Legend of The Young Master

Chapter 208: Charge

The attack from Luding came. Array of the fort shook.

The Pavilion Mistress was with her group supporting the array, and she felt the assault on the members around her – felt them stumble. She raised her voice with those of her sisters. She could hear them, feel them in the Aethereal conscious space, she feel Xilai and Liwei too.

The gray qi was everywhere. Its demonic radiance was seductive and dangerous, the siren call of adventure to the young, to run away from work and go on an adventure instead. The Pavilion Mistress remembered her adventures – days passing forests and by the rivers, her body wet from a swim, her horse cropping grass . . .

Far, far away, the arrays that defended her house were—

Xilai read this attack by Luding, and its immense subtlety, and just as he was about to throw his counter, he saw the trap.

"Luding wanted him to swat the attack aside."

This attack was an insidious it was draining the power of array in fort. It's unique working struck directly at the array from all sides and drained its strength put the one defending the array in difficult situation too. The craftsmanship was magnificent. The power involved was majestic.

And any counter – any reinforcement – would drain away with the array's power themselves, into the hungry maw that awaited.

"If I survive this, I'm going to learn that attack," Xilai thought.

He took his narrow sword of bright blue power, and severed the Pavilion Mistress's connection to the fortress array. She was going to be pulled in by Luding.

The fortress array fell. Luding gave a grunt of satisfaction, tempered by knowing that Xilai had done the only thing he could have to avoid being sucked down with them.

The tiny shadows danced around Luding's head, in the sudden accession of power – this ancient power, the very lifeblood of the array that had stood for centuries. It was bleeding into the ground at his feet, and his Qi bathed in it. The final collapse was like the opening of a window. There – and then nothing.

He didn't pause. His staff swept up, and he released his second attack – a simple hammer.

One Leg and Three Legs and the ballista and the top third of the great North Tower vanished in a flash of light. The explosion that followed destroyed every window in the fortress – the stained glass of the fortress became a hurricane of colored shrapnel.

Monk Zen, head down behind the altar below the great window, had his back flayed bloody. His robes were all but ripped from his body although his head and arms were covered. He screamed.

Wuyi reached into his sacred chamber and went to the wall. He funneled valor Qi through the wall.

Four feet below the duckboards at the base of his trench, beneath the swarming horde, ten fuses ignited simultaneously. Above him, in the fortress, a single massive pulse of power cut through the night air. The shockwave almost knocked him off Haruki's back. But the fuses were lit, and now—

"Now it was a hundred long heartbeats to Armageddon."

He had reached the base of the slope and now followed the path between the first of the blue lights, navigating the rubble toward the town's back gate. Haruki couldn't move quickly here, making this the weakest part of the whole plan. If he could see Luding, then Luding would see him. In fact, the whole point was for Luding to see him. Yet even now, the Yingmo were starting to shift their positions.

They must have already realized that their trap was set in the wrong place.

The enormous figures around the Luding were new. Luding had already struck the ballista and destroyed it.

"We're too late."

He was halfway across the town, with Haruki moving at a steady trot. One bad step on the rubble and he would be down. The risk was incredibly high. Fifty heartbeats. He turned in the saddle and looked back. Baijian was right behind him, and the sound of the column of warriors filled the darkness, which had been silenced by the force of the explosion.

He rose on the back of his horse as Haruki carefully stepped over a downed roof beam. The blue lights seemed to ripple, casting eerie shadows. Then, he was over the outer wall and into the field. Baijian followed closely, passing the wall right behind him. They reined in their horses together, preparing for the next move.

He turned Haruki and pointed his muzzle at the specter figure, now at eye level, just two hundred paces away across the plain. Behind him, his raid group formed into a wedge as they freed themselves from the tangle of rocks and roof tiles that had once been a town. In the dark, Wuyi thought,

"Damn, we're good."

He raised his right arm and took up a spear, even though he usually practiced with a sword. The spear was better for charging. He used a little valor qi, letting it flow through his arm to ignite the tip of his spearhead. It didn't just burn a little; it burned like a star. He swept his spear down, signaling Haruki.

The horse gave a small start and then went from a standstill to a gallop in just three strides, as if they were in a tiltyard. Thirty heartbeats.

✶ ✶ ✶

Luding watched the dark sun come at him, and he waited with a curious mixture of elation and loathing for the misshapen thing. It was like a man, but it was not like a man. He was some odd fusion of man and something else. Being righteous was far-fetched to Luding; Wuyi was not a proper human.

Wuyi was a fusion of demonic and something else, just like he himself was no more human but a fusion of human and ancient qi. He might have pitied Wuyi, but he hated him as well – because Wuyi's fusion was different from his. He was coming, just as his secret friend said he would. But not by the path He had said Wuyi would take. That meant the secret friend was compromised. And that meant .

. .

The dark sun held a power that shouted itself to every demonic creature on the battlefield.

This was his first clear look at the thing, and Luding felt a tingle—not of fear, precisely. But in that creature was something that bellowed a challenge to him, like a vast predator roaring defiance across the swamps of the Wild. Every demonic creature felt that call. Some flinched from it. Some were attracted to it.

That was the Way of the Demonic Wild.

...and so the dark sun must be a creature of the Demonic Wild, and that meant—

It was too fast. Luding's discovery came very, very late. He had allowed himself to ponder the thing's creation for long thuds of his great, slow heart, and in that time the man had crossed the ruins of the Lower Town like a Kwimok—so fast that even as his hidden ambush of Yingmo sprang from their concealment and raced to save him, they were already too late to strike a blow.

The wedge of warriors was past them.

"Something was slowing him!"

"Wench!" he roared in his head. "She was working her will on him—" He shook himself free of her enchantment, even as—

✶ ✶ ✶

Wuyi put his heels to Haruki's sides—just a pressure so that the great horse knew not to stint. This was going to be dangerous. Slowly, his horse was covered in red Qi. As Haruki absorbed Qi, its size grew and a horn appeared in the center of its head. This was first time he was going to use his spirit beast to full extent. Wuyi did not plan to but seeing the bodyguard's of Luding he had no choice.

Luding was standing facing the fortress, and his bodyguards of misshapen horrors were shoulder to shoulder, holding massive weapons such as spiked clubs, and wearing armor of wood and leather. They glowed, not with the normal gray of Luding's Qi, but with a sickly putrescent color.

Wuyi had hoped to save his spear for Luding, so he gave Haruki the sign to put its head down. He flicked his spear down, and the Dusha followed the spear tip, cutting up—

Haruki struck the Dusha as it parried the spear, so that the horn on his great horse's head drove into the monster's stone-armored chest like a spike. It was six inches long, sharp as a needle on its tip and as broad as a man's hand at the base, and the horse weighed more than the Dusha by several times.

The horn broke the stone plate in two and punched through its hide, shattering the bones of its chest. A level two beast, Haruki, fed on Wuyi's Qi for so long, was a beast on its own. It crushed the Dusha flat and planted a great steel-shod hoof precisely on its hips, the horse's charge virtually unimpeded by the collision.

Acting as a practiced spear master, Wuyi let his spear come down again. Luding was ten paces beyond his bodyguard, just turning to ward himself. He leaned forward, adding the power of his body to the weight of the horse.

By luck, or a last-second intuition, his spear struck home within a hand's span of where the ballista bolt had struck Luding hours before, and the spear attacked steely specter bones, rocking his enemy back. Luding tottered, reached out with his staff—

Fell backwards and crashed to earth.