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  I have always believed in the superiority of the mounted warrior over even a cultivator on a flying sword. For one, you can't teach a sword anything, while a well-trained horse is more than mere conveyance; it is an ally. In terms of equipping an army, I found horses a lot more viable on that front as well. The creation of flying artifacts, or worse, teaching men to use their Qi to fly, takes an appalling amount of time. If I needed a bunch of fast and powerful horses, I didn't need to raid some sect's treasury or threaten a group of master craftsmen. I'd simply unleash my own mount, The Red Hare, into several paddocks of mares, and soon my army would have horses that could almost keep pace with flyers.

  None of that means cavalry is without weakness; every form of cavalry in the history of mankind has shared one particular vulnerability: They need momentum.

  The pair of men on their ‘bikes’ were already reacting to my shared words with Ji-Ho, but at this distance, I doubted they could get their vehicles underway before I was within reach. It apparently wasn't a doubt they shared as the mounts of both men let out a rumbling howl, and they surged forward.

  ‘Idiots.’

  Suffice to say, I was correct in my theory that I would be able to close the gap before their two-wheeled vehicles could do anything useful. With a rather self-satisfied smile, I planted my still inactive spear on the ground and used its metal haft as a lever to vault myself into the air. Unlike earlier that day when I fought the green drones, my goal wasn’t height, but momentum of my own.

  There was a loud thud and a satisfying surge of impact pain that ran up my legs as I swung my legs up and delivered a pair of simultaneous kicks to the chests of the mounted men. It would still be a long time before I returned to my former glory, but I was quite graceful in that moment, if I do say so myself.

  Normally, I would have aimed higher and snapped the necks of both men with kicks to their jaws; however, my host had asked me to refrain from killing either of them. My understanding was that Ji-Ho didn’t want to offend the lord whom these men served, and while I didn’t care about local politics in the slightest, I would not have it said that Lu Bu is a poor guest.

  Besides, holding back in this manner was kind of fun sometimes. It gave lesser men a chance to demonstrate their techniques or strategies against me. It was good training, and every now and then an opponent would do something clever enough that I would consider adding it to my own arsenal.

  To my surprise, this actually proved to be one of those times. Both men were sent flying off of their mounts, but recovered themselves before they hit the ground; A sign I was facing a pair of actual warriors. The arms of the pale-skinned man lit up in a series of purple lights, and his fall was suddenly arrested mid-air, leaving him to float gently to the ground.

  The man named Enkh did something similar, though it was his legs that glowed green, before he twisted like a falling cat and simply landed on his feet.

  While I intended to go over the information being displayed on my HUD with Diaochan later, I mostly just ignored the skill explanations that appeared in the bottom left of my vision. I was mostly focused on once more closing the gap with my pair of enemies.

  Standing their ground next to each other, the pair of men both drew a ‘gun’ each. I say drew, but that might give you the wrong impression. The little projectile weapons leaped with lightning speed on their own accord from leg holsters into the waiting hands of the pair of cavalrymen.

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  I don’t know if it was a symbol of their friendship or if maybe their liege armed everyone in a uniform manner. Regardless, the little single-handed guns the men were using were identical according to my HUD.

  I had been watching Ji-Ho and Ha-Rin use their own guns this morning, and while the accuracy had left something to be desired, I was impressed by the weapons. Impressed enough that I had already decided to get one as a backup to my spear, much as I’d carried a bow in life.

  While I knew that the metal projectiles from such weapons were too fast for me to dodge, I didn’t actually need to avoid the shots themselves. Oh no, I simply needed to predict the shooters, which is precisely what I did.

  Gaze locked on the movement of the pair of guns, I dashed forwards, bringing my staff up I flung my weapon outwards as both Oviraptors fired their deadly projectiles. Sparks flew as my finely wrought spear clipped the pair of miniature spears being launched at me. It wasn’t my proudest deflection, and if I’m honest, the Oviraptors sent their shots faster than I had expected, but I did knock those projectiles off course enough that they didn’t hit me.

  I kept the momentum of my swing going and turned it into a spin that bounced my spear’s haft off the side of their heads one after the other. There was no fancy skill-based recovery for them after that; both men stumbled, and my kill-sense told me to pounce.

  It wasn’t much of a fight after that; it never is once I spot my foe starting to fail. It seemed everyone else kept their ‘stats’ hidden, as I only knew these men were both listed as level four. I would be curious to know how strong they actually were, compared to most people around here. Less physically powerful than me of course, but I am Lu Bu; it is almost never fair to compare me to other people, no matter what their supposed level.

  While I battered the pair of previously arrogant men all over the courtyard, two things of note happened; neither of them had anything to do with the warriors I faced. The first was Ji-Ho sprinted past into his home, where hopefully this doctor waited.

  The second didn’t come till I had concluded my rather satisfying non-lethal brutalization of the pair. I had tossed their barely conscious forms over near their vehicles. To their credit, the bloodied and beaten men managed to pull themselves onto their bikes as I watched contemptuously. The pale one muttered something I couldn’t make out and then spat on the ground before the pair of them sped off at a rather shocking rate of acceleration.

  The sight of the two vehicles tearing through the thin streets past the courtyard made my heart soar again, but that wasn’t the interesting part. That was the other thing I was feeling within. Honestly, feeling might not even be the right word. Hearing, maybe? I certainly felt like I could hear it, but I knew the sound was coming from within, not without.

  Thunderous and familiar hoof falls, the sound of an earthquake made flesh, the implausible crack of hooves belonging to a beast so far down the path of the cultivator that it, an animal, had faced and overcome heavenly tribulation.

  “Do you hear that, Diaochan?” I asked the A.I.

  “I…think so,” came back her response that was so soft as to almost be a whisper.

  I found Ha-Rin being tended by a greasy-haired man of middling years, and dark complexion, not night dark, but darker than my own. I had no idea what his heritage was, but he obviously hadn’t come from the Middle Kingdom.

  Barbarian or not, he seemed to know what he was doing, as by the time I saw them, the little forgemaster was sitting in a reclined bed-chair thing and most of her wounds were closed, her breathing too was far more steady. Ha-Rin had yet to regain consciousness, but as the doctor and her brother were doing some sort of sparking metalwork inside her back, that was probably a good and intentional thing.

  “Hey Ji-Ho,” I said casually. “When Ha-Rin isn’t dying, tell her I need my spear fixed.”

  With that, I tossed the thoroughly bent out of shape weapon to the ground and left them to their surgeries.

  Lu Bu being a prick as per usual.