Blood sprayed through the air, severed grass carried on the wind, and all of it had happened in the space of a single blink.

Held aloft in Lu Tuo’s grip, Young Master Lin the Seventh’s condition was, only now, becoming clear to everyone present. Blood streaked him from front to back, his arms twisted at unnatural angles, clearly shattered or pierced by something; a crossbow bolt lodged in his back, and on top of all these wounds, that final blade stroke had left his entire body looking like a sack torn apart, ravaged over and over.

The black-clad figure who had delivered that stunning blow had already plunged into the shadows on the other side and dissolved into them, leaving no further trace; the fighting on that other side had gone quiet as well. Lu Tuo stood at the very front, tall and imposing as an iron tower, silently laying Lin the Seventh down.

In the distance, Wanyan Qingjue’s mouth opened slightly, but no words came out. The masters throughout the crowd had all, by now, stretched and loosened their limbs, settling themselves into their best possible readiness. It was clear enough—after a night that had gone so smoothly, the unexpected had finally caught up with them; whatever martial-world clan or group of masters had come out tonight, wherever they were from, had clearly gone unnoticed, laying a trap to strike from the shadows.

The blade technique wielded by that black-clad figure who had just burst forth was, without question, of near-mastery level—truly not to be underestimated—and the loss of seven or eight men in the blink of an eye made clear that the enemy had indeed laid a formidable ambush.

Lu Tuo’s hand had already shot up the moment danger struck, signaling readiness to meet the enemy, his gaze fixed warily on the direction the blade-wielder had vanished into. Among the crowd, a Jurchen man crouched low, nocking an arrow and drawing his bow, listening for the rustle of wind through the night forest. With a sharp crack, blood burst from his face, and he toppled backward.

“Watch out—”

“Meet them—”

This uncanny attack shattered the equally uncanny stillness that had followed; someone let out a great shout, and everyone scattered, each seeking cover of their own. Yinping, her vital points seized by Li Wanlian, who struck her repeatedly with pressure-point techniques, found her whole body gone weak and numb; she tried to resist, but was dragged back regardless. Amid this chaos, the sight of these men each displaying first-class skill all at once was, frankly, astonishing—footwork and body positioning honed over years of martial training, or the raw predatory instincts cultivated through years spent hunting or in the army, all fully on display now that real combat had arrived. Having practiced the most orthodox forms of internal martial arts since childhood herself, Yinping was, if anything, all the more able to appreciate just how terrifying what she was witnessing truly was.

Whether it was the whooshing sound of wind and thunder in their footwork and body movements, the lightning-fast techniques of their darting, weaving advances, or the sheer precision of their leaping, twisting maneuvers—all of it made unmistakably clear just what caliber this particular team truly was. The Yue family’s army had, ever since its founding, gradually drawn in no small number of skilled martial artists—but it was never wise to build an army’s elite core purely out of individual masters; for an army composed largely of refugees and farmers, sheer strict training alone could never prepare them for the true chaos of battle. Only by placing them alongside veteran soldiers or powerful martial-world fighters could an army hope to draw out its true maximum strength.

But whether or not that kind of arrangement was wise, faced with the reality unfolding right before her eyes now—especially after two nights of this kind of slaughter—Yinping could only admit that a team like this, in a small-scale engagement involving only a few hundred men, truly did come close to being unstoppable.

The sudden appearance of these heroes on the other side had dealt Lu Tuo and his men a genuinely severe blow to their confidence, and it truly was no small feat—especially that one strike of “Night Combat, Eight Directions” delivered by the black-clad figure, which, in terms of sheer mastery, was likely not inferior to her own father’s spear technique in the slightest. And yet, even so, in this moment, Yinping still found herself wanting desperately to shout out loud, hoping they would flee as quickly as possible—and, ideally, take General Gao with them.

Whether the other side turned out to be heroes of the martial world or some small detachment of soldiers, it made no difference either way.

Overhead, the stars and moon wheeled slowly on, casting sparse patches of light through the trees; a few small fires still burned along one edge of the woods, sending smoke drifting up into the night sky. In this moment, figures darted and crossed through the trees with a whooshing rush—some dodging, some weaving forward at great speed through their twisting, evasive movements, and others still, moving with an uncanny, almost spider-like gait, hugging the ground so closely they nearly vanished entirely into the low wild grass, effectively immune to any threat from arrows. At the same time, the Jurchens’ finest archers and the martial-world masters skilled with hidden weapons dodged and struck back at once, hurling stones, iron caltrops, and arrows in a rapid, crackling barrage into the darkness ahead.

Lu Tuo, too, surged forward at that same moment, several crossbow bolts crossing through the exact spot where he’d been standing an instant before, grass stalks flying up into the air.

“Fire-lances—!”

The furious shout shook the woods.

Though it might be said the two sides had, up to this point, held a clear advantage and disadvantage between them, the truth was that everyone here was still fighting within the same dark forest. As Lu Tuo’s several dozen masters sprang into motion on every side at once, the darkness itself seemed to erupt like some sudden, roaring undercurrent. Amid the clash of the crowd, a Jurchen archer swiftly wrapped a fire-arrow and loosed it with a whistling hiss; at the same time, someone else picked up a torch soaked in oil and hurled it, lit, into the darkness ahead.

The instant the torch left his hand, a crossing bolt struck him in the shoulder. The flame arced across the night sky; beside a small tree, the one who had loosed the bolt was turning to dodge, and as the flying torch slowly illuminated the scene nearby, several figures flashed briefly into view.

“Watch for their fire-weapons—”

“There they are!”

“Vermin, come out—”

Amid the sudden shouting, figures were already darting toward the enemy’s position. These martial-world masters each had their own fighting style, but having come prepared this time, they avoided the kind of instant, catastrophic losses suffered before. The first man to charge in found himself, the moment combat began, twisting his body sharply and shouting, “Watch out—!” as a crossbow bolt came shooting up from the side; then came the clang and clatter of blades meeting.

A second man, then a third, charged in just as abruptly, and then someone let out a great shout: “We’ve been tricked! These people have real bite!”

Wanyan Qingjue’s temples throbbed violently; in that brief moment, he had no idea what “tricked” was even supposed to mean, or how bad “real bite” could possibly turn out to be. His own side, after all, was made up entirely of first-class masters, painstakingly gathered together—even granting the enemy some skilled fighters of their own, surely not every single one of them could be this formidable. Even as this shout rang out, eight or nine more men charged in, followed by a chaotic roar of voices: “Everyone together… cut them down—”

“Come and die—”

“Ah—!”

“Watch out, it’s a trap—”

Amid the shouting, one man had his belly cut open and was dragged out at a dead run by his comrades. Lu Tuo, who had originally meant to hold the center as a command point, found himself just as thoroughly confused by all the shouting, and charged forward himself. If they were shouting to gang up and kill the enemy, that meant there was at least a real fight to be had—but then what on earth did “it’s a trap” mean?

Not far off, Yinping, her head spinning, watched all of this unfold in equal confusion.

Lu Tuo’s figure charged forward!

Behind a cluster of bushes, a fierce brawl came into view—more than a dozen figures locked in chaotic combat. Lu Tuo surged forward and, seeing the nearest enemy in front of him, swung his blade in a horizontal slash. The man, holding a steel blade in one hand and a shield in the other, was sent flying by the sheer force of Lu Tuo’s strike. His comrades nearby were formidable too; with Lu Tuo’s arrival, three more masters pressed forward in a fierce joint assault—only to see their opponents shift positions, a long spear and a hooked sickle-spear rising to meet the attack of all four men at once, forcing them steadily backward within moments.

But even as Lu Tuo pressed the attack, something already felt wrong to him. As the saying went in the martial world: a year to master the blade, a month for the staff, a whole lifetime for the spear, and always keep a sword close at hand. Both spear and sword were easy to learn but nearly impossible to truly master; anyone who wielded either well was, without question, a genuine master, and the hooked sickle-spear was an even stranger, more exotic weapon still, brutally difficult to use well. This spear and this hooked blade, though being steadily pushed back, had still managed to hold their ground against the combined assault of himself and three others—there was simply no way fighters of this caliber could be unknown names in the martial world.

These two weapons retreated a few steps, then a long blade and a long sword came weaving in, once again holding off the four-man assault in their place, while the spear and hooked blade swiftly repositioned to fill the gap left by the blade and sword, taking on the attacks of the men nearby in turn.

A brawl among a dozen or so martial-world fighters was an entirely different thing from a clash between soldiers—positioning, awareness, reaction speed, all honed to an extraordinary level of finesse. And yet, looking closely now at what appeared to be a chaotic scramble of fighting, the ones who had, remarkably, managed to hold off ten attackers turned out to number only seven. Their coordination and positioning, their mutual awareness and support for one another, was so refined, so seamless, that despite this fierce, all-out assault from Lu Tuo’s side, not a single kill had been scored—and in a moment of carelessness earlier, one of their own had even been wounded by the other side instead.

The enemy… were masters too.

Lu Tuo, having spent years fighting through the martial world, felt the hair on his body stand on end the instant he sensed something was wrong. The clash of blades between the two sides had lasted only a brief moment so far, and more men were still charging in from behind; even as he pressed his own fierce assault, more of his men kept arriving to join in. The seven fighters before him, through their seamless coordination and defense, had already been forced back several dozen feet—yet, were the outcome not so strange, most onlookers would probably have assumed this was nothing more than a completely chaotic, disorganized brawl. Under Lu Tuo’s onslaught, the enemy had clearly begun to feel tremendous pressure, and yet the blade-wielder among them fought with a light, elusive style, holding his ground even while hard-pressed; the other blade-wielder among them was even more clearly the core of the group—his broadsword strikes fierce and violent, each blow exploding forth like a volcanic eruption, spreading like wildfire, and he alone was single-handedly holding off the combined assault of three or four of Lu Tuo’s own men, steadily relieving the pressure on his comrades. This particular blade technique stirred something in Lu Tuo’s mind—something unsettling, something beginning to take shape.

…

The woods had descended into total chaos.

And it wasn’t just on this one front. As this sudden threat unfolded, the scouts and outer-perimeter men that Wanyan Qingjue had positioned elsewhere in the woods had been alerted as well, and were now converging rapidly toward the fighting. Beside Yinping, a Jurchen man blew a war-horn, sending the signal far and wide; before long, a signal flare shot up from the woods in the distance too—perhaps another group of would-be rescuers, arriving from a different direction, had also been discovered.

Li Wanlian licked the blood from her fingertip; not far off, under the combined assault of Pan Dahe and the others, Gao Chong could do little more than hold his ground with sheer effort of will. He knew that the arrival of allies might well be his best chance, but no matter how fiercely he fought, he could gain almost no ground. Just then, from within the woods where combat had only just begun, Lu Tuo’s roar rang out: “Retreat—!”

That roar came out high-pitched and agitated, and what it conveyed was, without question, anything but reassuring. As the leader of a team like this, Lu Tuo, even when facing genuinely dire circumstances, could generally be counted on to project calm composure to those around him—no one had ever expected, or could have expected, that he would encounter something capable of shaking him into this kind of visible agitation.

Amid that furious shout, two more men charged forward, one of them barely rising from a leap off the grass before his feet had even touched down—and ahead of him, a flash of blade-light rose up to meet him.

Blade and figure crossed; the body hit the ground and rolled, the severed head already sailing skyward. The figure who had delivered that stroke was tall and gaunt, one hand gripping a blade, the other side of his body showing nothing but an empty sleeve fluttering gently in the wind. The instant he appeared, another voice rang out amid the fighting: “Retreat—!”

And in the same instant that he caught sight of this one-armed figure, that name, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, suddenly surfaced in Wanyan Qingjue’s mind, unbidden.

—”Sky-Piercing Blade,” Du Sha.

At the same moment, the tide of blood surged forward, the wave of steel spreading outward—

…

Just moments before, memories from many years past had already begun surging up in Lu Tuo’s mind.

Back in those days, calls for the Wu dynasty’s northern campaign had been growing louder, and, as it happened, Fang La’s uprising had broken out in the south around the same time. The Qi clan, ever in favor of peace negotiations, had not let the opportunity pass them by—pulling strings from above to lend considerable support to Fang La’s faction. Lu Tuo, too, had gone south at the time, joining Fang La’s army, entering the service of a martial-world man named Bao Daoyi.

Bao Daoyi had held no small standing within the Sage Duke’s army, but he’d also made his share of enemies—the Tyrant Blade faction being one of them. Later, the demon lord Ning Yi, through some particular set of circumstances, had killed Bao Daoyi; the Tyrant Blade Camp had shielded him for it, and, according to rumor, had even helped bring about the marriage between Ning Yi and the head of the Tyrant Blade faction herself, Liu Xigua.

Given Ning Yi’s own level of skill, it seemed unlikely he could have truly killed Bao Daoyi himself—the real truth of the matter was difficult to trace, and, in any case, not something Lu Tuo particularly cared about. It was only that, at the time, the Tyrant Blade Camp had counted many masters among its ranks, and having thrown in his lot with Bao Daoyi, Lu Tuo had come to know something of some of their fighters as well—several disciples trained by the once-peerless blade master Liu Dabiao, each with his own distinct style, yet each formidable in his own right.

Among the men here now, the one whose light, elusive defensive blade technique had been facing him just now was, he now vaguely recalled, likely “Feather Blade” Qian Luoning; as for the other one, fierce and explosive in style, that was likely the trace of the one known in rumor as the “Ember Blade.”

The Tyrant Blade Camp…

Those three words surfaced in his mind, and in that same instant, he found himself shouting aloud: “Retreat—!” But it was already too late.

Just as he let out that roar, someone in the woods raised a hand and signaled.

The Jurchen swordsman who had charged the furthest ahead rolled and leapt to his feet, only to find two figures already flying toward him—one seizing the steel blade in his hand, the other wrapping around him from behind, clamping a hold onto his face and driving his body down from top to bottom, pinning him to the ground. With his blade seized and his face held fast, the Jurchen swordsman’s still-free left hand drew the dagger from his belt in a desperate counterattack, only to have the man pinning him drive a knee down to block it; a short blade was then drawn twice, hard, across his throat.

Thick blood surged out in a torrent—the whole exchange had taken only the blink of an eye. More figures came flying in, and from the side, another figure appeared, long blade pointed straight at Lu Tuo, killing intent surging like a tide.

…

Even as the tide of battle pushed forward and then surged back again, no one on the black-clad side had shown the slightest inclination to retreat—more of them were pressing forward from behind to join the fight instead.

As Lu Tuo pulled back from the fiercest part of the fighting, watching the blade technique of the black-clad figure who had faced him directly, he could see that this one, too, showed no sign of wanting to withdraw.

Of the ten-odd men who had charged in, six had already been killed in the blink of an eye; the rest had banded together and pulled back, only now beginning to sense that something was truly wrong.

Everything had unfolded at a breathtaking pace—from the moment Lin the Seventh and seven or eight others had been eerily swallowed up at one end of the battlefield, to the vanguard charging in, to the reinforcements arriving from behind, and finally to Lu Tuo’s own violent retreat and the battle line surging backward—all of this had taken place within the span of only a moment. For a battle of this scale, this might, in truth, still be only the opening probe.

By this point, most of the men had already surged toward the front lines, or had already engaged the enemy directly. Qiu Tianhai gathered his strength and charged, unleashing a Through-the-Back Fist strike straight at the one-armed swordsman who had appeared first and was now holding off two men at once. The one-armed swordsman turned and delivered a plain, unremarkable slash, its killing intent cutting straight for Qiu Tianhai’s skull; Qiu Tianhai twisted violently to dodge the blow, and three more figures came charging in from the side. His White Ape Through-the-Back Fist and his leg techniques left afterimages flickering all around him; in a single exchange, he drove back all three attackers with a rapid series of blows.

The skill on both sides seemed, at best, roughly matched; a part of him, somewhere in the back of his mind, began to think this fight might yet be winnable.

Amid the crowd, someone shouted, “This is… the Tyrant Blade!” Several others faltered for a moment, distracted, trying to place why the name sounded so familiar.

And then, someone shouted, “Black Banner.”

“Retreat—!” Lu Tuo’s furious roar had, by now, begun to sound genuinely urgent, the very air of the night seeming to shatter with it! Someone else shouted, “Run—!”

Blood bloomed through the air, heads flew, some men fell, others scrambled and crawled. Lines of blood surged and sprayed everywhere; in the blink of an eye, Lu Tuo had already fallen back to the rear lines, understanding now that this was, truly, a fight to the death, striving with everything he had to save what he still could. Li Wanlian dragged Yinping along, trying to flee; Yinping struggled with all her strength, but was, in the end, dragged further and further away.

Meanwhile, the black-clad fighters kept surging forward, their rhythm of running, striking, and dodging never breaking. Even those facing off directly against masters like Lu Tuo refused to linger for long—rotating forward in turns, striking together, then falling back after only a brief, swift exchange to take cover behind tree trunks and large rocks, waiting for their comrades to catch up, occasionally striking back with crossbows in the meantime. Wanyan Qingjue’s team, for all its own genuine coordination, found that coordination reduced to something of a joke in the face of this sudden, overwhelming enemy—more often than not, one or two of his own masters, confident in their own skill, would linger too long in the fight, only to find themselves surrounded and cut down by three or five enemies at once in the next instant.

The advancing black tide—especially when facing down several dozen masters at once—moved with a speed that left little time to react, though it still couldn’t possibly hope to catch up to Li Wanlian and the others just yet. Lu Tuo, having fought fiercely from the rear for a while, turned to break through and force his way out; on the other side, Pan Dahe and the others had already abandoned Gao Chong and fled. Gao Chong lunged forward, spear raised, meaning to give chase, but a sudden wave of dizziness washed over him—having fought this long and this hard, his strength was, at last, beginning to fail him.

Lu Tuo went racing past. Gao Chong drew a deep breath as figure after figure streaked past him on either side.

Before Wanyan Qingjue and the others had entirely vanished from sight, he glanced back once, drew his bow, loosed an arrow, and shouted, “Master Lu, hurry—!”

Lu Tuo roared back, “They can’t hold me!”

No one else doubted this claim of Lu Tuo’s in the slightest—a master of his caliber, with such formidable potential, was, like Gao Chong himself, extraordinarily difficult to kill unless pinned down by some fixed objective, or worn down to the point of exhaustion. After all, if he truly meant to flee, no ordinary horse could ever hope to outrun him, and no ordinary arrow or crossbow bolt could easily prove fatal to him either. Even as Lu Tuo let out that roar, several more black-clad figures appeared from the front and side, wielding long whips, iron chains, spears, and even fishing nets, trying to cut off his path; Lu Tuo, only briefly slowed, quickly shifted direction instead.

Two iron shields blocked his path ahead.

Lu Tuo let out a roar like a tiger and charged forward, smashing one man, shield and all, clean off his feet through sheer force; his body twisted and darted toward the other side, when two metal flying shuttles came crossing in from opposite directions, blocking his path in one particular direction—and then came a tremendous roar of sound.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom—

Smoke and dust rose into the air, flashes of flame crossing through the darkness; the combined efforts of the crowd could only manage to slightly restrict the direction of Lu Tuo’s charge—more than a dozen long iron tubes had, by now, been aimed straight at him, and they fired.

Lu Tuo’s body shook violently several times, his footing faltering; one leg suddenly buckled beneath him. In the distance, the black-clad fighters swept past his position; someone seized him by the hair and, in a single stroke, took his head clean off, without so much as breaking stride.

Many stood there, eyes wide, stunned into stillness for a moment. They understood, now, that Lu Tuo was truly dead.

This was the end of an era for the martial world.

…

The Black Banner’s people were still sweeping forward, ever onward.