Legend of The Young Master

Chapter 199: Familiarity Breeds Contempt

The Pavilion Mistress turned, and multiple chairs appeared. She sat in one of them. She wore elegant silk robes, and her foot, clad in delicate embroidered slippers, rested over the arm of the chair.

"You know, in old age, one doesn't easily adopt positions like this," she said happily. "Ah, to be young again." She leaned back. "You must have asked yourself many times."

"I've been largely trapped in his spell charms for many years," Xilai said. "But yes. I think of it now. All the time."

"I only know that in the months before the final battle with the demonics, he discovered something. Something terrible. I badgered him to tell me, and he would smile and tell me that I wasn't ready to understand it."

Xilai grimaced. "He never said as much to me."

The Pavilion Mistress nodded. "But now you know what he knew. I know it too, now. There aren't many secrets between us now."

"Yes," he said.

The Pavilion Mistress shook her head. "Any servant of the Order of the Lotus Sect knows that even if we are righteous, not every demonic is bad, and not every righteous is good. The most important thing is to use our wisdom," she said. "He was a fool who saw the world entirely in shades of black and white. He still is.

A staggering intellect, a tower of puissance, and no common sense whatsoever." She shrugged. "Enough chatter. My home is being blown to bits. Show me how to use our power to stop him."

"Like this," he said. "But it will be more efficient if you pass me power of array and I cast."

In a heartbeat – because in the conscious space, time had so little meaning – a grand palace appeared. They stood on a balcony of his great palace, looking out over the world of solidity. In his vision, Luding stood out like a beacon tagged in gray. Xilai pointed her towards the thing that had been her lover. She flooded Xilai with Qi power. He made fire.

✶ ✶ ✶

For the first time, Luding paused to raise a shield. His burst of temper was over, and Xilai's response had been respectable. No more, but no less. And the fortress's defenses were back. He had landed some good blows. But now he was risking himself for nothing.

He raised a second shield. Xilai's mighty blow rolled away like a child's stick on a knight's armor. Luding grunted. It might have been a laugh.

✶ ✶ ✶

Baijian's unconscious body took six men to carry, and Wuyi was unwilling to lose the horses that had been left for the Lower Town, so a party of archers cleared the town's upper gate and opened it. The group escaped behind the horses, and the Raid group went over the walls via ladders.

It was all going very well until the demonics struck back. His rear group was slow in forming – understandable, in the conditions – but suddenly three of them were down, dead, and a gleaming monster stood over them with a pair of wickedly curved axes gleaming in the soft spring moonlight. Xingjian – Yun Ming's attendant – and another Qi adept, his Qi armor opened as if he was wearing leather.

A third man was face down beside them.

The fear was like a waft of foul air. There were more demonics behind it – fluid and horrible, arresting and terrifying in their movements. And below them, a legion of swamplings, Duskreavers, and men poured into the town they were leaving. Just like that, Wuyi was alone. He had just summoned the Red Daoist and couldn't summon him immediately again.

"Run, little man," the demon whispered.

Wuyi reached the sacred chamber. He heard a voice from the statue's shadow, urging him to summon it since Valor was already summoned. Wuyi disagreed; the situation was bad but not desperate enough for him to summon his second trump card. He approached the chamber wall, and the Statue of Harmony rose from its platform and followed him .

He touched the wall, statue touching his shoulders and symbols on it lit up. He smiled and returned to the dark battlefield. His sword arm was bathed in silver Qi. The demon rotated its two axes, one over each wrist, and a black-red Qi light connected them.

"You!" said the demon. "Ahh, how I have longed to meet you, leader of the raiders."

Wuyi raised his blade in a guard position and cast his Qi. A beam of silver-white light rose into the night like a beacon and then fell to earth in the center of the town.

"Missed," hissed the demon.

Wuyi backed away rapidly. Above him on the trail, a crossbow bolt was loosed with a snap. The demon grunted as the bolt struck.

The demon let loose his own Qi. Wuyi caught it, marveling at the ease with which he fielded the blow. In this battle of Qi, his adversary's attack was like the cut of a sword. He caught it and parried it with a sword of his own Qi, flicking it away. But the demon followed his Qi attack immediately with a heavy cut from his right axe.

It was not the first time Wuyi had fought a battle involving both Qi and physical attacks. He remembered the first time he'd stopped such an attack; he had been hit in the next instant due to the sheer pleasure of having accomplished it. Now, as then, he almost died through admiring his own cleverness.

If not for the Statue of Shadow cutting down the enemy at that time Wuyi had kept as backup, he might not have survived.

What was surprising was these demonics; their prowess was formidable. He was a Qi master, as were Baijian, Yun Ming, and Meiying, but none of them had the strength to face these demonics alone. Only his summons, capable of fighting Qi lords, could take on these demonics with ease.

Wuyi pressed forward into the attack. The demon's axe fell away harmlessly like rain off a roof.

Wuyi began to cut overhand, his left foot powering forward. He caught the growth of his opponent's Qi and turned the blow even as it was rising from his adversary's talons. The attack came in solidly, and he drove the power into the stones of the road between them. The road exploded, knocking him flat.

With a high scream, the demon leaped over the crater and swung both axes at once. Wuyi saw Jia step over him and catch both blows – one on his Qi shield, one on his sword. Jia staggered, but the blows fell away.

Wuyi backpedaled and got himself back. He rolled to the left, almost falling off the elevated road. The demon leader was pounding Jia with blow after blow, and the lad was standing his ground, pushing his sword and his Qi shield up into the blows, deflecting them, using the demon's strength against it as best he could.

The other demons were trying to get around the fight. Wuyi got his feet under him and cut at the demon from the side, but the thing parried his blow high with an axe blade – a horrifying display of skill – and flicked his weapon forward. It was all Wuyi could do to bat the blow aside.

Both fell back as the demon hammered blow after blow, one axe then the other, in an endless rhythm. It might have been predictable, except that it was so fast. And then, during the moment that Wuyi had one axe turned on his sword, and Jia had the other – just for a heartbeat – safely on his Qi shield—

Yun Ming punched his spear between them. The demon fell away, folding over the blow. But its armor – or its skin, or its demonic Runes of power – held. Wuyi stumbled back, and he felt Jia at his shoulder.

"Let me in," Yun Ming shouted. Jia slumped and Yun Ming stepped past him. Two demons leaped past their leader, who was just gaining his feet. Far above them on the fortress, the ballista loosed.

Thump-snack.

The ballista on the north tower loosed.

Whack.

The ballista on the towers of the Bridge Castle loosed.

Crack! Crack!

High above them, Xilai leaned out over the wall, hand in hand with the Pavilion Mistress like lovers, and spread his fingers.

"Illuminate my path," he said. The Lower Town seemed to explode as a hail of fire fell, a hand of fate that struck buildings flat. The demons were silhouetted in fire. At the back of their group, demons turned to see what had happened. Wuyi had to fight the vainglorious urge to charge them. He backed another step.

The two things came at them, and their terror even without help of statue ..

Wasn't as strong as it had been. Somewhere deep inside, or perhaps above, the fight, Wuyi had time to smile at the irony. The truth was he had lived his entire childhood in fear. He was afraid of so many things. Familiarity breeds contempt. He was used to acting while he was afraid.

He did not need harmony to face the terror that these demonics brought. It wasn't having any effect on him.