Path of the Sect Leader

Chapter 45: Black River Lizard – Final Part

The jade slip listed every scale on a Black River Lizard’s hide, but not a single word on how to kill one.

Seven heads bent together over the swamp’s stink, arguing until voices cracked. Everything else they could manage; the real problem was those damned back spines. To hurt the beast they had to close distance. Wind-Array Spirit Boats were built for distance, not dogfighting. One spine grazing flesh and the victim would melt before he hit the ground.

Yu Denou scratched his beard, then shrugged.

“My sword’s faster. I’ll be the bait. Keep its eyes on me up high; you lot gut it from below.”

Qi Xiu’s stomach twisted.

“This is Chu Qin business. Dragging you into the jaws… I can’t repay that kind of debt.”

Yu Denou waved it off with a careless grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I only have to annoy it, not hug it. Stay high, strike and climb; I’ve danced with worse.”

Qi Xiu stopped arguing. From his robes he drew a spare ash-gray first-grade robe and pressed it into Yu Denou’s hands.

“Wind barrier enchantment. Might buy you half a breath. Please.”

Yu Denou tried to refuse. Qi Xiu muttered something about it being surplus from another clan, practically trash. Only then did the wanderer accept.

Plan locked. Roles assigned. Pills and talismans handed out like new year candy.

Qi Xiu looked at the five pale but determined faces around him, drew a slow breath, and gave the order.

“Back the way we came. We hunt.”

Yu Denou shot forward on his sword, golden streak against gray sky. Zhang Shishi followed like a thundercloud. He Yu rode the center, ice Qi already crackling around his fingers; main spearhead. The rest formed a loose wedge around the genius. Yu Jing, boat ruined, trailed on a sluggish Spirit-Bamboo Kite, bringing up the rear.

They found the lizard exactly where they’d left it, sunning its anger on a mudbank.

Yu Denou announced their return with a roaring sword phantom straight to the face. The lizard bellowed fury; seven spines lanced upward. Yu Denou rolled, twisted, climbed; every spine missed by a finger’s breadth.

Now.

Zhang Shishi slammed his palms together. The stone cushion swelled to the size of a millstone and dropped like divine punishment.

Boom!

The lizard staggered, belly flashing pale for one heartbeat.

He Yu’s eyes narrowed to slits. Twin ice lances thinner than wrists but colder than midwinter speared out, punching perfect holes through soft underbelly scales. Blood hissed onto black mud.

Qi Xiu’s banner screamed. Pan Rong’s wood thorns followed. Everything they had crashed onto the wound in the same breath.

The lizard lost its mind.

Crimson flooded its eyes. Spines and venom erupted in a black storm that swallowed the sky.

“SHIELD!”

Zhang Shishi roared through bloody foam. Every drop of spirit power he owned poured into the cushion. It exploded outward into a wall of living stone three zhang wide, planting itself between his sect brothers and death.

Clangclangclangclang—

Bone spines hammered the shield like iron rain. Cracks spider-webbed across stone. Venom splattered harmlessly and steamed away.

The lizard charged, earth shaking, no longer caring about the mosquito overhead.

Yu Denou’s face twisted. He spat a curse and flung his hidden trump card; a golden date-pit spike no longer than a finger. It flashed once and buried itself in the lizard’s left eye with a wet pop. Eyeball and jelly burst skyward on a fountain of red and white.

The monster screamed; a sound to curdle blood; and stumbled.

He Yu swallowed another Qi Return Pill until his meridians burned, then shaped every last thread of frost into a single massive spear of ice longer than a man.

“Go to hell!”

The spear fell like a glacier’s revenge, ripping the lizard open from sternum to tail. Guts spilled in steaming ropes.

One more date-pit from Yu Denou. The beast crashed, twitched, and finally lay still; a broken mountain of meat painting the swamp in obscene colors.

The stone shield chose that moment to shatter into gravel.

Zhang Shishi’s eyes rolled back. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he toppled backward off his ruined boat, plunging toward the marsh.

“SHISHI!”

Qi Xiu dove, caught him bare inches above the mud. Healing talismans, life-preserving charms; he slapped them on like a madman.

He Yu landed hard, knees buckling, face splattered with lizard blood, looking half-feral.

The rest swarmed around their fallen senior brother.

Yu Denou dropped beside the body, two fingers to the neck.

A pause that lasted a lifetime.

“He’s breathing,” the wanderer announced, voice rough with relief. “Drained dry and backlash shock, but alive.”

Five chests heaved out the breath they’d been holding since the fight began.

On the stinking marsh, under a sky the color of old iron, Chu Qin Sect had drawn its first real blood together.

And lived.