There is no surer method of death than ruining a woman’s hair. -A common saying around the world

  Xinya was furious, and she wasn’t afraid to let everyone know it. Her wrath was that of the heavens, the divine justice of lightning, the celestial will of the universe. Moreover, it was her will.

  The light is my shield. Patience and control are my blades. She repeated the mantra Yoru had taught her at the beginning of her cultivation journey, altered slightly to match her path rather than his.

  Yoru might have been afraid of his anger, thinking it would lead back to his own madness, but Xinya was not. Her anger was a part of her, and it was a tool like any other. Her heart was true, and she was guided by the will of the heavens. With lightning as her ally, how could anger be a bad thing, so long as she controlled it like any other blade?

  As she glared down the oni that stood opposite her, she felt her fury grow inside her and directed it towards the lightning within her. The lightning, in turn, was guided by moonlight, taking whatever shape and composition that Xinya wanted. She could create lightning that had no shock just as easily as she could create lightning with no sound. Someday, she even hoped to be able to create invisible lightning, though subverting the light aspects of her qi was not something in her reach just yet. For this enemy, she was not willing to pull any punches. The fury within her was hot, and so too, would be her lightning.

  “I said, get off my pin,” she growled one more time. When he did not react, her patience ran dry. She stomped her foot, a gesture that might have looked like the tantrum of a petulant child, except for the bolt of pure lightning that streaked down from the heavens to slam into her opponent.

  The bolt was brilliant, but there was no shockwave accompanying it. The spectators covered their ears, but they did not get forced back as Xinya redirected the power behind the lightning into its burn. The Chikara Chief seized and grunted as the smell of burning flesh filled the air. Not waiting for him to recover, Xinya lunged forward, striking him in the solar plexus, just like Yoru taught her. Her small force was not much, but it was enough to force him back a step.

  Xinya stooped to pick up her pin. The coral shaft was snapped in three places, and the dangling silver was bent and mangled. Tears stung her eyes, and she fought them back. This was not the place for tears, even as she stared at one of the last connections she had back to Saikan, broken beyond repair.

  “You’ll pay for that!”

  “QUIET!” she snapped, her voice laden with qi such that it crackled like lightning. The oni chief flinched.

  “I…I will not be ordered around by a child!” With a long motion, he drew his saber from its sheath. The gathered spectators gasped. Out of the corner of her eye, Xinya could see both Lin and Yoru take a step forward, only to be held back by Satoro.

  It was not an honorable move. Xinya had no weapon of her own. As her Master, it was Yoru’s prerogative to give her her first weapon. That he hadn’t meant that she wasn’t ready for one, something she accepted, even though in this moment she dearly wished it wasn’t the case. The drawing of a weapon turned this fight from honorable and fair to deadly and unbalanced.

  “Father, don’t!” said the young master of the Chikara, Shion, she thought his name was.

  “I have been humiliated enough!”

  He lunged at her, swiping with the thick blade. Xinya ducked beneath the blow, her mind racing as she tried to figure out what to do about her current predicament. The blade twisted around, darting back towards her. Blow after blow came, each one fueled by his blinding fury. Xinya could see the blade in his hand turning red with the fire of his qi. If she was hit even once, it may ruin her chances of winning the fight.

  “Use speed to your advantage whenever possible,” those were the words of Shen Taihua, her only remaining blood uncle. At the time, she lacked the qi and control to truly implement those words. She was small, and her opponent was much bigger than her.

  As a Silver, qi flowed through every inch of her body. Her meridians flowered like lightning, spreading from her core and forking to feed her limbs. She focused on it, letting that lightning fuse into her muscles. It was time to end this.

  If it weren’t for Satoro holding me back, I would have jumped straight into the middle of that fight the moment the Chikara Chief drew his saber. The thick blade had more than enough heft to it to seriously hurt my Xinya if she was hit.

  “Don’t,” he warned. “Interfere, and the old ways will declare him the winner, even if he is an honorless rat.”

  Such were the ways of the Oni. As with many yokai, power meant more than honor. The powerful were not questioned. Their reputations built on fear, rather than respect. So, I held my position, carefully counting the seconds and minutes as they passed, and ready to Flash Back the moment the fight turned poor for my precious niece. And, if it came to that, there would not be a force in the realm that would stop me from chucking him head-first into the void.

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  It would be close. The Chikara Chief had power on his side, swinging his blade with enough speed and strength to cut the eleven-year-old’s head clean off. She ducked and dodged, but her position was not a good one. I bit down on my lip, trying to remain calm in the face of the danger. Xinya did not need me distracting her.

  “Come on, you can do this,” I muttered under my breath, hoping that she could hear. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Shi Reili’s shade sitting on a rooftop, also watching the battle unfold.

  Without warning, Xinya’s qi surged with lavender light. The embroidery in her dress flashed with actual lightning as sparks coursed over her entire body. It filled her eyes with electric fury, and trailed off her every move, leaving sparks in her wake as she moved incredibly fast. In fact, she moved so fast that I doubted that the Chikara Chief could even keep up with her movements.

  She darted inside the range of his blade, ducking under his arm and into the relatively safe space behind him, but she didn’t stop there. Xinya continued sprinting with the power of lightning fueling her steps until she reached the edge of the spectators. There, Chikara Shion stood, glaive in hand, despite the fact that he could no more interfere than I could. Xinya’s hand latched onto the weapon, yanking it from the young oni’s hand. Weapon in hand, she dashed around the edge of the courtyard until coming to a dead stop on the far side.

  Lightning crackled off her in lavender and plum-colored sparks. Her eyes were dark as she glared at the man who had not only ruined her favorite hairpin but also dared to fight her with dishonor. The lightning within her visibly empowered her to smite such a treacherous foe.

  The Chikara Chief recovered and set his saber in an offensive stance before sprinting across the courtyard at her. He dragged his blade across the stones, creating sparks that ignited into an inferno along his blade, but Xinya showed no fear.

  She raced forward, lightning coursing from every inch of her skin and clothes. Just before the two crossed blades, Xinya slammed the butt end of the glaive into the ground, using her momentum and speed to launch herself into the air.

  I held my breath, eager to see what she was setting up. The girl twisted mid-air, and a small cloud of black clouds formed overhead. In the next instant, she was falling, streaking towards the ground surrounded by shimmering lightning which shot through the glaive. With a shout, and a thunderous crash of lightning, Xinya slammed the glaive into her opponent.

  This time, she didn’t bother removing the shockwave from her bolt. The courtyard exploded in a shower of stone and dust, and the onlookers all turned away, save for Lin, Satoro, and I.

  When the dust cleared, the Chikara Chief lay on the ground, his body still twitching from the shock. I didn’t know if he was alive, and frankly I didn’t care. Xinya stood next to him, glaive in hand, and sparks dancing in her eyes.

  Never before had I been so proud of my niece than seeing her standing over the body of her foe with all the superior fury of an Ascendent.

  “Chieftain Chikara has been defeated,” Iza Kirana announced. “The victor is Lang Xinya, fighting on behalf of Kaishin Satoro.”

  With the announcement, the battle was officially over. Xinya blinked, and the lightning faded from her just in time for me to wrap her in a tight hug.

  “You did it!” I said, squeezing her tightly. “I’m so proud of you!”

  “You…you are?” she asked, as if it wasn’t completely obvious to everyone around us.

  I pulled back, looking into her violet gaze and trying to fight back tears. “Of course I am!”

  “But, my technique didn’t work?”

  “Which one?” I asked, unsure of what on earth she was talking about. “You did brilliantly!”

  “I was trying to use Heaven’s Rain with the last strike, but it didn’t work. The blade didn’t split.” She frowned, and I tried to bite back laughter as I pulled her into my arms again.

  “We can work on that. I thought it was something else entirely, and your trick with the lightning speed was wonderfully executed.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “But, what about the pin. You bought it from Madame Meng, in Saikan,” she said, pulling the broken shaft from her sash. She was on the brink of tears, but I just wrapped a hand around hers and let my qi flow. When I released it, a new reality replaced the old one, and the pin was whole in her hand once more. With a gentle motion, I slipped it back into place in her hair.

  Xinya’s smile was brighter than the moon itself. I carefully preserved that moment in time, eager to hold it forever in my heart.

  “You did wonderfully, Xinya,” Lin praised. “I didn’t have my first duel until I was twenty, and you handled that with far more confidence and honor than I did. You do us proud, and you do your parents proud in the afterlife.”

  “I knew it was a good choice to pick you as champion,” Satoro mused. “Good job, Xinya.”

  The girl blinked at him. “That’s the first time you called me by my name.”

  “Of course. You just earned it.” Satoro’s answer was half-hearted as he examined the Chikara Chief. With a swipe of Heixin, he severed the oni’s head from his body. “Just to be sure.”

  Lin and Xinya looked startled by the sudden death of the Chief, but I didn’t flinch. This fight was done by the old traditions of the oni people, a race that was notorious for their strength and violent tendencies. If Satoro, as the most ancient of them all, said that the Chief must die to fulfill the right, then who was I to question him? Even the Chief’s own son and daughter didn’t flinch at the action. There was clearly little love lost between them and their now deceased father.

  Satoro beckoned the young oni forward. As Young Master, Shion had the highest authority of the Chikara, yet he kept his head bowed as he approached his elder.

  “You know what this means, right?” Satoro asked. “Are you going to challenge the outcome?”

  Shion exchanged a look with his sister before bowing. “No, Grandmaster Kaishin. The battle was fought well. The former chief will be stripped of his titles, and for his dishonor, he will be removed from our family records.”

  “Good.”

  Shion then turned to Xinya. “This battle was fought in the name of the old ways. Every oni knows what this means.” He knelt, kowtowing fully before the lightning artist. “The Chikara Oni now recognize the authority of Chieftess Lang, the Raijin Princess.”

  discord!