Ke Sang smiled, a sound like an old crow’s croak: “I’m not here for him. I’m here for you.”
Xiao Nanhui pretended not to hear and continued limping forward. Her head was going numb; the figure before her seemed to loom like a towering demon-subduing pagoda that she could not get around no matter which way she turned.
She looked down — and Ke Sang’s foot was already pinning down the hem of her already nearly-disintegrated clothing.
She gave a sharp yank. The hem tore into two pieces. And this time what greeted her was a cudgel coming straight down at her head.
Xiao Nanhui barely managed to tilt her head to one side. The cudgel fell squarely on her shoulder, hammering her so hard she could almost hear her own collarbone crack.
Not a problem in sight, and then all the problems come at once. How could she be this unlucky?
Xiao Nanhui spat out a mouthful of blood in indignation: “Why do you keep making trouble for me?!”
“Woman — I told you before: I remember your face.” Ke Sang’s gaze shifted and came to rest on the flat-bow spear, and a gleam of excited greed gradually lit his eyes. “Such a fine thing, wasted in a woman’s hands. Why not give it to me.”
Left with no way to avoid this confrontation, Xiao Nanhui instead burst out laughing with cheerful recklessness.
“You have good taste, I’ll grant you that. But I have no intention of giving it away. As long as it’s in my hands — even if I’m only using it as a walking stick — it has nothing to do with you.”
Ke Sang said nothing. He slowly raised one foot, reached into the boot, and pulled something out, screwing it onto the long staff in his hand with a creaking, grinding noise.
That sound was exactly like something being screwed into her own bones.
Both her legs had been trembling steadily. The wounds on her ankles had gone numb. Which was perhaps just as well — at least it spared her the distraction. Whatever else happened, as long as the hand that held the spear didn’t tremble, that was all that mattered.
The sound of steel dragging across coarse gravel came rushing toward her, carrying with it a crushing surge of wind — like an enraged bull charging straight at her.
This was the sound of heavy weapons clashing against each other.
In the past, Yaoyi had always used this to mock her, saying it was a sheep bleating and an ox heaving — nothing like the clear, crane-like ring of a famous sword being drawn from its scabbard. She hadn’t agreed with him before, and had argued back.
But now she found she was beginning to come around to his point.
A sword’s killing aura was less oppressive. It didn’t press down on you like a spear, smothering the breath out of you. And sword techniques left more room for maneuver. Once a spear was thrust out, it almost always carried the unstoppable force of thunder — no retreat for either party. Calculated this way, the spear truly wasn’t something that made people like it.
The thought lasted only an instant, and by the time she returned her focus, Ke Sang’s iron spear was already coming straight at her face.
Blood loss made her heart pound like a drum. There were no thousands of troops around her and no soldiers, yet this was no different from a real battlefield.
She lost count of how many exchanges had passed. Her reactions grew slower and slower; his movements grew blurrier and blurrier in her eyes. She felt a flash of frustration — and by the time she registered it, both legs had collapsed to their knees on the Gobi ground.
“Woman. Finish yourself off. Don’t waste your effort.”
Xiao Nanhui seemed not to hear. She slowly rubbed both hands alternately on her clothing.
Too much blood had soaked into them, making them slippery and difficult to grip. She had nearly lost hold of the spear shaft.
Ke Sang watched in silence for a moment, then gave a cold laugh. He gripped his spear in one hand and began walking slowly toward Xiao Nanhui.
A weapon taken from a living person’s hands was far more interesting than one taken from a corpse.
The elegant and ancient pattern on the spear was soaked through with its owner’s blood by now, but it remained bright as snow.
A truly fine spear.
His hand reached out carelessly toward it, when the woman who had been kneeling motionless on the ground suddenly raised her eyes. Her elbow shifted with the smallest motion, and a tricky, horizontal sweep flew out, aimed straight at his throat.
The sharp side-edge of the flat-bow spear sliced open Ke Sang’s jaw, leaving a line of blood.
The strike missed its mark. Xiao Nanhui swiftly drew the flat-bow spear back and held it flat in her hand, doing her best to conceal her ragged, chaotic breathing.
“I began training with the spear at seven years old. The first technique they taught me was how to grip a spear. As long as I have a single breath left in me, no one can take this spear from my hand.”
It was a pity, she thought — if she weren’t already at the very end of her strength, that strike might well have taken his life.
The expression on Ke Sang’s face finally showed a flicker of shame-turning-to-rage. She recognized that look well.
A powerful gust wrapped in blowing sand struck her full in the face. Xiao Nanhui closed her eyes.
The world darkened before her in that brief instant — but a clear, resonant note lit up her ears.
It was the sound of a zither. The note of high-pitched urgency.
In the next instant, that lingering note seemed to transform into the sound of something cutting through the air, passing from far away to very close — and landing hard beside her ear.
Xiao Nanhui opened her eyes. Something like a dot of crimson seemed to fall from her lashes.
Ke Sang’s face was no more than a palm’s width away — but the lacquered black arrowhead that had drilled out from between his two eyebrows was nearly pressing against her forehead.
The body, already robbed of life, knelt to the ground. The heavy mass raised a cloud of dust, and only the spear in his hand still leaned crookedly against the earth.
The wind seemed to pick up around them.
The wind carried that strange zither sound again.
This time it was the note of the tonic — the palace tone.
Before it even faded, a small dark cloud of arrows descended, transforming Ke Sang’s corpse into a sieve in an instant.
The arrow shafts, their momentum not yet spent, trembled before her eyes like a crow dipping its head to feed on carrion.
Xiao Nanhui looked past those arrow shafts toward the distant cliff face behind her. Between the red rocks, something square and black was embedded — and looking closely, she could see scales of light glinting: sunlight reflected off dark armor.
Three ranks of dark-armored warriors fanned out in sequence. The first rank held repeating crossbows with high tension. The second rank held iron-tipped grand bows. The third rank held long sunset bows taller than a man. The one thing they shared was that every arrow shaft in every hand was lacquered black as ink.
Ten thousand arrows released at once — like a murder of crows sweeping past in formation. Thus they were called: the Black Feather Division.
Now she finally understood why the Sun Mansion’s guards had been shouting “Tiancheng’s people are coming,” yet all along her path she had seen almost no Tiancheng soldiers at all — only a ground covered in corpses and arrow shafts.