Originally, Cao Hong’s ambush of Lu Hongti had been set up under the guise of a guest, deliberately timing his invitation for when the people usually around her were occupied elsewhere. Out here in the wilds, in truth there weren’t many rules governing such things, and now that Qingmu Stockade had, in effect, opened its doors for business, it treated its guests all the more courteously. When Cao Hong told her he had a matter to discuss, even though she happened to have no one with her at the time, Lu Hongti still came along. She was unarmed then, carrying no weapon at all, and Cao Hong had privately laughed to himself at how easily she’d been fooled, thinking she had little experience of the world of rivers and lakes.
And yet the sheer skill with which she had fought her way alive out of that hut against nine attackers had genuinely given him a fright. By now the rest of the stockade had also erupted into chaos, firelight and battle cries spreading everywhere. Cao Hong and the others chased after her; Lu Hongti’s figure moved with such speed that they could barely keep up. When two of the Qingmu rebels rushing out ahead attacked her, she merely sidestepped, and after a shout of warning went unanswered, she strode straight into their attack. As their two blades came down, she kicked, almost like lightning, shattering one man’s kneecap, and with a flick of her hand sent the other’s long blade flying out of his grip. Then came two sharp slaps, one to each man’s head, sending blood spraying as they were knocked flying to either side.
By then one of the guards from behind had caught up and struck out with his blade, but Lu Hongti twisted his wrist backward with her free hand. Lu Hongti was tall for a woman, but the man was one of the elite guards, powerfully built, standing a full head taller than her. As she tried to use her own momentum to fling him aside, he too stepped forward, trying instead to seize and throw her.
The guard’s own momentum was fierce as well, and in the blink of an eye the two figures had surged more than two zhang forward, trading attempts to throw one another three times over, the air ringing with three sharp “whoosh, whoosh, whoosh” sounds — and after those three spins, the force of their momentum sent them both flying into the air.
A tremendous crash — the two figures slammed directly into a house behind them, tearing straight through the hard white-poplar wall.
Out here in the mountain forest, wood was the one thing never in short supply, and the timber used to build the houses was extremely tough — for a body of flesh and blood to break through it was truly a fearsome thing. And yet this time, it was the guard’s body that had borne the full impact. As the two of them flew through the air, the guard struck the wooden wall back-first, while in front of him, Lu Hongti — moving with him at the same thunderous speed — even shifted her body’s position as she went, turning to drive her side straight into his chest, in what was unmistakably a mountain-leaning strike.
Every style of boxing has its own way of generating power, but many techniques share common principles underneath. This mountain-leaning strike, put simply, throws the full weight of the body against an opponent; in practice, one trains by slamming into trees and walls, but techniques built around raw power like this are usually the province of men. And yet in this instance, the force gathered through those three rotations was already beyond reckoning — the guard had already lost his footing, and as the two of them flew through the air, with Lu Hongti driving herself bodily into his chest, every ounce of that force landed on him at once, far more brutal than any such strike delivered from standing ground.
In that one blow, not only did blood burst from his mouth, but even the body beneath his leather armor seemed to shatter — mist of blood sprayed from several places. When he crashed thunderously into the house, bringing the structure down around him, Cao Hong and the others saw Lu Hongti walk out through the door on the far side.
It was at that moment that Cao Hong finally understood — he had run into the most dangerous kind of opponent there was.
But by then there was no turning back. The main reason Lu Hongti didn’t want to keep fighting with them was her worry over the state of the stockade, but Cao Hong and the others had no way to let it go. In the course of the chase, they crossed nearly half the stockade; whenever they came across fighting along the way, Lu Hongti would plunge in and cut down a few before moving on to the next spot. Sometimes she fought bare-handed, sometimes she grabbed up a weapon along the way — as long as it wasn’t a tightly formed unit, not six or seven men swinging blades at her all at once, a few exchanges were enough for her to cut down several men, using techniques honed on real battlefields, every strike aimed to kill, with no mercy given.
Cao Hong and his remaining guards could only cause her some minor trouble at best, and by the time the woman, now half-covered in blood, turned to face them again, the rebellion inside the stockade had already been largely brought under control. In truth, Cao Hong’s own skill combined with five or six guards attacking together could still put some pressure on her — but it was only pressure, nothing more. That day she hadn’t expected to end up fighting like this, and she was still dressed in a simply cut black gown, now spattered with blood, half red and half black, setting off her oval face and furrowed brow; as she strode forward killing, the impression she gave was of nothing but an unrelenting chill.
Seven men together could still pose a threat, but the moment one of them was suddenly cut down in the melee, the speed of their collapse turned abruptly much faster. Cao Hong and the others fought and retreated all the way, and by then they had finally come to understand: that she had gone to meet with them unarmed hadn’t been because she lacked experience of the world — it was simply that she hadn’t thought it necessary.
…
“We — we give up, stop —”
Driven back eight or nine steps by that great force, Cao Hong finally couldn’t help crying out, but before the words had even finished leaving his mouth, a figure flew past him — it was the guard who had just swung his blade to block Lu Hongti. He had no idea how she’d sent the man flying so far. The body slammed onto the ground, rolled several times before coming to a stop, coughed up blood, and was already dead.
“General, go —”
Another guard, his weapon already knocked away, gave a great shout and rushed at Lu Hongti, trying to grab hold of her, only to be struck on the crown of his head by her open palm while still in mid-leap. He dropped to one knee and collapsed at Lu Hongti’s feet. Cao Hong watched, eyes bulging with fury: “I — I am a general under the Prince of Jin’s command…”
Lu Hongti walked toward him, shook her head — there were a few flecks of blood on her face too, yet somehow she gave an impression of cleanliness, none of the usual bloodlust of a killer about her — and simply said, “I won’t let you go.”
Her footsteps light and even, the distance closed. Cao Hong steadied his spear and, with a roar, thrust it out. Lu Hongti stepped forward, her body seeming to merge with the spear itself; Cao Hong felt a strike land on his lower abdomen, then a second at his chest, and then, with a howling rush of wind, her sleeves cutting the air so hard it cracked like a whip, her two palms struck his chest in a lightning-fast series of three blows, one flowing straight into the next.
Blood burst into the air with a wet spray; Cao Hong’s body flew nearly two zhang before crashing to the ground, his spear falling beside him. Lu Hongti kept walking forward.
Struggling, Cao Hong staggered back to his feet and began backing away — his armor had at least kept the wounds from being immediately fatal. “You don’t dare kill me — if you kill me… the Prince of Jin will sweep Mount Lüliang clean… don’t kill me, cough, cough…”
Lu Hongti bent down, gripped one end of the fallen spear with one hand, and as she straightened, spun the spearhead around in a flash, planting the tip against the ground and pushing it forward, driving Cao Hong back before her: “No one can sweep Mount Lüliang clean…” Cao Hong watched her, kept retreating, then with a shout drew the long blade at his side: “You don’t dare kill me…”
In the next instant, Lu Hongti’s wrist flicked, the spearhead leapt up; Cao Hong swung his blade in a flash, trying to knock the spear aside, but struck only empty air. The long spear, held merely by its tail end, seemed to move through the air like a living serpent, even pausing for an instant before piercing straight through his defense.
His long blade fell to the ground. Cao Hong grabbed the spear-shaft with both hands — it had already run through his lower abdomen and out through his back. He could no longer speak, only gripped the shaft with both hands, while at the other end, Lu Hongti, still holding it with one hand, kept pushing him forward. With every step she advanced, he was forced to stagger back a step, blood and worse seeping from his clothes and trousers.
Not far off, in the small square, a crowd had already gathered around the rebels. Figures had begun to appear on the rooftops along the alley as well. In the darkness, Lu Hongti pushed Cao Hong forward until they reached the edge of the small square; there she suddenly raised the shaft, tearing through his innards, and Cao Hong let out his final scream. Lu Hongti, gripping the spear with both hands, drove the tip hard into the earth and stone beneath, pinning Cao Hong dead to the ground.
Firelight flickered all around; both the rebels and those who had put down the rebellion watched all this unfold. Lu Hongti walked toward the front of the small square, first greeting an old man at the front of the crowd — white-haired but still sharp and alert-looking — and only then turned to face the rebels. On one side stood the young men who had taken part in the fighting, now variously wounded; on the other stood the women and children, weeping. Among the crowd, one young man, half-covered in blood, was still holding Lu Hongti’s sword. Lu Hongti walked over to him, and the people around him instinctively drew back; she took the ancient blade from him.
“That should be returned to me now,” she said quietly, and then turned toward the leaders among the rebels. “Uncle Lu San. Brother Mu. I’ve always treated you well.”
Every stockade has its own temperament, and the people here tended to be direct. There was a trace of sorrow in Lu Hongti’s eyes as she said this simply. The men opposite her held her gaze for a moment, and finally the middle-aged man still holding the wrought-iron broadsword lifted his head. “You’re just a woman, after all!”
“…No one ever said a woman couldn’t be stockade master,” Lu Hongti said after a silence. “And besides, the stockade was left to me by the old master.”
“But you’re still a woman, and plainly you can’t command the respect of the men! That you’re not dead today is only because they underestimated your skill — and because we overestimated that Cao Hong! You’re not dead, so for now they still stand on your side, but they won’t remember a thing about you if you had died — because in the end you’re a woman, and you’ll marry someone, and who knows what kind of man your husband will turn out to be!”
“If I marry, I’ll still be stockade master of this place.” Lu Hongti lowered her eyes, then raised them again. “Uncle Lu San, I know exactly why you’re doing this. Last year, when we robbed that escort caravan in the sixth month, I said there was to be no unnecessary violence — they had already surrendered. But you all wanted to seize the escort agency’s daughter to marry into your household, and when her father refused, Ninth Brother Ren killed him. I punished Ninth Brother Ren for that — you never once reflected on the killing of that girl’s father, only went around saying I let their family off without justice, is that not it?”
“Everyone up here in the mountains, who hasn’t killed someone! Who hasn’t lived this way! My son Lu Ren is a grown man now — why shouldn’t he be able to take a wife! You punished him twenty lashes and made him kneel a whole day over a thing like that — do you have any idea how sick he was when he got back? You’re a woman — what do you understand! Spouting all your rules — do you have any idea how much better off we’d all be if you’d just let things be!”
“Let things be, and you’d have nothing at all! It’s because I held to the rules that I got you all fed in the first place!”
“Bullshit!”
“Uncle Lu San, you and the rest of you were blind — you thought it was just the times improving! Why weren’t the times good before, then!”
“The Jin and Liao are at war — everything is scarce, that’s why more people are moving goods north and south!”
“You — you people are pigs!” Arguing, laying out reasoning — that was never Lu Hongti’s strength. Her face had begun to flush, and she snapped this out. One of the people beside her, seeing that Lu Hongti wasn’t much good at this kind of talk, suddenly cursed loudly, and in an instant the whole square erupted into an uproar.
“Damn it, Lu San, can’t you see how things are!”
“Screw you — if it weren’t for the rules the stockade master set, who’d bother trading exclusively with us, sending us supplies…”
“Just kill him already, why go on about it.”
Amid the clamor, Lu San said, “Hmph. Fine, you’ve won, do whatever you like. I’ve spent my life with a blade at my throat, my head hanging by a thread — I forgot how to be afraid a long time ago. But don’t forget, you’re a woman, and I won’t be the only one who turns against you — someday, someone will kill you, and then everyone will forget you ever existed! And another thing — you may have forgotten certain things, but I haven’t. Years back, you said yourself that you’d pass the stockade mastership on to someone else, because you’re a woman, and you’ve kept trying to pick someone out ever since. You’ve done exactly that, haven’t you? Now that the stockade’s grown large, and you won’t let go, isn’t it just because of that bit of power…”
The crowd around them broke into curses. Lu Hongti’s face, flushed a moment before, now shook her head. “I won’t give the stockade to you.”
She smiled, a complicated expression crossing her face as she looked around at everyone, then lifted her head and repeated herself. “I won’t be giving the stockade to any of you.”
This flat, unadorned declaration left the crowd momentarily silent, and after a moment Lu Hongti spoke again: “Because I finally got you all fed… A few years back, none of us had enough to eat — ha, a blade at your throat, your head hanging by a thread, who wasn’t like that back then, when no one followed any rules and everyone just grabbed and fought over what they could get… When I was still small, one winter it snowed heavily, and there was truly nothing to eat. Uncle Lu San, I gave the last half of my own flatbread to Ninth Brother Ren, and he still didn’t have enough, and I went hungry too, chewing on tree bark. Everyone in the stockade cried from hunger, on and on…”
Her voice caught a little; she wiped at her eyes, then laughed. “Back then, there were always a few days like that every single year! Everyone here lived through it! After I became stockade master, there was nothing I could do about it either — I’m skilled enough to go wherever I please, to go out and kill people, but who was there to kill! Killing anyone wouldn’t have been enough to feed everyone. Back then I did think — I’m a woman, maybe I’m not suited to be stockade master, maybe someone else could do it better than me. But it’s different now. I’ve finally gotten everyone fed, and if you want to be stockade master, that wouldn’t ordinarily be a problem at all…”
Tears still on her face, though she had been smiling, she now clenched her jaw. “But if what you want is to make everyone go hungry again, I won’t let you turn things into that.” Faintly, there was a resolve in those words that, for her, came from that man now a thousand li away…