The words fell upon Sword Elder Bai Chong like an avalanche of freezing snow.
“Bai Chong, little nephew... You still haven’t learned to relax your elbow when you draw from the left hip.”
The Glory of Morning Frost trembled in Bai Chong’s grasp, its starlight gleam wavering as the breath flow of metal-qi through his forearms sputtered and died. The tall, austere elder took a reflex step backward. His boots slid against the damp meadow turf. His sharp, angular face had drained of every drop of color. That turned as gray as the granite cliffs towering above them.
Behind him, an elderly deacon from the Azure Cloud Sect dropped his brass scrying compass into the grass with a muffled thud.
“That stance...” the deacon gasped, his voice cracking into a high, wheezing pitch that carried across three ranks of swordsmen. “The loose travel sandals... The green willow twig... The wine gourd with the chipped bamboo stopper! It’s him! By the Ancestors of the Eastern Sea, it’s Senior Martial Brother Gu! The Wandering Sword Saint Gu Qingfeng!”
The name blew up through the ranks of the Golden Sword Army like a sky war bell rung inside an enclosed cave.
Ten thousand swordsmen froze.
To the generation of students currently marching beneath Heavenly Sword Manor’s golden banners, Gu Qingfeng was not a mere fighter. He was a living myth. He was the peerless prodigy who, three hundred years ago, had split the Northern Sea Wyrm with an unsharpened iron rod. He was the righteous wanderer whose exploits were carved into the jade stele lining the Manor’s old family Hall of Heroes. Every novice who entered the sect was given a copy of the Thirty-Six Precepts of the Wandering Blade, written by Gu Qingfeng before he turned his back on sect politics and vanished into the western horizon eighty years ago.
For eighty years, Heavenly Sword Manor had taught that Gu Qingfeng had either climbed to the Upper Realm in a chariot of purple clouds or entered closed-door seclusion to guard the old family leylines.
Now, their supreme moral paragon was standing in the middle of a grassy defile, wearing stained green rags, smelling faintly of fermented peach wine, and holding a willow twig behind his ear while guarding an azure slime.
“Senior... Senior Uncle Gu?” a young core student stammered, his fingers falling away from his sword handle. “The Wandering Sword Saint is... Defending the demon lair?”
“How can this be?” whispered another student, his golden armor clattering as his knees knocked together. “We were told this valley was a pit of blood and bone! We were told an ancient fiend was skinning mortal travelers alive! Why is Martial Grandfather Gu standing beside him?”
The rigid sharp-angled discipline of the ten thousand Golden Sword fighters began to warp.
Rows of gleaming shields tilted sideways. Flying swords hovering above students’ shoulders dipped toward the grass, their golden light sputtering out as the fighters lost their mental focus. The sharp, uniform spiritual pressure that had dominated the canyon dissolved into a chaotic murmur of shock, confusion, and growing doubt.
High above on the floating flagship Sky-Cleaver, Grand Elder Xuan Ji nearly snapped the gold-trimmed stone railing off its mountings.
Veins bulged along the old man’s forehead like angry blue earthworms. His withered cheeks flushing was dark crimson. The sudden spiritual feedback from ten thousand wavering minds rattled the flagship’s master control magic charms, causing the vessel’s golden sails to flutter erratically.
Xuan Ji lunged toward the golden voice-magnifying magic charm array, his Core Formation amplified screech tearing through the canyon air:
“Lies! Deceit! Don’t listen to this terrible imposter!” Xuan Ji bellowed, spraying flecks of white foam from the corners of his mouth. “The true Senior Brother Gu climbed beyond this mortal coil decades ago! The creature before you is an ancient shapeshifting fiend. Or an old madman possessed by demonic heart-devils! He has fallen from the righteous path! Cut him down! Heavenly Sword students, advance and purge this traitor to the sect!”
Gu Qingfeng didn’t flinch at the ear-splitting screech.
Instead, the old drunkard picked up his chipped wine gourd, uncorked the stopper with his teeth. Then he took a long, lazy gulp of Jade-Dew Wine. He tilted his head back, savoring the fragrant wood-qi that spread through his chest, before spitting a mouthful of clear liquid onto the grass.
“Traitor to the sect?” Gu Qingfeng’s voice was neither loud nor strained. But infused with transcendent sword-intent, it cut cleanly through Xuan Ji’s amplified roaring. It echoed off every granite cliff edge in the Grand Defile.
“Xuan Ji, you old crow,” Gu Qingfeng chuckled, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “You always were better at shrieking than swinging steel. Two hundred years ago, when our Master lay dying in the Hall of Quietude, who was it that slipped Seven-Night Rotting Sand into his healing tea so you could seize the Elder’s Seal? Who was it that forged the row scrolls to banish the third branch students to the salt mines? You think because eighty years have passed, the mountains have forgotten your stench?”
The canyon plunged into dead, horrifying silence.
Even the mountain thrushes in the pine branches stopped chirping.
On the deck of the Sky-Cleaver, several senior deacons from the other allied sects turned their heads slowly. They stared at Xuan Ji with wide, questioning eyes. The rumors of Master Cang Hai’s sudden demise two hundred years ago had always stayed like a foul odor in the Eastern Sector. But no one had ever dared utter them aloud.
To hear it shouted across a battlefield by the sect’s most revered martial hero was like pulling the cornerstone from a grand marble palace.
“You... You slanderous vagabond!” Xuan Ji shrieked, his voice climbing into a ragged squeal. “Madness! He has gone fully mad! Bai Chong! Why are you standing there like a wooden post?! Charge! Form the finger bone! Trample them!”
Down on the turf, Bai Chong didn’t charge.
The Glory of Morning Frost hung limply in his right hand, the tip resting on the clover. He looked at Gu Qingfeng—really looked at him. He saw the familiar, easy stance. He saw the clear way Gu Qingfeng’s breathing synced with the natural ebb and flow of the mountain brook. That was not demonic possession. That was the purest attainment of the Dao of Flowing Waters.
“Senior Uncle,” Bai Chong whispered, his throat so dry it felt coated in fine sand. “Is... Is the sect’s cause truly unjust?”
“Look behind you, boy,” Gu Qingfeng said softly. He gestured with his thumb toward the valley basin. “You brought ten thousand swords to butcher monsters. Have you seen a single drop of human blood on these stones? Have you smelled corpse foul fog? Or do you smell warm roasted chestnuts and freshly picked mint?”
At the cedar table, Lin Xiao offered a warm, encouraging nod.
“We have sweet red-bean pastries coming out of the ovens in twenty minutes, too,” Lin Xiao added helpfully. He set down his empty cup. “With flaky lard crusts and toasted sesame seeds. It really is a shame to stomp around shouting when breakfast is practically ready.”
A soft chime rang in Lin Xiao’s mindscape as the Omniscient Dao Spirit processed the psychological state of the opposing army:
Lin Xiao noted the fluctuating numbers with quiet satisfaction. Fifty-eight percent pause index. That’s more than half the vanguard rethinking their life choices before noon.
“Affirmative, Host,” the Dao Spirit responded smoothly. “The core students’ spiritual deep ring with their formation magic charms has degraded significantly. However, hostile leadership displays signs of acute psychological collapse and panic-induced escalation.”
Indeed, high above, Xuan Ji had abandoned all pretense of righteous dignity.
The old grand elder pulled a crimson old family command tally from his golden robes. His hand shook with rage as he slammed it against the flagship’s central transmitter array.
“All vanguard regiments!” Xuan Ji’s voice was now a cracked howl that shattered the calm morning. “Disobeying the command tally is punishable by nine ages of soul scourging! Don’t look at the traitor! Don’t listen to his demonic whispers! Lower your pikes! Draw your backup daggers! Crimson Flame, Azure Cloud, surge forward! Trample the clearing through sheer numbers! Anyone who retreats shall have their dantian pulled out on the spot!”
The brutal weight of sect discipline slammed down on the crusaders like a heavy iron cage.
The young students flinched, their faces pale, their eyes filled with misery and terror. In traditional sects, the old family command tally was total law. To disobey meant being stripped of training and thrown into the frozen deep-sea mines for hundreds of years.
“Forgive us, Senior Uncle Gu!” a core student cried out, his voice choked with despair.
“Form ranks!” another officer bellowed, trying to mask his terror with volume. “Close the gaps! Move forward! Don’t let them speak!”
Driven by institutional terror rather than righteous zeal, the forward ranks of Heavenly Sword Manor, combined with the regrouping Crimson Flame fighters and the advancing wind students of Azure Cloud, surged forward. Five thousand heavily armored fighters crowded into the narrow bottleneck of the defile, their shields linked, their boots pounding the turf as they rushed toward the cedar table in a desperate, panicked stampede.
They bunched tightly together between the narrowing granite cliffs, five thousand men and women packed into an area barely larger than a village threshing floor.
Gu Qingfeng took a step backward, sighing as he uncorked his wine gourd again. “Pity. Fear always makes fools hurry to their own undoing.”
Lin Xiao gave a gentle wobble on his cushion.
“Don’t worry, Brother Gu,” Lin Xiao said with a small smile. He looked up toward the pine-crested southern ridge. “Old Man Tie has been waiting all morning for them to get into a nice, neat pile.”