The Grand Defile had ceased to look like a field of glorious martial conquest and now looked like an open-air confectioner’s workshop struck by a runaway cart of warm taffy.
Across an area three hundred yards long and nearly two hundred yards wide, the canyon floor was carpeted in a thick, quivering expanse of pastel-blue marshmallow jelly. Embedded within this fragrant, bouncy sea were five thousand elite fighters of the Orthodox Crusade, representing the finest martial bloodlines of Heavenly Sword Manor, Crimson Flame Pavilion, and Azure Cloud Sect.
None of them were dead. None of them were bleeding.
In fact, almost all of them were locked still in poses of deep indignity.
“Brother Han, stop kicking!” a sword student from Azure Cloud yelled, his muffled voice echoing from beneath a sticky mound of springy blue fluff. “Every time you kick, your boot stretches out a foot, snaps back, and slaps me directly across the ear!”
“I’m not trying to kick you!” Han shouted back, his face pressed sideways against the turf. “I’m trying to circulate the Golden Crane Wind Step! The manual says to channel qi through the heel to shatter physical bonds!”
“Well, your Golden Crane is slapping my ear with twenty pounds of mint-scented jelly! Cease your channeling at once!”
A few yards away, an elder deacon of the Crimson Flame Pavilion was stuck in a stance that defied the natural articulation of human joints. In his panic to dodge the first canister, he had leaped backward while attempting a mid-air spinning fire-kick. The honey-silk had caught his ankle at the apex of the arc. It pulled his left foot up behind his right ear before adhering firmly to the rock wall. He was now suspended three feet off the ground like an awkward temple acrobat, unable to lower his leg, his red robes hanging over his face. Meanwhile, his exposed hairy calf quivered with tiredness.
“Insolent demon spawn!” the deacon wheezed, his face purpling beneath his inverted hem. “Release me! Face me in honorable single combat, you coward of the wilderness!”
Lin Xiao walked slowly past the suspended deacon, hands clasped loosely behind the back of his azure linen scholar robes. He paused, tilted his head. Then he reached up with a gentle hand to tuck the deacon’s hanging hem securely into his sash so the old man’s dignity remained partially intact.
“Elder, shouting with your foot behind your ear is going to give you a terrible cramp in your hamstring,” Lin Xiao advised with genuine concern. “Take slow, even breaths. If you stop fighting the jelly, it will mold to your lower-back and provide quite pleasant lower-back support. It’s infused with mountain mint. It’s actually very good for soothing inflamed tendons.”
The deacon blinked through his sweat, his curses dying in his throat.
He waited for the painful burn of demonic corpse poison. He waited for flesh-eating maggots or rotting foul fog to seep into his pores. He had spent fifty years listening to sect lectures about the unspeakable cruelty of beast abominations.
Instead, the cool, springy jelly beneath his back felt... Extraordinarily comfortable.
It was softer than the stiff horsehair mattresses in the Crimson Flame elder dormitories. It smelled of wildflower honeycomb, toasted vanilla pods, and fresh meadow breeze. As his wild breathing slowed, the gentle warmth streaming from the ancient slime seeped through his silk robes, relaxing the knots in his lower spine that had bothered him since the autumn damp set in.
“What... What kind of cursed witchcraft is this?” the deacon muttered, his voice trailing off into confused confusion.
All around the defile, similar scenes of existential confusion unfolded.
Students who had spent months preparing for blood and slaughter found themselves resting upon what was effectively the world’s largest, softest communal daybed. A fighter tried to ignite an aggressive martial art. Each time, the non-Newtonian properties of the jelly hardened instantly to absorb the shock. That turned the violent moving burst into a harmless ripple of sweet-scented warmth before softening back into springy plushness.
Then, from the deep shadows of the northern pines, the wolves stepped forth.
Three hundred Shadow Gale Wolves emerged in utter silence. Their coats were glossy black, their broad paws moving across the sticky jelly with impossible, weightless grace as they used shadow-stepping to glide over the water’s skin. Silver lunar mist drifted from their tails, and their ruby-red eyes gleamed in the midday sun.
“The beast horde!” a young Heavenly Sword student shrieked, squeezing his eyes shut and pulling his neck into his gold-trimmed collar like a frightened turtle. “They’ve come to devour our entrails! Mother, forgive me!”
A massive shadow wolf padded up to the trembling youth.
The student braced for the tearing agony of fangs sinking into his throat. He held his breath, waiting for the cold embrace of death.
Click.
A soft, metal snap echoed near his hip.
The student cracked open one eyelid.
The terrifying wolf was not biting his throat. Instead, the beast had delicately clamped its front teeth around the leather strap of his sword sheath, cleanly unbuckling the brass clasp without scratching the silk of his tunic. With a practiced toss of its dark head, the wolf slid the golden flying sword free of its sheath. Then it dropped it gently into a large woven willow laundry basket balanced on the back of an accompanying bear-warrior.
“Good boy, Blackie,” the bear-warrior rumbled softly, patting the wolf’s dark flank before moving to the next trapped fighter. “Stack them neatly, blades pointing down so we don’t scratch the lacquer.”
The young student lay fully frozen, his heart pounding against his ribs.
The wolf looked down at him, its intelligent ruby eyes filled with what looked suspiciously like pity. The great beast extended a broad, pink tongue, gave the student’s tear-stained cheek a wet, comforting lick. Then gave a soft, friendly woof before bounding away to disarm the next row of swordsmen.
The student reached up with one sticky, trembling hand, touching his wet cheek.
“It... It licked me,” the youth whispered to his friend glued beside him. “The bloodthirsty shadow fiend just licked my face. It tasted like peppermint.”
“My sword is gone,” his friend whispered back. He stared into the sky with glassy, unfocused eyes. “They took my sword, put it in a laundry basket, and didn’t even steal my spirit stone pouch. What kind of demons are these?”
Through the entire meadow, the shadow wolves and bear-craftsmen moved with the calm, organized smooth speed of farmhands harvesting ripe melons.
They didn’t strike a single prisoner. They didn’t strip their clothes. They merely disarmed every locked still fighter, systematically gathering thousands of flying swords, daggers, brass formation compasses, and magic charm scrolls, stacking them neatly into padded wicker hampers to ensure no one accidentally hurt themselves while trying to wiggle free.
A crisp, semi-clear blue screen chimed into Lin Xiao’s vision:
Lin Xiao reviewed the tracking data with an approving nod.
Four thousand eight hundred and fifty swords collected without a single scratched finger, he thought happily. And their mental sour note is over ninety percent. That means their minds are ready for a hot meal.
“Host,” the Omniscient Dao Spirit noted in her cold and exact rhythm. “Disarmament phase is ninety-seven percent complete. The psychological breakdown of traditional conditioning is progressing according to optimal settings. Prolonged exposure to non-violent hospitality combined with high-grade sense comfort is actively neutralizing their hostile intent matrices.”
Near the edge of the circular sword fence that Gu Qingfeng had planted earlier, Sword Elder Bai Chong was sitting waist-deep in a mound of blue jelly.
His pride as a sword master of three hundred years had kept him from wiggling. But the sheer absurdity of the scene before him was doing far more damage to his soul than any blade could have inflicted.
He watched five thousand of the sect’s finest warriors lying peacefully in a sea of sweet marshmallow fluff. He watched terrifying shadow wolves acting like well-trained hunting dogs collecting retrieved fowl. And he watched Gu Qingfeng leisurely strolling through the rows, pointing out loose bootlaces and chuckling to himself.
“Senior Uncle Gu,” Bai Chong murmured, his voice hollow and exhausted. “Is this the demonic sky-trial we were summoned to purge? A meadow of warm honey and gentle wolves?”
Gu Qingfeng stopped beside Bai Chong, resting his weight on his trusty willow twig. He looked down at his former junior, his eyes soft with an old, weary tenderness.
“Bai Chong,” Gu Qingfeng said quietly. “When a man spends three hundred years locked in a gold-trimmed castle, staring at cold iron and listening to old men talk of divine supremacy, he forgets what the world actually looks like. He forgets that grass is soft, that spring water is sweet. That a beast has a heart that beats just like his own. You came here looking for monsters, nephew. But the only monsters in this valley are the ones Xuan Ji planted inside your head.”
Bai Chong closed his eyes. A single shudder ran through his lean, armored frame.
Before he could answer, the fragrant aroma of woodsmoke and wild herbs drifted over the ridge from the south, with the cheerful clanking of heavy bronze ladles.