Tian stepped between Little Treasure and the inn’s window, his passing leaving the grass and dirt twisting behind him. He sent out his mind, calling for the crane to come quickly, to hurry over now. Danger! Terrible danger!
The window, and the wall around it, exploded outwards. Tian sensed more than saw knives flying towards him. They curved, flew straight, seemed to be reaching for every part of him. But if he dodged, they would shred Little Treasure. Tian didn’t try to get clever. Instead, he pulled out their fishing boat from a storage ring. The knives shattered the hull, but it broke their momentum.
It also blocked their vision. He flung out his Heavenly Swallows to his right, even as he ran left. “Hide under the boat, both of you!” The bald man sneered as he flung another knife at Tian’s face before pulling out a hatchet. Tian slipped the curving knife and rushed in. The hatchet rose to parry a suddenly striking rope dart from Tian’s sleeve.
“Hidden weapons against the Black Acacia Gang? You are courting-” The invisible darts slammed into the bald man’s temple, sharp metal qi piercing thin bone and destroying the brain behind it. Tian ripped the darts away with a hard flex of his vital energy, even as he kept his rope dart spinning.
The world went white, there was a sudden ringing in his ears, dizzy, he nearly fell over. The pain in his meridians made him gasp. His long soak in the yin pond hadn’t been as healing as he had hoped. The three men jumping out through the hole in the wall looked delighted, however.
“I see you aren’t doing too well. Tell you what, kill yourself, and I’ll leave you an intact corpse. You won’t get a better offer today.” All three had shaved heads, looking less like a monk’s tonsure and more like a blister or infected growth rising from the neck. Revolting and unnatural, and their leering grins said plainly they liked how they looked.
“There are no grudges between us. Why do you do this?” Tian asked, keeping the rope dart moving. The men hadn’t stopped either, spreading out, pulling out hatchets and short, heavy knives.
“Grudges? We love you. We love you, your little female friend, your bird. We love you so much!” One of the bald men giggled, moving to put Tian in a three way pincer with the others in the gang. Tian, for his part, couldn’t move too far from the overturned boat.
“Strange way of showing affection.”
“Five hundred spirit stones a head. Two thousand for the three of you if we take the crane alive. It seems someone fancies a new flying mount. Rest assured, our love is entirely sincere.” The man moving around to his back had a serious face and a serious voice.
Tian’s eyes narrowed slightly. Their voices weren’t similar, they were identical. The tone and manner of speaking changed, but the voice didn’t. Same with their faces- each wore a radically different expression, but it was the same face over and over again. “You are… triplets? No, there was a fourth baldie, quadruplets?”
“Hehehe. There are more arts in the world than your mountain would like to admit. It seems your fellows aren’t coming to your rescue. The offer is still open. No? Pity.”
The three struck with easy coordination- two from the sides, one from the front. Tian kept the boat at his back. It wasn’t much of a wall, but it was all he had. The rope dart twisted and flew out, the rope hooking on his elbow and getting yanked back in time to be kicked over into the face of another rushing bandit.
Injured or not, Tian had spent years using a rope dart. He had long since transformed it into another limb. A hatchet came in from the left. Tian shifted right as his foot snagged the rope and whipped it up from directly underneath the arm to wrap around the wrist. Then Tian stomped down on the rope and reversed direction, slamming his elbow into the bald man’s temple as his arm was yanked out of position. Then a wide, thick knife stabbed at his gut and Tian had to shift forward and right again, unable to capitalize further on his strike.
He dodged the knife. He didn’t slip the kick that slammed into his ribs. He could feel them creak, the air driven from them. He returned the favor by grabbing the leg and stepping backwards again as he twisted the foot as close to a full rotation as he could manage. The bald man swore and tried to flip in the air. Tian stopped his rotation, then turned the foot in the other direction. just in time to block a chop from the knife with the bald man’s calf.
A woman strolled out of the hole in the wall of the inn, drinking in the scene. Bald, tattooed, and he couldn’t keep an eye on her because the thugs never let up.
Something hit the back of his head. Stars burst in purples and blues and whites across his eyes and he staggered forward. He tried to whip his dart around, build some distance, but without Snake Head Vine Body, he just didn’t have the space to build up momentum. Without momentum, he was just waving a rope around.
“Don’t run! If you run, we kill the kid first, then your little eunuch slave!” The woman yelled, as a baldie rushed in, swinging his hatchet at Tian’s neck.
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Tian didn’t bother speaking any nonsense. He just did his best to sway back from the blow and countered with a savage kick to the bald man’s nuts. That was the thing about hatches and knives. Not much reach. Tian might not be able to use his arts, but he hadn’t been cultivating his body just for the fun of it. He kicked the man hard enough to lift him off his toes and leave him kneeling and vomiting on the ground.
“Bastard! How dare you?” The bandit who got cut across his calf was up and moving again. Tian could smell the blood clotting powder on him. He was well back, thrusting carefully with a narrow black spear. Not trying to finish off Tian, just disrupt him, pin him down enough for the others to finish. They were moving more cautiously too- Tian tried to get his rope dart into the one rolling up off his knees, but the bandit managed to deflect the dart with his hatchet. The fluidity of the move made it clear the bandit had been ready for it.
Tian narrowed his eyes slightly, whipping the heavy dart around his head. They weren’t going all out. Which made sense; they were here for a pay day not to risk their lives. But they were also close to the Convent. Even dead drunk, the Sisters would be here pretty damned quick once they knew bandits were in town. So why…
A trap. It was a trap. He tried to warn the crane, but couldn’t reach her. There was a soft laugh drifting over the air and piercing his ears. “Sorry, my array just activated. It seems your second message didn’t go through. Oh dear, so sad, oh well.” The woman’s voice might have been pleasant in another setting.
“Do we have to keep dragging this out?” The bandit was still hunched over, even though he was on his feet now.
“A little bit longer. To kill the bandits you must capture their king, right?” The woman leaned against the wall of the inn, as bald as the others, but Tian noticed she had tattooed a thorn tree on her head, stretching from one side over the top, around her face and across the back of her skull. Spiderwebs hung between the branches of the trees, and Tian could see living things still thrashing in them.
She laughed, and the bald bandits laughed with her in perfect synchronicity. Each face twisted into a different expression- cold indifference, leering cruelty, innocent joy. The woman was smiling too, and her smile told Tian she enjoyed this, enjoyed every part of it, enjoyed it in ways he was glad he didn’t really understand.
“Filth!” An outraged woman’s voice, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the bandits.
“Oh, here comes your-” She stuttered. Tian felt the qi in the air violently contort, as something invisible broke.
“Now, Sisters!” Tian heard Liren roar and come charging in. He couldn’t take his eyes off the bandits. Little black spots covered their bodies and faces, the skin stretching up, then long thorns pierced the skin from within. Trickles of blood and lymph turned them into bloody creatures, demons of suffering.
“That was unwise.” The bandits, male and female, spoke as one. “That was very unwise. Now I can’t let any of you live.”
“Were you going to anyway?” Tian asked. The Sisters from the Convent rolled into the clearing outside the inn, alcohol burning away, eyes filled with fury. Iron bars and heavy staves were popular accessories amongst them, as were long glaives and heavy armored gloves.
“You misunderstand. I was just going to kill you, the boy, the eunuch and the girl. The crane was going to be someone’s broken little pet. Now I have to kill everyone.”
The ground exploded. Small creatures made of vines and thorns all long and wet and inky black, burrowed up from the ground. Even now, even with them in front of him, Tian could hardly feel a difference in their qi from the trees and shrubs that lived all through the town.
“I’m going to kill the whole town! I’m going to kill everyone in the convent! I’m going to kill the dogs and chickens and cats and rats! I will hang you all up on my thorns and watch you struggle and die!” More “bandits” came jumping out of the inn, spikes growing from them as whatever was within them discarded their human disguise.
Tian was lost, spinning in the horror of the moment. The horrors turned towards him. They reached for him!
Chant! Your mind is under attack! CHANT!
Tian staggered back, his hand coming up and he started counting on his rosary. “On, Ran, Cho, Sa, Ni, Re, Hu, Vo, Ti, Lu, Xha…” The shapes shuddered and twisted. Whatever it was, it was fighting him. He kept at it, pushing as hard as his burning meridians could stand. This wasn’t real. This was an illusory array, and his sisters were under attack. So he could stand this pain, and poured all that emotion into his chant.
It wasn’t an art, exactly. Tian always wondered why it wasn’t something everyone could do.
“Oh, none of that!” The once female bandit almost yelped. Tian’s rolling chant was making the bandit-monsters twitch and spasm. Perhaps it was the illusion breaking down, or perhaps it was something else. Tian kept his mind on the elemental sounds he was making. It wasn’t his job to kill. It was his job to break the illusions. His good sisters could handle the killing just fine.
The monsters clearly agreed with his assessment. A silent signal passed between them. A spiky vine-horror leapt from the ground as the three bandits surrounding him lunged in, eager to kill.
They were smashed back, screaming as bright yang qi ripped them open. A long spear with a bright red tassel swept the ground and rose with an emperor’s fury. With a single blow, it smashed apart the head of one bandit. It returned like the tide, and like the tide, came crashing out again to pierce another bandit’s head. Iron hard hands spun the spear, tearing out a throat before an iron hard foot smashed through the spikes and shattered a bandit’s spine through their intestines. The creature on the ground was crushed into vile paste with furious contempt.
Blue robes and a white veil fluttered in the wind. Tan hands flicked black blood from the bright spearhead, making sure it was ready to kill again. Hong Liren had arrived.