When the gleaming blade tip punched up through a plank of the bridge, Xiao Nanhui’s thoughts drifted for a brief, unmoored moment.
That blade — it suited tonight’s moon perfectly.
A waning crescent.
Curved. Sharp.
With a tremendous crack, the pierced plank shattered into fragments, and two dark figures burst upward through the gap in the bridge. Why that particular plank? Because its position fell precisely between Ding Weixiang and Zhongli Jing — splitting the two apart in an instant.
The choice of breach point was truly cunning. Xiao Nanhui thought this, watching through the rain of falling wood splinters as Ding Weixiang’s face shifted slowly into growing alarm and shock — and somehow, she almost wanted to laugh.
Zhongli Jing’s body tilted off balance to one side, and the attacker’s blade followed after him like a silver fish leaping clear of the water.
Xiao Nanhui breathed a quiet, resigned sigh.
Well then — after everything they had been through together on this journey, they had come to count on each other. She could not truly stand by and watch someone die.
A powerful force struck Zhongli Jing from the side at his waist. Fine, scattered droplets of mist mingled with the stars above him and tumbled through his sight, and the ink-black night sky spun and wheeled before finally coming to rest. The man’s pitch-black pupils gave a faint tremor, then at last brought their unfocused gaze to rest on the strands of hair drifting before his eyes.
A woman’s arm — like a cord of supple steel wrapped in softness — locked firmly around his waist. A voice, steady and carrying a hint of exhilaration, sounded beside his ear.
“Hold on tight.”
The attacker had been a fraction away from success when his quarry vanished before his eyes. The next instant, a black shape came crashing down toward him from above. He thrust his blade up to meet it and slashed down hard — only for a cascade of ginseng roots and lingzhi mushrooms to come tumbling down over his head and face.
“What a waste!” Xiao Nanhui cried out in pained protest, though her hands never stopped moving — one arm keeping hold of Zhongli Jing, she launched a flying kick that caught the attacker squarely before he could dodge, sending him sprawling.
On the other side, the attacker locked in combat with Ding Weixiang heard the commotion and glanced back, just in time for his falling comrade to come crashing into him. Distracted for a split second, he took a blade across his arm.
The sudden eruption of fighting had the entire suspension bridge lurching and teetering on the edge of collapse. Of the four chains that had been anchoring both ends, two had already snapped. The remaining two were barely holding.
If this dragged on any longer, they would all die here.
Xiao Nanhui hauled Zhongli Jing up and broke into a run toward the far bank. While the attacker was still scrambling to his feet, she planted a foot squarely on him and trampled straight over.
Ding Weixiang saw her and immediately launched himself after them. The two attackers were right behind, hurling curved blades one after another.
A fierce rush of wind bore down on the back of Xiao Nanhui’s head. With both hands occupied, she bellowed at Ding Weixiang: “Block it!”
Ding Weixiang’s entire attention was on Zhongli Jing in that woman’s arms. Without drawing his blade, he threw his hand back to deflect the attack — but the curved blade skewed wide and sliced off half of Xiao Nanhui’s hair with a sibilant hiss.
Xiao Nanhui was incandescent with fury, but this was a life-or-death sprint, and she simply had no time to settle the matter with him.
With a sharp crack, another chain snapped. The entire bridge lurched and tilted catastrophically to one side. Xiao Nanhui looked back and watched as the wooden planks of the bridge tore away like dead leaves in a gale, section by section, plunging into the raging river in the gorge below. The collapsing bridge came rushing toward her. She flung Zhongli Jing toward Ding Weixiang.
“Your person — catch him!”
Ding Weixiang scrambled to catch the man, found his footing, and leapt toward the end of the bridge.
At the bridgehead, Bolao stared at the collapsing bridge, the world spinning around her, and could only shriek at the top of her lungs: “Hurry! The bridge is going down!”
Xiao Nanhui, still fleeing for her life and ducking the blades whipping past her head, screamed back in fury: “You think I don’t know?! A rope! Throw a rope!”
Bolao wheeled around and dug through the luggage to find a length of rope used for lashing cargo, channeled all her strength into it, and threw.
Ding Weixiang, closest to the bank, cut in and snatched the rope first, using Bolao’s pull to carry Zhongli Jing safely to the far side.
Bolao reeled in the rope and threw it out again toward Xiao Nanhui — but midway through the air, the rope was sliced clean in two by one of the attacker’s curved blades. This happened again and again, and with each attempt the rope grew shorter. Xiao Nanhui wheeled around and swore: “Damn you!”
The attackers answered with two blades apiece. Now all three of them were balanced on only a single remaining chain. Whether it was the attackers’ strikes or Xiao Nanhui’s own evasive moves, they all performed like acrobats in a troupe — and that last chain could not hold much longer either.
The attackers seemed resolved to drag at least one person down with them, and simply would not relent. Xiao Nanhui seized an opening, spun around, and yelled at Bolao: “Cut the chain!”
Bolao hesitated and did not move at once. Xiao Nanhui urged again: “Cut it — now!”
Before the words had fully left her mouth, Ding Weixiang had already drawn his blade in a flash. The air rang with a sharp, metallic shriek — and the last iron chain of the suspension bridge snapped clean in two. All three figures on it plunged at once into the mist below.
Bolao’s eyes went wild. She whirled on Ding Weixiang: “I told you to cut it and you actually cut it?!”
Ding Weixiang pressed his lips shut and said nothing, grabbed Bolao before she could throw herself off the cliff, and gestured for her to look toward where the bridge had fallen.
All three of them at the bridgehead held their breath and looked down — and then, cutting through the mist, a silver streak of light shot out.
Three crisp, rapid sounds: crack, crack, crack.
In an instant the silver light expanded to several times its original length, driving into the cliff face like a bolt of lightning.
Rocks and pebbles tumbled free. The mist, fine as gauze, parted on either side — and there, revealed by the moonlight, was a gleaming silver spear.
An instant later, a pair of hands followed it — and Xiao Nanhui seized the spear’s shaft with both hands. Her plummeting body stopped dead in midair.
Under the pull of gravity, the steel spear shaft bent into an impossible arc, throwing back the moonlight in a blaze of white — like the crescent moon, rising.
In the next breath, using the force of the shaft’s rebound, Xiao Nanhui vaulted upward from the cliff face, pulled the spear free from the rock with a backward sweep, and drove it into a higher point in the same motion. One recovery and one plunge later, her hands could reach the top of the cliff. Bolao and Ding Weixiang each grabbed an arm and hauled her up from below.
Xiao Nanhui lay on the ground heaving like a dead fish for a moment, then slowly pushed herself to her feet using the spear as a support.
“In all the days we traveled together, I never once saw Brother Yao’s weapon. Now that I have — it truly is extraordinary.”
Xiao Nanhui looked at the one who had engineered all this and put on that expression of theatrical admiration, and her anger surged. “And isn’t that entirely thanks to Brother Zhongli? If not for Brother Zhongli’s talent for drawing in all these black-clad friends, I wouldn’t have needed to resort to such a desperate move just to survive.”
Ding Weixiang, hearing this, immediately showed his usual true colors of fawning devotion. “If Brother Yao is so capable, then why, back in the swamp, did you need our lord to rescue you?”
Bolao reacted as though she had just heard the funniest thing in the world, making no effort whatsoever to conceal her disdain. “Your lord rescued her? He just wanted that wretched stone!”
This time, Ding Weixiang was genuinely enraged. The customarily pallid face actually flushed with a touch of color. “What nonsense are you spouting?! My lord had already known long before—”
“Wei Xiang.”