Wu Hao threw himself back, falling onto his hands as he tried to avoid the sword cleaving down at him. It scythed down with a long trail of sunlight behind it, so bright that his eyes instinctively shut as he fell.

  The sword's tip tore through the rags on his chest, and left a blazing trail of heat carved into a line on his chest and stomach, pulling back before it tore into his crotch. If he'd been just a bit slower, it might have split him from the crown of his head down to his belly.

  It burned like hell, but Wu Hao managed to resist the urge to scream. Vague memories of having received Fire Resistance at some point came to mind before he dismissed them. Flames formed from qi were still flames, but unlike real flames they wouldn't cauterize the wounds or burn them shut. They'd just keep burning until all the qi was gone or the flames were forcefully extinguished.

  He tried to force just a little qi to the wounds, trying to make them close, but all it did was add fuel to the fire. They burned bright blue, scorching his flesh and making blood spurt from the wound on his chest.

  At that point, he did scream.

  The female disciple raised her sword again, and the only reason that she didn't manage to end Wu Hao then and there was that someone attempted to barrel into her.

  She'd only realized it too late, and didn't have the time to dodge, so instead she just planted her feet, blazed with that peach-scented qi, and threw herself forward with equal vigor.

  723, the one who'd tried to ram her, was thrown back. His blood-stained rags flapped in the wind as he flew before slamming back-first into a tree.

  He didn't get up.

  Wu Hao, meanwhile, had scrabbled up. But he'd also realized that he'd left the knife back in the carriage, and cursed.

  Then he tried to take stock of the situation before the female disciple was able to turn her attention back to him.

  Maybe Uncle Bai's fight against Ke Jiazhong was going well. Maybe it wasn't. All he could tell was that their respective scents of qi were still present and still seemed active. Where the rest of the deathsworn were, he had no clue except for 723, and trying to look around only showed him a vague mess of blood and flesh that he hoped were the porters' remains.

  He shook his head to clear it, even as the female disciple turned back to him. That was another thing he'd missed, the reason for all the peach-scented qi.

  There had been two martial artists, not one as he'd first assumed, and the other martial artist of the Diancang Sect was standing opposite from him.

  She didn't look much like Ke Jiazhong. He had an elegant demeanor, with his golden hair neatly combed, his clear green eyes, his clothes free of stains and creases and dust. Ke Jiazhong looked like he'd just stepped out of a noble family's mansion or an official examination hall, and it looked like that was an impression he'd put some effort into presenting to the world.

  The woman - well, girl, she was about his age - didn't. She was short, for one thing. Her hair wasn't combed but instead in a wild, artless frizzle, with shocks of that same bright molten gold occasionally peaking out behind the coal black of her hair, and with hair ornaments arranged haphazardly. Thick eyebrows over brown eyes, tightly drawn into an expression of righteous fury and which were slightly red, gave her something of a wild appearance, like an angry raccoon.

  Peach juice stained her robe, which must have been cut specially to make place for her sizeable chest, but on the other hand blood stained her sword and the left side of her robes. That, combined with the leaves stuck in her hair and the way in which she'd appeared, told Wu Hao a story.

  He had a sinking feeling that those blood stains explained why 729 hadn't returned from his attempt to scout the area.

  "Wait," Wu Hao rasped, trying to buy time. "Shouldn't you introduce yourself first?"

  She scowled in return, but it did seem like he'd convinced her.

  "Du Linglong," she said, nodding her head just a little bit to serve as a bow. Her disgust was clear from her expression, and her hand remained on her sword even as she spoke. "Diancang Sect, inheritor of the Nine Suns Sword Style."

  Oh, he thought. She's not just a disciple but an inheritor of some art he'd actually heard of, she's got a title and she's confident enough to introduce herself with it. He knew what that meant, very well.

  Wu Hao had fucked up.

  He had - and there was no other way to say this - fucked up very badly.

  "721," he said, in response, trying to wrangle down the instinctive terror. "Red Dawn Sect."

  Her brows furrowed. It was cute, and it might have been cuter if she hadn't been trying to cut him just seconds ago.

  Some distant part of Wu Hao noted that absently, even as his hands clenched. He wanted his knife, but he didn't even have anything that vaguely served the same function. Without it, he had only a single technique to his name - an earth-tier fist technique. It'd sufficed against 726.

  It wouldn't suffice. That much was very, very clear to him.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "You tried to free the prisoner," she told him, raising her sword again and drawing back into a martial stance. Her feet had been planted, and she lowered herself slightly to present a slightly lower profile.

  Then her hands gripped the sword even tighter. "And you killed Boss Lu. He had a family. He treated me like his own granddaughter."

  Wu Hao wanted to protest that he hadn't - he didn't even know which of them had been Boss Lu - that it'd been Uncle Bai's fault, that he'd commanded them to go do this, that they hadn't had a choice - but the words turned to ashes on his tongue.

  "Why?"

  He wished he knew.

  Du Linglong held the sword raised up, so that its tip aimed straight at Wu Hao's heart. A final request to tell her, but he just couldn't. Her lip quivered.

  But the sword didn't waver.

  "Die," she commanded, and then she blurred into a line of sunlight as her sword tore through the air.

  Wu Hao had to dodge immediately, instincts screaming, but his foot had barely moved to step back before she was already on him. She was fast - not as fast as Xing Zhao had been, but still faster than he was.

  She slashed out, not big swings but precise movements where each movement flowed naturally into the next. It wasn't a technique, but each slash rang out with thick lines of sunlight that blazed in his vision so hard that he could trace the path of her sword with his eyes closed.

  Backpedalling, he threw himself behind the broken carriage, buying himself just a moment to breathe. Dozens of little flames littered his arms, hands, and he'd only narrowly avoided several cuts to his face. They all fed back to the big cut in his chest, the flames flickering over his skin and leaving burn marks across his rags that torched his skin.

  He hissed, feeling the pain crash through his heat resistance.

  No choice, then. A strange feeling of resignation almost ran across him before he bit it down and focused inside of him. He saw Du Linglong vault over the carriage, twirling around in the air and landing atop the carriage.

  Wu Hao unchained the limiter in his heart, feeling utter freedom blaze through his body in its harmony of bliss and pain. The qi blasted from his core, cracking through every restriction in its path, and despite everything he couldn't help but crack a sickly grin. The flames on his body roared as if to announce his presence.

  With one hand, he took firm hold of them and drenched his hand in qi, plucking them like they were living things and then squeezing them to death.

  It hurt. It hurt more than the actual flames did.

  He could feel the skin of his hand melting even as it reconstructed itself. Panting, he stared up at Du Linglong, who seemed stunned at what he'd just done. Then her face set into an even more sour look, if that was possible.

  She launched herself at Wu Hao with a perfect application of qi in a movement technique which left a long line of sunlight behind her, looking like a ray of light was fired at Wu Hao.

  So he jumped over her, forcing the qi to his feet and rocketing up into the air. Xing Zhao had just waited for him to touch down, so he hoped -

  Du Linglong took another step even while flying, slammed into one of the trees, and even as it began to topple with a groan she'd turned herself around and fired her body like an arrow at him, even as he was spiralling in mid-air. Her sword was pointed at him, again ready to pierce his heart.

  Panicking, he forced his qi to his feet in a blind attempt to try another jump, but it fell away and he still didn't have any control over his descent.

  Inspiration struck and he tried to twist, using the qi not in an attempt to force himself up or down but to the side instead, and he barely managed to clear out of the way before the sword tore a long cut that trailled all the way up his arm.

  Blood ran from the wound, thick and red, but Wu Hao managed to land on his feet and jumped away again as soon he was able to. His improvised movement technique let him try to make a run for it, and he tried to track Du Linglong as she slammed into another tree and held onto another branch, waiting a single breath.

  But she was tracking him, too. He felt her gaze like a physical thing boring down into his back, before another burst of qi sent her soaring straight for another tree, landing feet-first with a deep thud of cracking wood and then launching herself again, like a human missile.

  So he ran, trying to get closer to the carriage.

  All he could hope for was that his knife was laying there, somewhere near the ground where he'd first fallen, and that getting the knife would allow him to be even slightly more of a challenge. Maybe he could free the prisoner, but -

  Another loud thud behind him as Du Linglong fired herself at him again. Her sword was raised, this time to perform a slash, and as he turned slightly to try and figure out when the best timing to dodge was he saw that thin rays of light had begun to wrap around her sword again.

  Shit, he thought. Shit shit shit.

  If he had one advantage, it was that she was avoiding killing blows. He didn't know if it was on purpose - to get information from him? - or because she didn't know how, but every single one of her blows left just a little gap to be countered. In theory. He didn't have the opportunity to actually make use of those, but he was certain of one thing.

  As she fought, as her eyes resolutely refused to move away from his, her resolve was building, and it wouldn't be long before she'd stop holding back.

  Grimacing, he felt another searing explosion of peach-scented qi behind him. This time it was aimed straight at him.

  So he turned, mid-step, and ignoring the pain as his ankles groaned, he forced more qi to his feet, extended a single fist forward, and launched himself with a qi explosion of his own.

  They slammed into each other with a loud boom, Wu Hao's fist slamming into the side of the sword with bone-rattling force. He could feel the bones in his hand crack and an eruption of pain burrowed into his brain, but he forced himself to ignore it.

  Instead, his other arm reached out and took hold of the hem of Du Linglong's robes. She hadn't expected him to try the same thing as her and he could see a faint cloud of pain in her eyes, which was swiftly making place for fury, so his opportunity was limited.

  He couldn't allow himself to think - thought itself would be too slow - he only had now -

  Pulling himself up over her even as they fell from the air, he tried to force her below him so that she'd slam into the earth first. Qi erupted from his back in a clumsy approximation of what he did with his feet, propelling them down into the earth with all the power he had at his disposal.

  Wu Hao had drawn so much qi that his vision began to blacken, like paper caught in a fire. He couldn't breath, couldn't think.

  Then - an eye-searingly bright streak of qi lanced through the dark. Du Linglong hadn't let go of her sword, but instead forced her qi through it, using every little bit of the sunlight that'd built up along its edges and expending it all at once in a swordstroke that hit the air. It was, quite literally, brilliant.

  And they rolled at the last instant.

  When Wu Hao hit the ground, back-first, the impact was so hard that he felt bones shatter, muscles tear, and nerves die. A giant cloud of dust blew up from them, as big as the one Ke Jiazhong had caused, if not bigger.

  The last of his qi began to rip its way out of his back, trying to repair the damage, but he knew it was impossible. He directed it upwards, instead, and felt a pleasant numbness ripping away his senses and taking away the pain. The last thing he saw before dying was Du Linglong rolling off of him, a single tear trailing down her face.

  Then her expression hardened into a determined look and she turned to go help her fellow disciple.