters—looking like an athlete off a pole vault—black robes and skirts twisting and flaring, and the man who had charged beneath her was casually sent flying several meters, scattering everything in his path.
Only now did the crowd truly register what was happening. As the blood and the severed arm fell, people cried out in alarm. Xiao Chan was still asking, “Young master, what’s wrong—” when Ning Yi grabbed her shoulder and pulled her to his side; a nearby passerby, sensing something wrong, staggered backward toward them and was shoved away by Ning Yi.
Shouts erupted into the night air. A dozen meters off, the clash of weapons rang out in rapid succession; someone screamed wildly. The atmosphere had turned fierce and deadly, like two armies clashing on a battlefield. The lanterns strung overhead there were already densely packed, hanging over the street like a spiderweb; every so often one would burst, or an entire cord of lanterns would come crashing down. Someone on the ground was sent flying by a strike, one hand already gone, clutching the wound and screaming in agony.
Brawls and street fights weren’t unheard of in Jiangning—escort agencies, gangs, the guards of great households, clashing for all sorts of reasons. But this sudden scene was different. The one who had leapt into the air moments ago was just a single woman, and yet those now closing in to surround her were all burly men, dressed in the short blue tunics of underworld fighters, their bodies carrying the fierce, bloody air of men who lived by the blade. And still, despite this, they were gaining no advantage against her.
Ning Yi stared at the chaotic scene ahead as the crowd’s flight accelerated around them. Xiao Chan clamped both hands around his waist, crying, “Young master, young master, they’re fighting—!” hopping anxiously, trying to pull him away. But Ning Yi merely kept one hand on her shoulder, shielding her at his side; whenever someone came running close enough to collide with them, he’d casually push them aside. With so many people, the shifting shapes ahead were hard to make out clearly, but the area gradually began to clear.
A rough circle with a radius of a dozen meters or so had opened up on the road, but the chaos hadn’t diminished at all—weapons, screams, and flames from fallen lanterns burning on the ground. A child cried somewhere in the distance; people in the crowd shouted, searching for companions; someone knocked down struggled to get back up. An old horse tied beneath a tree nearby had spooked and was thrashing and shrieking. A voice rang out through the air: “Wulie Army in pursuit of a criminal—clear the way!” A man’s chest was run through by the black-robed woman’s sword, and he flew backward more than ten paces before crashing to the ground.
Though she seemed to handle being hunted by five or six men with room to spare, the fight was nothing like the elegant choreography of a wuxia film. The sword in the woman’s hand looked to be a bit over half a meter long—longer than a dagger or the military sabers Ning Yi had seen, but shorter than an ordinary longsword, with a blade that looked wider and clunkier, probably built to hold up under heavy chopping. The woman was tall but looked somewhat slight, dressed in black robes and a black skirt, her face veiled. She attacked rarely, mostly parrying with clangs of metal, darting and dodging within a small range.
Among the men attacking her was one giant standing some two meters tall, who wielded a table—even a post torn from a nearby wooden stall—as a weapon. Against him she looked almost clumsy at times in her dodging, but nearly every strike she landed counted for something. A blade her length wasn’t easy to drive through a man’s body, but the force behind her thrusts was tremendous; her slight frame gripping that sword seemed to throw itself bodily forward with everything she had, driving the blade clean through in a single strike—which was exactly why the man run through earlier had been sent flying more than ten paces before he fell.
In this brief span of fighting, the woman’s black robes were already speckled with blood—mostly the enemy’s, though she herself may well have already been wounded, or else the blood on Ning Yi’s own hand made no sense. But there was no telling at that moment. Once his view cleared, what appeared before Ning Yi’s eyes was the woman dragging a wounded enemy backward by the hair. Amid the clamor, the man being dragged along the ground kept shouting, flailing his hands and kicking his feet, trying to grab her arm, but in the heat of it, several attempts all failed to catch hold.
Two more companions charged from ahead, but he blocked their way. From the side, the giant swung a table down at her; she was already retreating rapidly, and now, with a sudden burst of force, she planted her legs and heaved—the man on the ground was yanked nearly airborne. The woman’s body hit the ground and rolled, the table nearly skimming over her head; she spun once and was already rising again as the dragged man’s body slammed down, dust flying. His hair had been torn in a ring; as she rose, his scalp tore away with a wet sound, blood pouring freely. She kicked him once in the back.
The two men charging from ahead—their companion was suddenly kicked upright from the ground, and they hurriedly reached out to catch him, when the black-robed woman’s sword tip flashed through from behind, driving straight into his chest.
“Ahh—!” The man who’d reached to steady his companion’s shoulder cried out and staggered backward fast; all three of them retreated together like a stacked sandwich for a dozen meters, scattering a patch of fire started by a burning lantern, and collapsed in a shower of sparks. The woman flipped backward, pulling her sword free. The man on the ground shoved off his already-run-through companion above him: “Kill her!” His own chest had already taken a shallow stab from the sword tip, and his calf had been pierced by several bamboo splinters during the earlier scramble; he was drenched in blood, thoroughly wretched.
A throwing dart whistled in from somewhere nearby, drawing a spray of blood across the black-robed woman’s shoulder. Then a blue-clad man with a broadsword closed in, his blade flashing and sweeping, forcing her into repeated retreat.
Flames flickered, smoke billowed, and the horse’s long shriek rang out—the old horse tied nearby had broken free of its rope and, in the midst of the chaos, bolted wildly straight toward the crowd, who were still shouting in hesitation, unable to flee in time. The panic was spreading outward. Just as the horse had covered about half the distance, a flash of light streaked through the air, arcing subtly, and plunged with a soft thud into its skull—the black-robed woman had thrown her sword itself as a projectile.
The charging horse jolted as if struck by lightning, its body letting out a keening cry in midair, still carried forward several more meters by momentum before collapsing with a thunderous crash, blood gushing from its head like a spring.
The fight there hadn’t paused for even a moment. Amid the flashing blades, the now-weaponless woman kept dodging. Suddenly, the hem of her black skirt swirled like a lotus blossom, and the man swinging his broadsword down staggered backward, seized by unspeakable pain from a groin kick. Beside him, another blue-clad man wielding twin blades rushed in, trying to force her back—but in the next instant, the woman simply advanced.
The twin blades cut through empty air; the single-blade man, having just been struck by that groin kick, realized in that instant he’d become the target and tried to swing his blade in defense—but his sword hand was suddenly seized. A crack sounded at his knee, his calf snapped and twisted completely out of shape, and just as the pain reached his brain, a pale hand suddenly loomed large before his eyes.
The woman’s sleeves were long; through the fight, her hands had been almost invisible—only now could one see the pale arm flash out from within the sleeve, the fabric snapping through the air with a sound like a whip. Her fist closed, knuckles driving straight for his eye.
Bang—
The rippling force drove straight in through his eye. Beside him, the twin-blade man swung to intervene, but in that same instant the woman moved like lightning, her body already circling around behind him.
Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap—
Eye, nose bridge, throat, temple, spine, back of the skull—by the time the twin-blade man’s strike came down, the woman had already circled behind the single-blade man, her sleeve-wrapped palm dropping from the air like a steel whip, striking the crown of his head.
“Yaaah—!”
The twin-blade man’s eyes went red, his blades whirling like wheels. Ning Yi, watching from a distance, couldn’t make out the details, but before him came the clashing sparks of countless rapid strikes—and within seconds, a broadsword abruptly burst out through the man’s back. As his body collapsed, the slight black-robed woman stood there, sword in hand, drenched in blood, looking this way.
The two-meter giant snatched up a table and swung it at her, but she no longer dodged—one hand swept through the air, redirecting the force ninety degrees to send it crashing aside, and she charged forward dragging the broadsword. The giant had barely raised his second table when the flash of the blade was already rising.
Boom—
The single blade had already been heavy, seemingly forged to the weight of a executioner’s blade; on her slight frame it looked almost strange dragging along beside her—yet this stroke of the blade split the table clean in two, shattering the giant’s entire ribcage, the blade lodged inside as he was sent flying along with it, table fragments still spinning through the air. Her long hair streamed wild in the wind as she surged, ghost-like, toward where the dead horse lay.
By now only two blue-clad men remained alive on the scene—the one with the injured calf had only just managed to rise and dared not charge; the dart-thrower had circled the whole fight without engaging directly. Seeing the woman charging toward him, he sent his dart whistling and spinning wildly through the air, but she closed the distance instantly—a tangled blur in the air, the two figures crashed together, fell, rolled. The woman spun and rose in a single motion, blood seeming to whirl around her body—the dart-thrower’s throat had already been slit, the dart’s cord now in her hand. Her black skirt swayed once, and the long dart, trailing its cord, whistled across more than ten meters and buried itself in the forehead of the last survivor, the one with the injured calf…
The entire fight hadn’t lasted long—a mere three or four minutes—but the crowd around had already scattered much further out, and the noise had quieted considerably. Several constables had drawn their blades but dared not approach from a distance. The woman paid them no mind. Drenched head to toe in blood, she walked to where the dead horse lay, thick blood already pooled across the ground. She reached down, pulled out her sword, wiped it with a cloth, and with a swift motion sheathed it behind her back.
Ning Yi and Xiao Chan had also retreated some distance, but were still close enough to watch it all unfold, their whole bodies trembling faintly…