Sleet turned to freezing rain, slicking the blood-stained flat stone slabs of the central ring as the morning gong struck for the final four.
The Grand Imperial Martial Arena was packed to the low roof walls with fifteen thousand spectators. Despite the sub-zero chill, the air smelled of hot roast chestnuts, mutton fat, and the wet copper tang of frozen blood. Betting slips fluttered through the stands like autumn leaves as runners shouted changing odds. Pei Jing’s odds had dropped from thirty-to-one down to even money, his barehand dismantling of Lu Tian having shattered the country capital’s complacency.
On the south side of the ring stood Gui San, the “Poisonous Mantis” of the Shadow-Blade Pavilion.
He was a slight, wiry man of thirty-five, his skin sallow and oily, his back curved in a permanent hungry hunch. He wore loose, dark green silk robes that rustled softly in the wind, cinched with a wide sash of oiled pigskin.
In his hands, he held a pair of bronze hook-swords.
The weapons were three feet long. It ended in curved, vicious billhooks designed to trap weapons and gouge throats, with crescent moon-blades guarding the handgrips and dagger points jutting from the pommels. Along the bronze cutting edges, the metal was discolored. A faint, rainbow-bright greenish-blue film that gave off the faint, sickly-sweet aroma of rotting nightshade.
