The Sacred Assembly Breaks Apart
In the end, that final thread snapped.
The first to move was not Qi Jianfeng.
It was Qi Zhenyue.
From the moment he entered the hall, the young lord of the Sacred Unicorn Cult had been holding a furnace of anger inside his chest. Feng Hong's "You are dreaming" had been spoken before the old images of the Four Gates, before the Phoenix and Dragon lines, and before his own father. In one stroke it had swept away every scrap of the prestige he wore as the cult's young lord. And then Long Tianxiao had stepped in from the side and met the Sacred Unicorn Cult word for word, yielding not half an inch. One was the Palace Master of Phoenix Dance Palace, the other the young lord of Azure Dragon Isle. In rank and in age, both stood plainly on his level. Yet here, in the old hall of Tianmen, they had shown so little restraint toward father and son alike, as if they truly did not place the young lord of the Sacred Unicorn Cult in their eyes at all.
From the moment Long Tianxiao entered the hall, Qi Zhenyue had already found the blue-robed young lord of the isle intolerable.
That blue robe. That dragon worked across it. That hard spirit that met one head-on. And above all that look of a man still young, yet already born unwilling to bow even half an inch once he stepped forward. Every one of those things set Qi Zhenyue's teeth on edge. Now Feng Hong had rejected the marriage before everyone, and Long Tianxiao had cut in behind her. The rage that had been piling up inside him layer by layer since he entered the hall finally could no longer be held down.
With a sharp shout, he stamped forward half a step. The hem of his white robe flared wide, as if a great white breaker had suddenly risen.
"Long Tianxiao, do not mistake kindness for weakness!"
"My father still remembers the old ties of the Four Gates, and that is why he has spoken to you civilly. Yet you keep interrupting, keep provoking, and keep forcing the issue. Do not be insolent!"
At that shout, even the few oil lamps still burning in the ruined hall seemed to sway under the force of his anger. Their flames jumped, throwing the scars on the walls and the ancient images in the corners into wavering light and shadow.
Long Tianxiao only gave a cold laugh.
There was no warmth in it, only the hard edge of a young man determined to stand to the end. He straightened very slightly through the shoulders and met Qi Zhenyue's gaze head-on. His voice was not loud, but every word struck clearly, like nails driven into stone.
"Insolent?"
"You are the ones forcing a marriage. You are the ones trying to crush others under your weight. And at the end of it, you call someone else insolent?"
Here his gaze darkened, and under the swaying firelight the dragon worked into his robe seemed to darken with it, making the pressure of his presence feel even sharper.
"The ones who truly do not know their place, as I see it, are the Sacred Unicorn Cult."
The moment those words were spoken, the last shred of face that could still be barely preserved in the hall was ripped to pieces on the spot.
The fire in Qi Zhenyue's eyes exploded.
He had always been sharp-tempered and forceful by nature. Since childhood he had been treated like nobility. Who in the cult did not indulge him, flatter him, give way before him? When had he ever been pressed like this in such a place—before the old ground of the Four Gates, before his father and the elders, with another man speaking straight into his face without the least restraint? The fury surged up into his chest, and there was no longer the slightest chance of holding it back.
"And what are you," he shouted, "to point fingers here?"
Before the last word had finished, he was already in motion.
The white blur flashed.
Qi Zhenyue's Cloud-Treading Unicorn Step opened beneath him, and his whole body slashed diagonally out from before the western seats like a streak of white lightning. He had only just moved when his right leg had already swept up through the air, the wind of the kick fierce and cutting, the white sleeves and robe snapping sharply as it came crashing toward Long Tianxiao's chest.
Before the man himself had even arrived, the violent force of that kick was already pressing straight into the air before him. Several nearby lamps were driven sideways by the gust.
This was one of the forms of the Divine Unicorn Leg—
Flying Unicorn Chases the Sun.
The true terror of the move lay in seizing the advantage before the opponent could even gather himself. Once the leg came out, the savage force of it struck the chest and breathing first, robbing the other man of rhythm and composure before he had even read the line of the kick.
Long Tianxiao had already been guarding against him.
The instant Qi Zhenyue's shoulder dipped, his eyes had gone cold. Seeing the leg come down like a white bolt across the air, he did not dodge. He did not retreat. The blue of his robe shifted sharply to one side, his waist sank, and his left palm thrust out on the slant. There was no flourish in it at all. Instead it was grand, solid, and heavy, like a hidden dragon suddenly lifting its head from the deep. A violent palm-force surged upward from below, meeting the kick head-on.
Bang.
Palm and leg met with a sound like a muffled drum.
The dust beneath their feet burst upward at once and rolled outward on all sides. Lamp-shadow, fire-shadow, robe-shadow all wrenched out of shape together. Even the broken great images in the four corners—the Dragon, the Phoenix, the Unicorn, and the Tortoise-and-Serpent—seemed to darken under the impact.
Qi Zhenyue had intended to seize the initiative with that first strike. Instead Long Tianxiao's palm came so squarely, so steadily, that it cut Flying Unicorn Chases the Sun in half before it could fully land. A flicker of alarm passed through him. His face grew harder. Without even drawing back the leg, he twisted in the air on the force of the collision itself, and his second kick slashed out at once, faster still, nastier in angle, aimed directly for the opening beneath Long Tianxiao's left ribs.
Long Tianxiao gave a low grunt. His right foot shifted. His body turned with the motion. His palm turned over with it, the edge of the hand slicing out on the slant. It was Azure Dragon Sweeps Its Tail.
There was nothing showy in the move. It asked only for two things: heaviness, and precision. The palm-wind skimmed past the outside of Qi Zhenyue's lower leg. Had it landed properly, it might not have broken the bone on the spot—but it would certainly have numbed half the leg at once.
Qi Zhenyue did not dare take it head-on. He had no choice but to withdraw the force midway. The white blur of the leg drew in. He dropped lightly to the ground, but the instant his toes touched, he charged in again on the third step. Both legs came out in sequence—sweeping, stabbing, chopping, driving. Shadows of legs flipped and spun so quickly that they seemed almost a rolling mass of white light.
And yet Long Tianxiao would not retreat.
The Myriad Dragons Palm always favored a grand, direct line of attack, the kind that was strongest when a man's spirit did not falter and his inner force did not float. Facing the ruthless speed of the Divine Unicorn Leg, he sank the line of his palms still lower. Palm after palm he met the kicks head-on, each one heavier than the last, and step by step he pressed forward instead of yielding. No matter how fast Qi Zhenyue's kicks came, how fierce, how deceptive, how often they touched and vanished and reappeared from the left or right, Long Tianxiao still answered with the same overwhelming, upright palm-force, like a great river in flood against an unmoving mountain.
For a time the ruined hall was full of white and blue shadows crossing and crashing through one another. The wind of kicks and the force of palms made the firelight shudder wildly. Dust on the floor rolled and whirled without rest. The more Qi Zhenyue fought, the more urgent he became; every move carried the ruthless intent that he would not stop unless he crushed Long Tianxiao before everyone present. The more he pressed, the steadier Long Tianxiao became, his palms growing heavier and more forceful with every exchange. One side was swift, fierce, blazing, oppressive. The other was heavy, grand, upright, immovable. The two clashing lines struck sparks out of one another the moment they met.
At the same time, on the other side, Long Boyuan's eyes darkened and he started forward.
Once the young lord of the isle had moved, how could the elder responsible for Azure Dragon Isle's martial transmission possibly stand by? But he had only just taken a step when, from the western side, a tall, gaunt white-robed figure cut across first and blocked him precisely where he stood.
The newcomer's eyes were gloomy, his face hard and cold.
It was none other than Helian Chi, Left Protector Elder of the Sacred Unicorn Cult.
With a thin, unpleasant smile, he said in a voice not loud but carrying a strange, dry heat in it,
"Elder Long, why be in such a hurry to interfere in the affairs of the younger generation?"
Before the last word had fallen, he had already struck.
Though lean of frame, Helian Chi's palm was anything but light. His white sleeve swept once, and a single palm drove straight out. Where the palm-wind reached, there was already an undercurrent of heat inside it, as though hidden fire lay banked in the strike and meant to drive itself into a man's chest, belly, and meridians alike.
A cold light flashed in Long Boyuan's eyes. His blue robe did not even stir. His right palm met it heavily.
Boom.
The force of this exchange was even deeper, heavier, more dangerous than the collision between Long Tianxiao and Qi Zhenyue. It was like two hidden tides meeting head-on inside the ruined hall. The brick beneath both men's feet shuddered. Fine cracks silently crawled out through the seams between the dusty floor-bricks. Helian Chi's palm-force was fierce and dry with heat; Long Boyuan's was deep and heavy as the sea. Heat met depth. Harshness met weight. Each swayed a little, and in that first exchange both knew the other was far from ordinary.
And almost at the very same moment the two elders engaged, the two blue-robed disciples of Azure Dragon Isle at the eastern seats could restrain themselves no longer. Seeing both their young lord and their transmission elder already in the fight, they stepped forward together to join in.
Xue Wuli had been waiting for exactly that moment.
This master of the Eastern Branch Hall of the Sacred Unicorn Cult had stood all along behind the western seats, his eyes cold, the corner of his mouth holding the faintest trace of a sinister smile. He was like a poisonous snake coiled in shadow—neither moving first nor saying much, only waiting for the instant disorder broke open so he could strike through the gap.
Seeing the blue-robed disciples move, he let out a cold laugh and shouted sharply,
"Go!"
The fifteen white-robed disciples split apart at once as if they had practiced it a thousand times.
Not in a wild rush. Not in disorder. They broke three and five at a time, each cluster a pattern unto itself. The front line drove the center, forcing the other side backward. The rear line cut off the dead angles, denying them room to turn. The two wings each specialized in striking at wrist-meridians, the ribs, and the lower body. It was plain they meant to use sheer numbers to trap the Azure Dragon Isle disciples to death where they stood.
The white surge rose like a snow-net flung out from west to east.
Azure Dragon Isle had come with the smallest numbers to begin with. However sharp these few blue-robed disciples might be, how could they stand against such a formation? They had scarcely met it when the first two were already driven back several paces. One had not even fully drawn his blade before two white-robed men were already upon him high and low. Another had only just turned to change position when a kicking shadow flashed in from the side, forcing him into a hurried evasion. In the blink of an eye the eastern line was already in immediate danger of collapse.
Feng Hong saw it all, and the cold in her eyes sharpened at once.
From the moment she entered the hall she too had been forcing down her anger. Qi Jianfeng had tried to use the old assembly to force a marriage. Qi Zhenyue had turned on them openly. Helian Chi had cut off Long Boyuan. And now Xue Wuli had set the white-robed disciples on the blue-robed line the instant chaos broke open. This was no loss of temper and no accident of the moment. The Sacred Unicorn Cult had long intended to use the weight of the gathering to crush others. Tonight they were simply laying the hidden intent bare before the whole hall.
The anger surged up in her chest. The red of her robe flashed. She shot out from the southern side.
"Xue Wuli, you shameless dog!"
Before the last word had fully left her lips, she was already there.
She was astonishingly fast.
Her red form had only just broken from the southern seats. The next instant she was before him. Her body turned. Her five fingers flickered. Flying Phoenix Finger came out like a sudden rain of red sparks, taking the face, the brow-center, and the side of the throat in rapid succession. The move was exquisite in speed and lightness, yet every point it targeted was a vital place. It chilled the heart to watch.
Xue Wuli had plainly not expected her to arrive so fast. His eyes darkened. He retreated half a step and turned his right arm over to protect his face first. But Feng Hong's art was all false and true interwoven together. The first two fingers came like streaming meteors. The third sank abruptly midway through the motion and drove diagonally toward the pulse at his right wrist.
He dared not slight it. He withdrew another half-step. The force and momentum he had been using to crush the eastern side faltered at once.
Feng Zhu was already there as well.
The moment she saw her sister move, her own red figure rolled forward after her. The Heavenly Phoenix Grasp rose with her body. But where Feng Hong's style was light, dazzling, and swift, Feng Zhu's was not. She sought no brilliance, no airborne speed. Her strength lay in heaviness, precision, and ruthless exactness. Her five fingers closed like a hook, aimed straight for the joints of Xue Wuli's right arm and the shoulder well-point. One before, one after. One bright, one hidden. She and Feng Hong formed a perfect pincer between them.
If Feng Hong's hand was a phoenix's beak pecking through firelight, Feng Zhu's was the silent drop of a phoenix's talons onto a branch—quiet to the eye, but once it had taken hold, almost impossible to break.
For the first time Xue Wuli's expression changed.
He was confident in his own ability, but to face the Feng sisters together at close quarters was another matter. And the martial arts of Phoenix Dance Palace were best at precisely this—close-in transitions of skill, one finger and one seizing hand, one swift and one heavy, every move aimed for joints and fatal gaps. A moment earlier he had still been driving the whole hall by moving the white-robed line. Now, pressed by the two sisters together, he found himself giving ground.
Feng Jiuyi hesitated no longer.
She had known from the start that once the hall turned openly hostile, there could be no more room for illusions. Spinning back toward the disciples behind her, she snapped out one command:
"With me!"
The six red-robed disciples answered at once and sprang out, heading straight for the white-robed line that had trapped the blue-robed disciples. Red forms burst up in a spray of motion, like streams of fire-feathers slanting into a white formation. Red and blue still had fewer people than the white-robed side, but at least they had managed to tear open one corner of the one-sided encirclement.
The two blue-robed disciples, who had been driven back again and again, finally got the smallest moment of relief. One steadied himself with his blade horizontal before him. The other shifted his step and reset his stance. Between them they managed, barely, to keep their formation from collapsing outright. But the white-robed line still greatly outnumbered them, and their advance and retreat answered each other with frightening precision. Even with the red-robed disciples now in the fight, red and blue together could do little more than hold the situation steady. To push the white-robed side back was still far beyond them.
And the moment they moved, Bai Suling moved too.
Since entering the hall this Right Protector Elder of the Sacred Unicorn Cult had stood silent as old snow that had never thawed. Merely standing there, she revealed no edge at all. But the instant she moved, she was faster than anyone.
The white shadow flashed once.
She cut obliquely across in front of Feng Jiuyi. Her footwork skimmed the floor. The rise and fall of it was so swift one scarcely saw her feet at all. In the blink of an eye she had entered the centerline. The movement was none other than one of the Sacred Unicorn Cult's superior body arts—
Cloud-Treading Unicorn Step.
This line of movement excelled in speed, pressure, and abrupt changes. In Bai Suling's hands it gained an added coldness. The instant she arrived, before the fingers of her right hand had even fully spread, a flicker of cold light flashed between them. Two Unicorn Nails shot out in quick succession, one for Feng Jiuyi's right wrist pulse-point, the other for her left shoulder well-point. The angles were vicious. They were aimed precisely for the instant in which an opponent changed from one technique to another and could least defend himself.
A cold light flickered in Feng Jiuyi's eyes. Her red sleeve lashed out. Her body tilted instead of retreating. Her right hand snapped twice with Flying Phoenix Finger.
Ting. Ting.
Both Unicorn Nails were knocked off line by force. One drove into a broken pillar and buried itself halfway into the wood. The other skimmed across the shattered brick and sent sparks of stone flying.
But that had never been Bai Suling's true aim.
The instant the two nails left her hand, she had already used the pressure of that moment to advance another step. Her white robe twisted close against her body. Her five fingers bent into hooks and came slashing down. This was Unicorn Searching Talon.
The move was cold, fast, and merciless. It contained no flourish and no feint. It went straight for the elbow bend and shoulder well-point, clearly meaning to lock one arm first and then cut off Feng Jiuyi's line to the east.
And how could Feng Jiuyi possibly let her take hold?
Her waist folded. The red of her robe turned sharply. For an instant she was like a fire-winged phoenix skimming away from the edge of the grasp. Bai Suling's fingers only barely brushed her sleeve. Feng Jiuyi's left hand had already turned over. The Heavenly Phoenix Grasp rose with the motion and seized for Bai Suling's wrist-bones. Her right hand followed with a single snapping point of Flying Phoenix Finger toward the opening beneath the ribs. She dismantled while striking, deflected while advancing—exactly the kind of close-range, shifting precision for which Phoenix Dance Palace was known.
Bai Suling's expression remained cold as ice. She did not tangle with the move. Her wrist sank slightly. Her feet crossed out of it again with Cloud-Treading Unicorn Step, and she slid away like windblown snow skimming the ground. It looked like a retreat. It was not. Feng Jiuyi's finger had just fallen short when Bai Suling's other hand had already shot in close, fingers spreading again, another Unicorn Searching Talon coming even more viciously than before, enclosing shoulder, collarbone, and upper arm all at once.
Feng Jiuyi's brow tightened. Her red sleeves flew. Finger and grasp changed three times in rapid succession. First she deflected the talon-point with Flying Phoenix Finger, then unmade the force at the wrist with seizing-hand technique, and finally turned her sleeve and brushed the line back toward Bai Suling's center. Their close-quarters exchange was terrifyingly fast. One side moved like a shadow, talons without end, hidden projectiles breaking rhythm and sight alike, every move bearing the merciless weight of the Sacred Unicorn Cult. The other moved in flowing turns, finger-art and grasp interchanging, deflecting the nails, dissolving the talons, and still somehow preserving the smallest possibility of reinforcing the eastern side.
In the blink of an eye the red and white shadows had become one knot of motion at the side of the hall.
Bai Suling pressed forward step by step, at times cutting into the centerline with Cloud-Treading Unicorn Step, at times flashing cold steel from beneath her sleeves with Unicorn Nails to disturb the eye and break the other's timing. Feng Jiuyi answered each one with the body-arts of Phoenix Dance Palace, Flying Phoenix Finger and Heavenly Phoenix Grasp rising and turning in succession. She deflected the nails. She neutralized the talons. She forced space enough to keep one path still half-open toward the eastern side. One was cold and relentless. One was fierce and cunning. One was cruel. One was subtle. Neither gave way before the other. In only a few breaths they were already fighting so hard that finger-wind broke in the air and sleeves rolled like banners in storm, while even the two damaged lamps nearest them began to brighten and dim under the pressure of their movement.
And with that, the entire old hall finally broke open all at once.
At the center, Long Tianxiao and Qi Zhenyue exchanged palm and leg like blows of thunder, white and blue locked in on one another, each refusing to yield half a step. Near the west side, Helian Chi and Long Boyuan drove palm against palm, dry heat and heavy depth crashing together so hard that dust shook from the seams in the floor. Along the eastern line, the white-robed disciples, relying on numbers, had the blue-robed disciples in a death-lock; the red-robed disciples fought their way in to help, and only by joining together could red and blue keep from breaking at once. On the southwest line, Xue Wuli had been driven into retreat after retreat by the Feng sisters, caught between finger and grasp with danger on all sides. On the southern side, Bai Suling had bound Feng Jiuyi fast, her talons and nails hemming the woman in so closely that she could not break away by half a step.
The firelight shook wildly. Dust rose everywhere.
Wind poured through broken eaves and shattered windows and sent sleeves and robes streaming. The four ruined images in the corners—the Dragon, the Phoenix, the Unicorn, the Tortoise-and-Serpent—flared bright and dark by turns in the shaking firelight, as if they too were looking down coldly on this same bloodline, broken apart again on the ancient ground of Tianmen after so many centuries.
The Whole Hall in Chaos
At the center, the young lord of the Dragon and the young lord of the Unicorn clashed in palm and leg, the sound of their exchanges like muffled thunder, the lamps brightening and dimming beneath the force of them.
Near the west side, Long Boyuan and Helian Chi met palm to palm with deep, heavy crashes, and under the sweep of their force even the dust packed into the seams of the bricks shook loose and fell.
To the south, red robes burst into motion. The Feng sisters rushed Xue Wuli together, one before and one behind. Elsewhere Feng Jiuyi was already entangled with Bai Suling, red and white shadows gliding low and fast across the ground as their struggle tightened.
And farther out, the fifteen white-robed disciples had now truly locked into short-range battle with six red-robed disciples and two blue-robed ones. In only a breath, the whole side of the hall had become a storm of steel and flesh.
This was not one of those chaotic fights where one side wins first in one corner and then turns to help elsewhere.
It was as though, the instant Qi Zhenyue moved, the entire old hall had been touched to a fuse. The center, the eastern line, the western side, and the southern edge all burst at almost the same moment.
No one place went first.
The whole hall went at once.
And the white-robed disciples were the first to gain visible force.
What made it worse was not simply their numbers. It was the way they moved when they came on—not as individuals, but with steps and positions so orderly that they almost formed a single enclosing tide. It was precisely the formation the Sacred Unicorn Cult drilled so often beneath its own roof—
The Hundred Unicorns Pay Homage Formation.
The true terror of the formation did not lie in cleverness.
It lay in the word together.
The first ranks pressed head-on, forcing the opponent to exchange breath and movement with them. The wings circled like wolves, watching only for the instant a man's body shifted and the smallest opening showed. The rear never rushed to strike first. It held back, gathering force, and the moment some part of the formation loosened, it filled that place at once. Layer upon layer. Ring after tightening ring. To the eye it might seem only a confusion of white robes and white shadows. In truth it was a net drawing closer and closer, bent on trapping a man to death inside it.
The two blue-robed disciples of Azure Dragon Isle had already been at a numerical disadvantage to begin with. Though the six red-robed disciples of Phoenix Dance Palace had rushed in to help them, the pressure on their side was still immense.
The blue-robed disciples fought differently from the red-robed ones. Their strength lay in blade and palm used together. One guarded the front. One defended the side. Their palm-lines were broad and forceful, their movements grounded. Yet they did not dare overcommit, for the white-robed formation loved precisely that—to lure a man half a step too far forward, then have the two wings cut him off and break him apart.
The six red-robed disciples moved differently again. Their steps were light, their changes fast, their attacks sharp and intricate. By themselves they would have looked more agile than the blue-robed line. But the two groups came from different gates. They had never drilled true combination-work together. One style naturally favored heavy, direct collisions. The other favored flowing insertion and close-range shifts. One attacked from a stable center. The other from angles, speed, and transformation. Under ordinary circumstances, such different lines of combat would have been more likely to hinder one another than help.
And yet, for precisely that reason, the fact that they managed to stand together now only made the struggle look more desperate.
A blue-robed disciple had only just knocked a white-robed man aside with a horizontal palm when the opening at his left flank showed. A white shadow darted in at once. One of the red-robed disciples saw it immediately and swept in from the side, her red sleeve unfurling as her Rending Feather Talon forced the attacker half a foot off line. But the moment she moved, an opening appeared behind her. Before the white-robed side could take it, the other blue-robed disciple, who had not yet even fully drawn his blade, struck sideways with the scabbard instead, catching the incoming palm and stopping it cold. The blow landed with a dull bang, the scabbard shuddering so hard that half his arm went numb. But he had still managed to keep her back from taking the strike.
So it went again and again.
Red broke fast moves for blue. Blue blocked hard collisions for red.
One side snatched the opening. The other side held the center.
One slipped between bodies like streams of fire-feathers. The other stood like reefs against a wave.
At first the coordination between them still held traces of unfamiliarity, and their steps did not always fall in perfect rhythm. But after only a few exchanges, every one of them knew the truth: if they still clung to the separate habits of their own gate and refused to cover one another that extra half-step, they would be broken and killed where they stood. So one took the line for the other. One blocked a strike for the other. And in the teeth of the white-robed encirclement, they hammered out the beginning of a battlefield understanding between different sect lines.
But the white-robed side still had numbers, and the formation was too well drilled. However hard red and blue fought to patch each other's openings, they could do little more than prevent an immediate collapse. The white tide pressed in layer by layer, narrowing the ground beneath their feet inch by inch. Seen from a distance, the white, red, and blue shadows seemed to knot together into one mass on the eastern side of the ruined hall, with blade-light and palm-shadows flashing through it again and again, and none of them able to break away.
For a time the hall was full of flying sleeves, kicking wind, palm-force, blade-light, finger-wind, and the unending clash of weapons. The firelight was whipped this way and that by the force of the combat, throwing everyone's shadows long and short, eastward and westward. The broken beams, ruined pillars, shattered windows, and ancient images all seemed to come alive in the rolling disorder, as though the whole ruined hall were swaying with the struggle itself.
Fang Yingjie, hidden behind the broken beam in the darkest corner, pressed his back to the icy wall and felt the white, red, and blue shadows blur together before him. The force and sound of it all rang in his ears.
And even in such chaos, he still saw one thing clearly:
The Sacred Unicorn Cult had come prepared.
The white-robed disciples did not move like men who had turned hostile on impulse. The way they advanced and yielded, who pressed, who cut off the way, who took the angle, who blocked the retreat—everything carried the hard, familiar air of men who had rehearsed such a slaughtering formation more than once in their minds. Even Helian Chi, Xue Wuli, and Bai Suling had each intercepted their proper opponents with a speed that felt less like spontaneity than like a sequence already set in place.
All his life Fang Yingjie had seen disciples of the same house exchange skills. But what happened in Mount Hua's halls was still, in the end, skill-testing. What he saw here was different. The moment the hall turned, the Sacred Unicorn Cult had pressed in from top to bottom—young lord, elders, branch hall master, and disciples alike—with the cold, relentless intent of men who meant not merely to win, but to crush and hold.
By contrast, Azure Dragon Isle and Phoenix Dance Palace, though fearless, had still come to a sacred assembly. They had not arrived in a formation designed for a full hall battle. Now that they had been dragged into one, they could only fight while trying first not to break. They could not, from the first breath, pour force into the whole hall the way the white-robed side had done.
And in the midst of that chaos, the ones who had first seized the upper hand were the Feng sisters.
Xue Wuli's sharp order had driven the white-robed disciples forward along the eastern line. It had been the most conspicuous move in the hall, and perhaps the one most deserving of hatred. Once the Feng sisters got near him, they left him no room at all to gather himself. In only a dozen exchanges, Xue Wuli found that he could not even fully unfold a single proper sequence of fists or palms.
Feng Hong remained in front.
Her body-art was astonishingly swift. The red figure turned once and was already before him, then behind him, then on either side, like flashes of fire-feathers in the wind. Flying Phoenix Finger came in a rain of sparks, now at the brow, now at the throat, now sinking suddenly from some angle the eye could scarcely guard. Every strike went for a vital opening.
Feng Zhu, by contrast, did not dazzle.
Her pace was not fast, and she did not try to dominate the eye. But once she came close, her pressure was heavier than her sister's. She always occupied the part of the line in which Xue Wuli's fists and palms could not fully open. Her right hand spread. The Heavenly Phoenix Grasp came with it, taking only the elbow, wrist, and shoulder-root—never grand places, always the places where a man's motion grows short. The move did not look fast. It was simply precise, and whenever Xue Wuli had barely avoided Feng Hong's leading hand, Feng Zhu's fingers were already there at the joints, hooking, dissolving, and binding. The result was that the force of his punches and palms kept dying halfway out of him.
Feng Hong drove in front. Feng Zhu cut off behind.
One forced the eye into confusion and never let a man settle his first move. The other entered close and, without seeming dramatic at all, slowly cut off the roads of retreat.
Xue Wuli was no weak hand, but once he realized how tightly the two sisters had fixed him between them, a chill rose in him as much from alarm as anger.
He dropped low through the legs and waist all at once and exploded with the Sacred Unicorn Cult's Crushing-Peaks Unicorn Fist. The fist-wind roared. The punch blasted outward from beneath the ribs. It was a line of force built around break, crash, thrust, and smash, so heavy it seemed truly capable of caving in the air before it.
Feng Hong did not meet it hard.
Her red sleeve unfurled. The Phoenix Dance Body Art turned in an instant, and her whole body slid away from the edge of the blow like a streak of firelight. Xue Wuli had meant to throw her back with that punch and then turn to suppress Feng Zhu. But his punch had only just extended when Feng Zhu used the opening created by its full extension to step in tight. One hand seized the wrist-bone. The other followed the elbow. The Heavenly Phoenix Grasp both took and dissolved the force at once. With one touch and one lead, she turned his punch off its proper line by a fraction.
Xue Wuli's face changed. His waist and elbow wrenched back. His left palm turned over, and the Blazing Unicorn Palm came out in return. The palm-wind carried a scorching heat and drove straight at Feng Zhu's chest. She did not meet it directly. Her shoulder shifted. Her feet withdrew only half a step, but her whole body slid along the edge of the strike and away from it. The movement looked like retreat. It was not. Her right hand never quite left the joints of his arm. Instead, she used the very force of his forward-driving palm to draw herself more lightly to his side and behind him.
At that moment the sound of weapons clashing along the eastern line suddenly sharpened by another degree. It was clear that though the red and blue disciples had barely stabilized their footing, they were still being pressed hard by the white-robed formation. On the other side, Feng Jiuyi still could not break away from Bai Suling's nails and talons. Near the west, another deep crash told of Long Boyuan and Helian Chi driving each other toward a still more dangerous edge.
Xue Wuli's palm fell empty. His heart sank. Before he could gather the line of his breath again, Feng Hong was already upon him from the front. The red shadow burst bright. Rending Feather Talon flashed. Her five fingers spread like blades and came straight for his throat. The move was both close and fierce. The whole half-foot before his neck seemed enclosed in that cold, murderous wind. Xue Wuli reflexively threw himself back. He only just escaped the line. Even so, the force of the talons skimmed across his throat so close it raised a chill there, and several locks of hair at his temples were cut clean away. Cold sweat broke across his back at once. He staggered back two steps before he finally got his footing.
And before he had even fully regained himself, Feng Zhu had closed again.
She never once made herself spectacular. She was like a silent shadow pressed against the place where his fists and palms least wanted her. As his right foot gave ground, she followed the retreat on a slant. Her left hand trapped the wrist. Her right closed over it. It was a line of taking, binding, and leading all at once, and the heaviness of it forced his whole arm outward by half an inch.
In ordinary times, half an inch means nothing.
In a close fight between true hands, it can mean death.
Because Feng Hong was already there.
The red shadow flashed close. Rending Feather Talon came out again. Five fingers like blades, the killing wind off them icy and sharp, straight for Xue Wuli's throat. The distance was so short and the strike so sudden that another half inch would have torn his windpipe open.
This time Xue Wuli was truly frightened. Cold sweat burst across his spine. Almost without thinking he hurled himself backward, both feet snapping against the ground again and again in a retreat that looked near to panic. Even then the talons almost skimmed his throat. His chest went cold. His breath shortened by half a beat.
And that backward retreat of his did more than save his own throat.
Because at that same instant, Qi Jianfeng finally moved.
The Unicorn Tests the Phoenix
Until now, Qi Jianfeng had not entered the fight.
From the beginning he had stood before the western seats, white robe hanging to the ground, his whole body unmoving, as though the palms and kicks and blade-light and finger-force inside the ruined hall were still not yet worth his entering in person. Long Tianxiao and Qi Zhenyue had turned on one another before him, and he had not moved. Helian Chi had intercepted Long Boyuan, and he had not moved. The white-robed disciples had formed up and driven at the eastern line, and he had not moved. Even when Xue Wuli, one of his own strongest branch heads, was driven back again and again by the Feng sisters and almost truly about to lose the Sacred Unicorn Cult face in the old hall itself, he had still only stood there, his gaze lowered, watching coldly.
And yet that gaze had never been wholly idle.
He had been watching Long Tianxiao's palms.
Watching how much true meaning the blue-robed young lord had taken into the Myriad Dragons Palm.
He had also been watching the body-art, finger-art, seizing-hand, and talon work of Feng Hong and Feng Zhu—how each flowed into the next, and just how far the fatal line of Phoenix Dance Palace had already been carried.
Most of all, he had been watching Feng Hong.
Though young, this Palace Master of Phoenix Dance Palace was bright, sharp, and daring in a way impossible to miss. When Flying Phoenix Finger moved, it was light and electric. When Rending Feather Talon turned, it was ruthless enough to stop the breath. Once the Phoenix Dance Body Art opened, the red shadow weaving through the lights truly did resemble a phoenix skimming through a hall of flame. One could not always tell whether she had crossed left or right at all. More important still, though the various arts she used had not yet fully fused into one body, something in them had already begun to show the outline of a greater whole.
Others in the hall might not yet have seen it clearly.
Qi Jianfeng had.
And because he saw it so clearly, the look in his eyes had deepened little by little.
Only now, when Xue Wuli's breathing had started to break, his right arm was on the verge of being fully taken by Feng Zhu, and Feng Hong's Rending Feather Talon had already come up under his throat with the genuine possibility of taking him alive then and there, did Qi Jianfeng finally take his first step.
Only one.
And in that one step, the pressure in the whole ruined hall seemed to drop under something still heavier, still more violent, and still more domineering. The flames all dimmed together. Even the night wind pouring through the broken eaves seemed to hesitate by the smallest degree.
Qi Jianfeng did not shout.
He did not warn them.
He showed not the slightest bit of the dragging grandeur some grandmasters affect before entering a fight.
The white of his robe only flashed once.
The flash was not ornamental. It was so straight and so fast it was almost plain, like a clean line of knife-light passing under a lamp. One could not quite see where the force began. The next instant he was already between the Feng sisters and Xue Wuli.
Xue Wuli had only just flung himself back from Feng Hong's talons. At the sight of that white shadow he felt immediate relief, as though his very lungs had opened again.
But Feng Zhu and Feng Hong felt the same thing at once in reverse—a small, brutal tightening in the heart.
Everything they had done so far had relied on one thing: seizing the initiative and using the close-quarter transitions of Phoenix Dance Palace to break the other man's rhythm completely. Now Qi Jianfeng had entered in one movement. It felt as though some enormous, thousand-pound stone had dropped from overhead into the middle of their line. Before it had even landed, its pressure had already begun to crush.
Feng Zhu reacted first.
She had been positioned at Xue Wuli's flank and still held half his arm in the line of her seizing technique. The instant she saw Qi Jianfeng come in, how could she possibly continue trying to take Xue Wuli? Her red sleeves spread. She withdrew and drove forward at the same time. Unlike Feng Hong, she did not seek spectacle. Her strength lay in old, proper defense—the instinct to protect first, and to attack while protecting. With one shift of the shoulders and one angled half-step, she yielded her sister half a body-space and put herself squarely between Feng Hong and Qi Jianfeng's approach.
Had it been anyone else, the move would have been admirable.
But the leg that came from Qi Jianfeng next was not one most people in the hall could have properly blocked.
His right leg swept out on the slant.
There was nothing dramatic about the line of it. It lacked the crackling, lightning-fast force of Qi Zhenyue's style. Yet the moment it rose, every person in the hall felt the same thing.
Not speed.
Pressure.
It was the pressure of a man who had trained his leg art so far into the bone and into the current of his own inner force that raising the leg was no longer separate from the act of dominating the whole space before him. Before the kick even arrived, the lamps sank half an inch lower under the wind of it.
Feng Zhu, who had just thrown herself forward to receive it, felt the air before her chest tighten as though what came toward her was not a leg at all, but a whole wall of stone shoved flat against her. She knew it was wrong at once. Her hands changed from seizing and trapping into a pure center-guard. Her shoulders sank. Her waist dropped. She meant to receive the blow hard.
Bang!
The sound was deep and heavy, like a giant drum beaten inside the ruined hall.
Feng Zhu's arms shook. The blood in her chest surged upward. The force of the kick lifted her bodily from the ground and flung her away like a severed kite. Her red robe spun in the air. She struck a broken pillar at the side of the hall and only barely stopped there, the impact knocking a taste of blood up under her tongue. She bit it back by force. Even so, the color had already gone a shade whiter from her face.
Feng Hong's expression changed at once.
"Sister!"
But before the cry had even finished, she was already there.
The sisters were of one heart. In ordinary times their styles differed—one bright, one deep, one swift, one steady. But when danger truly came, neither ever hesitated. Feng Zhu had only just been struck aside when Feng Hong's red figure came slashing in from the other side. Flying Phoenix Finger shot out to the flank, to the line of the leg, to the gaps of entry itself, the red points so fast and so fierce they almost made the eye ache.
But Qi Jianfeng was faster still.
One leg had only just finished. The next rose with the same returning motion. The hems of his white robe spread in an arc, and his legs came one after another in succession. This was one of the most oppressive lines within the Divine Unicorn Leg—
The Flying Unicorn's Chain.
The terror of the sequence was not speed alone. It was speed with pressure inside it, and pursuit inside the pressure. The first leg disrupted breath. The second disrupted footing. The third followed through the exact place where a body most hated to absorb force. If the opponent's rhythm broke by even half a point, the rest of the sequence would roll on without giving him a breath to recover.
Feng Hong's body-art was made for precisely this kind of line in theory. But what Qi Jianfeng used was no mere fast and fierce kicking style. It was what remained after the words fast, fierce, sharp, and oppressive had all been trained to their deepest point and had fused into something older and deadlier.
She had no choice but to force the Phoenix Dance Body Art to its limit. The red shadow twisted between the legs—left, right, high, low. The first two she barely escaped. Her sleeves snapped under the wind of them, and several strands of hair were driven loose at her temples. But the third came too tightly, too old in the timing, and from an angle too cruel to be read. She had no way to avoid it cleanly. She twisted shoulder and waist by force and managed to move the body only half a foot.
Whap.
The edge of the kick skimmed past her left shoulder.
It did not land fully.
But the force of it still shook half her arm numb and drove a wave of dull heaviness into the meridians of the shoulder. She retreated three full steps before she could steady herself again.
And that retreat changed the whole line of the fight.
When she and Feng Zhu had still been together, they had been able to fix Xue Wuli in place by using the close-range transitions of Phoenix Dance Palace. Now Feng Zhu had been thrown aside, and Feng Hong alone had to face the Cult Leader of the Sacred Unicorn Cult himself. Only then did the true depth of the man before her reveal itself.
He was not Xue Wuli.
Still less was he Qi Zhenyue.
His speed was not the speed of youth seizing an opening for glory. It was the speed of an old hand who knew exactly where every fraction of force belonged.
His fierceness was not the fierceness of hot blood. It was the fierce exactness of a man who could spend every inch of power at the exact place it should fall.
And his pressure was not the desperate pressure of a young man trying to overwhelm. It was the pressure of a mountain, of a wall, even of a whole sky driven level toward her. If she retreated one step, it pressed one step with her. If she showed half an inch of opening, it entered and devoured the whole line from there.
Feng Hong clenched her teeth. She knew she could retreat no farther.
If she yielded here, not only would she lose the initiative outright, but Feng Zhu would have no space to recover behind her.
And she could not lose.
If she lost, then the entire southern line of Phoenix Dance Palace in the hall would truly be stamped down under the Sacred Unicorn Cult's foot.
So she drove everything she had into the fight at once.
Flying Phoenix Finger came first.
Her fingers flew in a rain of light, going for the ribs, the throat, the wrist-meridians, every point where breath and force met. Had this been Xue Wuli, those fingers would long since have broken his rhythm apart.
But Qi Jianfeng did not bother to exchange the line in detail.
He simply drove the Divine Unicorn Leg with the inner force of the Sacred Unicorn Cult. Once the leg-shadow rose, the wind of it came like layered white surf. Before her fingers could even truly land, the weight of the leg-force was already pressing her into another change of position.
When the fingers could not take hold, Rending Feather Talon followed.
Feng Hong dropped low. Her five fingers rose like blades from beneath. The killing wind of the art went straight for knee-bend, ankle, and the waist-side gaps. This was one of the close-range killing arts of Phoenix Dance Palace. If she got within half a foot of a man, even great inner force might not save tendon and flesh from that hand.
But Qi Jianfeng had already expected her to close.
His feet shifted slightly. His knee lifted. The whole line of his leg-force seemed to retreat half an inch—yet that half-inch brought Feng Hong's whole attack-route under his control. Then the white robe turned. The leg came out horizontally from below, forcing her to withdraw the talons and break away. Her strike had not truly failed. It had only touched the edge of his robe and nowhere real.
Her heart sank. The Flying Phoenix Finger in her left hand had not yet fully withdrawn when the Heavenly Phoenix Grasp had already risen in her right.
This line of taking worked not from the upper body, but from the lower limbs—locking at the knee, the ankle, and the roots of movement itself. It had been created within Phoenix Dance Palace precisely to disrupt fast legwork and break the continuity of body-motion. Feng Hong's own body-art was terrifyingly quick. At that moment she forced it still faster, the red shadow circling Qi Jianfeng three times in an instant, front, back, left, right. Had she faced almost anyone else, one of those three would already have taken hold.
But Qi Jianfeng remained at the center of the circle all along, white robes opening and settling, his leg-shadows layering out around him as though he stood still while the force of his art itself expanded to fill the space. Each time Feng Hong came within half a step of truly fixing his ankle, knee, or waist, one more leg-shadow came down half a beat ahead of her and cut her off.
The sensation was suffocating.
Each time it felt as though if she were only half an inch faster, half a degree sharper, she would reach him.
And each time there was already an invisible wall there, pressing her back.
The more it happened, the more she understood his true intent.
It was not merely to crush her.
It was to press her, little by little, until Phoenix Dance Palace's hidden depths themselves were forced to show.
She understood that.
And because she understood it, she also knew she was already in genuine danger.
She could not retreat.
She could not lose.
The harder she bit down on that certainty, the brighter her eyes grew. The red of her robe shook once, and instead of yielding she drove herself again directly into the heaviest part of Qi Jianfeng's line of pressure.
The choice was brave.
It also drove the danger around her tighter still.
Qi Jianfeng saw that even now she still dared to force her way into the heart of his leg-force. His eyes sank a little. The white of his robe stirred. The next line of kicks came not especially faster, not yet fully all-out, but with the obvious intent of seeing just how much farther this young Palace Master could still drive the arts of the Phoenix before reaching the edge of life and death.
Dragon Palm Presses the Unicorn
At almost that same moment, at the other side of the hall, Long Tianxiao and Qi Zhenyue's fight had also reached the point where one side had to give.
The earlier exchanges of palm against leg had long since brought the fire in both men out into the open. Their fighting now was no longer a matter of seizing initiative through quick collisions. Both had already seen that the other was no opponent to be crushed in three or five moves. And because of that, every strike from here onward was both harder and deeper.
The white form at the center of the hall flashed again.
Qi Zhenyue's footwork changed sharply.
He no longer fought as before, using the Divine Unicorn Leg to press straight on the front. Instead he forced his body into terrifying speed, the white robe flickering, the whole of him suddenly appearing at Long Tianxiao's side, then behind him, then elsewhere around him. In the lamp-light several afterimages seemed to string themselves together at once, as though the same man had attacked from four or five directions at once.
This was one of the body-lines within the Divine Unicorn Leg that most revealed true mastery of movement—
The Trace of the Unicorn.
Qi Zhenyue had clearly realized by now that the Myriad Dragons Palm was strongest exactly when allowed to stand square and drive forward from the center. The more directly he tried to overwhelm it, the more his own force risked being read, received, and pushed back by Long Tianxiao's depth. So he changed his mind and changed his line. With Cloud-Treading Unicorn Step joined to the leg-art, he attacked from the flanks, from behind the shoulder, from the neck-side, always from the places hardest to guard. The white shadow flashed through the lamps and dust, snow-scattered, sharp, and impossible to pin.
Against almost anyone else, that line would already have broken the rhythm of the mind.
Long Tianxiao would not be moved.
He did not chase.
He did not turn after every white afterimage.
Instead he sank his feet one by one into the pattern of Dragon Walks the Nine Palaces, and his blue robe turned only as much as it needed to. His palms never strayed beyond the three-foot space before his body. Qi Zhenyue could be as fast as he wished. He could circle all he wished. But to enter that three-foot space he still had to meet the weight of those palms.
In a short span, Qi Zhenyue changed position three times, the leg-wind cutting like knives, and still he failed to truly enter within Long Tianxiao's guard.
His irritation sharpened. With a hard draw on his inner force, he rose abruptly into the air. His white robe spread in the firelight like a patch of cold cloud falling from above, and his right leg came smashing down at a slant toward the space between Long Tianxiao's shoulder and crown.
This was—
Cloud-Shattering Mountain-Step.
Compared to the flashing leg-shadows before, this move was almost plain. But it carried the whole advantage of height and descent. Before the kick itself fully arrived, the air over the center of the hall had already sunk by half an inch, and even the dust just beginning to fall back to the ground seemed driven down again under its pressure.
Long Tianxiao looked up, and something flashed in his eyes. Yet still he did not retreat.
His two palms circled inward from the outside, as though sketching an arc through the empty air itself. The heavy force of his palm-line suddenly took on the flavor of drawing and returning. Then both palms rose in sequence, one after the other, upward in a linked line.
This was Nine Dragons Returning to Heaven.
Unlike the direct, dominating blows in most of the Myriad Dragons Palm, this move emphasized circling, receiving, and borrowing. Cloud-Shattering Mountain-Step came downward by borrowing height and crushing force. But Long Tianxiao's palms drew that force into a turning current and shifted it by the smallest fraction.
Boom.
Palm and leg met again.
Qi Zhenyue was not knocked away, but the straight, crushing descent of his move was broken. When his toes touched down, his footing wavered by just a hair.
It was only a tiny unsteadiness.
Long Tianxiao saw it at once.
Qi Zhenyue saw it too. He knew it was bad. How could he let the other side settle after that? With a hard shout he drove himself back in, feet tapping again and again across the floor. His whole body skimmed low to the ground. The right leg swept from below. The left stabbed through the centerline after it. One before, one after, like twin bursts of fire running just above the floor.
This was Unicorn Treading the Fire.
Compared with Cloud-Shattering Mountain-Step, it was closer, meaner, and far more dangerous. It specialized in seizing the moment after a heavy exchange, when the opponent had not yet fully brought his breath back together. If it entered at the leg-line then, a proper palm-line often came too late by half a beat.
Long Tianxiao had been waiting for exactly that closeness.
When the first leg swept low toward him, he seemed almost deliberately half a beat slow. His shoulder turned. The opening at his left side showed and vanished.
Qi Zhenyue saw it and did not think.
His second leg drove in at once toward the space beneath the ribs and at the shoulder-root, clearly meaning to force the attack through and throw the other man off balance backward.
But at the exact instant the line of that kick was fully committed, Long Tianxiao turned half a position through the Nine Palaces beneath his feet, and his whole body shifted away by half a foot.
That half-foot was enough.
It carried the deadliest point of Qi Zhenyue's kick just past its target.
And then both of Long Tianxiao's palms came out together.
The left came neither high nor low, but on the slant, cutting in at Qi Zhenyue's knee-line like a blue dragon's claw, stopping the forward-driving force at the exact point of his advance. The right drove level through the center, grand and overwhelming, like twin dragons striking in from either side.
It was Twin Dragons Seizing the Pearl.
Qi Zhenyue's second kick had already been committed to the forward rush. The instant the left knee-line was intercepted, the force behind the whole motion broke by half an inch. And Long Tianxiao's right palm was already there. That half-inch of loss meant there was no longer any room left for recovery.
Bang!
The palm struck solidly against the line of his chest.
Qi Zhenyue felt as though an unseen beam had crashed squarely into him. His white robe blew back. He retreated three full steps before he could stop himself, and only barely did he manage to plant his feet before reaching the broken stone near the western side.
His face flashed pale, then dark. Blood surged up under his tongue. He swallowed it back by force and refused to let it spill before the hall. But the blow had landed hard, and the earlier rushes of attack had already consumed much of his breath. Now, with his centerline struck again, the flow of inner force in his chest and abdomen churned in sudden disorder. He could still stand. The fire in his eyes had not gone out. But his leg-art no longer flowed in one seamless line as it had a moment earlier. He might still force himself back into the fight—but the initiative was gone, and the current of his breath broken. He would no longer be able to drive forward as before.
Long Tianxiao had taken the half-step advantage.
But he was far from having crushed him.
The blow had landed. Yet his own chest was hardly at ease. He had taken the weight of Cloud-Shattering Mountain-Step, and then forced Twin Dragons Seizing the Pearl at close range. His arms still rang with numbness. The churn in his own energy center had nearly forced a trace of blood up his throat as well, and only by force had he held it down without showing a thing on his face.
And he had no time to follow.
Because at that very moment, at the side of the hall, the red and white shadows had turned still more dangerous. While fighting Qi Zhenyue he had only snatched occasional glances—seeing the Feng sisters pressure Xue Wuli, seeing Qi Jianfeng enter, seeing Feng Zhu sent flying and Feng Hong left alone inside the crushing field of leg-shadows. Now that he had finally driven Qi Zhenyue back and spared himself half a breath to look—
he saw the red figure stagger.
A shock sank through him.
Feng Hong was very nearly at the end of what she could withstand.
He had not even fully finished the thought before the blue of his robe had already turned, and with it he abandoned Qi Zhenyue entirely.
Dragon Shadow Enters the Fire
His thought had only just formed when his body had already moved.
The line of killing-intent that had still been fixed on Qi Zhenyue a moment earlier was cut off by force as though with one stroke. The blue figure slashed through lamp-shadow and dust. Under Dragon Walks the Nine Palaces he crossed three positions in succession and went straight into the crushing field of Qi Jianfeng's leg-force.
Qi Jianfeng's true killing intent had already begun to gather around Feng Hong.
After several forced evasions, the finest point of her rhythm had finally been knocked half out of alignment. That half-step was enough. Qi Jianfeng's white robe stirred. His right leg rose from below without the least wasted motion. The kick had not yet fully unfolded, and already the weight of it was descending. It was meant to seize the instant in which she changed breath and footing and crush her outright from there.
Feng Hong felt cold enter her all at once.
She forced one breath upward. Flying Phoenix Finger was only just beginning to rise when she already knew the truth: this leg came too deep, too old, too heavy. Even if she landed the finger, the man in front of her would not necessarily retreat. More likely he would simply continue forward and grind her whole line to pieces under the pressure of the kick. The thought flashed through her head like lightning. Her red sleeve turned. She had only just shifted half a foot out of the line when the white leg-shadow had already entered the dead angle before her shoulder—
And then, from the side, a wave of grand, powerful palm-force crashed in.
"Cult Leader Qi—does bullying a young woman count as skill?"
The shout had not yet finished.
The palm had already arrived.
It came squarely, heavily, and hard, not at all to exchange cleverness with him, but with the intention of cutting his leg-force in half through sheer refusal to yield.
Qi Jianfeng's eyes sank a little.
The line that had already entered Feng Hong's killing-angle shifted by force. The attack changed from crushing downward to sweeping sideways. The white hem of his robe flared, and the leg-force met the palm-force head-on.
Bang!
The lamps throughout the ruined hall shook wildly again.
The whole of Long Tianxiao's right arm rang numb under the impact. The churn in his chest that he had not yet fully suppressed surged again and nearly burst upward. But he had still forced that line of the leg away by half a foot.
And half a foot was enough.
Feng Hong's step crossed sharply. The red shadow spun. Using the force-wind raised by palm and leg together, she shot outward and clear.
When she landed, the lingering edge-force of Qi Jianfeng's kick still made her shoulder ache dully and her breathing run wild. She even swayed once before regaining full balance.
But when she looked up, the blue of a robe was already before her.
Long Tianxiao did not look back.
He only shifted his body slightly and placed himself between her and Qi Jianfeng. The figure before her was not some impossibly towering presence, nor did he assume any dramatic stance. Yet once that blue back stood there, it truly seemed as though the most dangerous line before her had been blocked.
"Palace Master Feng. Steady yourself."
His voice was not loud.
It was very deep.
"His legs are heavy. I'll take the front. You work the flanks."
Feng Hong was caught by surprise.
Since her youth, what she had known of others was one of four things: they watched her, yielded to her, feared her, or relied on her. They either treated her as the young Palace Master of Phoenix Dance Palace or as a piece to be pressured, bargained over, and fought over. Never before had anyone, in the middle of a true life-and-death struggle, stepped in without hesitation, taken a kick meant for her, and before even settling his own breath properly, told her first to regain her footing.
The astonishment lasted only an instant.
The hall had already no mercy left in it.
Qi Jianfeng had pressed up again.
He had meant to continue pressing Feng Hong and to see just how much more Phoenix Dance Palace she could still force out under the pressure of death. Instead this blue-robed young lord had inserted himself between them, hard-cutting his leg-line and, more importantly, taking the centerline in exactly the right way. Qi Jianfeng's brows did not move. But the look in his eyes had clearly deepened.
The white robe shook.
This time the leg-shadows rose no longer for Feng Hong alone, but to encompass Long Tianxiao as well.
And Qi Zhenyue moved too.
He had only just been driven back by Long Tianxiao's palm, and the blood in his chest was still not fully stilled. But the instant he saw Long Tianxiao turn away from him and go straight to protect Feng Hong, the shame and hatred inside him flared hotter than ever.
To him, that earlier palm had been no more than a moment's bad exchange, not a true loss. And now this choice to leave him aside entirely and turn toward Feng Hong instead—under the eyes of the whole hall—was as though Long Tianxiao had once again thrown him to the side without so much as a second look. If he swallowed that and did nothing, then as far as Qi Zhenyue was concerned, he might as well never raise his head again.
"Long Tianxiao!"
With that roar he moved again.
This time he did not care that the churn in his chest had not fully settled. Forcing inner force up by violence, he shifted Cloud-Treading Unicorn Step three times in succession and skimmed low across the ground, aiming to drive in from behind Long Tianxiao and join father and son in crushing the blue-robed young lord between them.
But before he had even gone several steps, a red shadow flashed out from the side.
"Young lord of the cult—pass me first."
The voice was not loud. It carried even a trace of roughness from blood not yet fully stilled. But the red shadow itself was not slow in the least.
Feng Zhu.
Qi Jianfeng had struck her hard. Her back had slammed into the pillar. Her chest was still roiling. Even now the taste of blood sat under her tongue. But she was the most stable, the deepest, and the most clear-headed of Phoenix Palace's younger line. The instant Long Tianxiao moved to help Feng Hong, she had already seen that Qi Zhenyue would never let that go. So before the breath in her chest had even fully returned, she drove herself upright from the pillar and cut across his path before he could truly enter the larger fight.
The fury in Qi Zhenyue's eyes burst.
"Get out of my way!"
The leg-shadow came with the shout.
This one was not a testing line like those he had used against Long Tianxiao. It was a direct strike, full of rage, aimed for Feng Zhu's waist and ribs, clearly meant to sweep her out of the way by force while she was still carrying the internal shock from the earlier kick.
Feng Zhu did not receive it head-on.
Her red robe turned. Her steps were astonishingly tight, shifting by half a foot at most, never wasting ground. Just as the kick entered its heaviest line, she bent through the waist and slid along the edge of it. The move was nothing like Feng Hong's dazzling evasions. It was a more grounded danger, a closer, heavier one. She was already past the deadliest force of the kick when her right hand turned over and closed like a soft hook at the tendon-line outside Qi Zhenyue's knee.
This was Rosy Cloud Locking the Pulse from the Heavenly Phoenix Grasp.
Qi Zhenyue had never expected that she would still dare come in so close while injured. His leg-force had only just run through empty air when his footing stalled by a hair. Feng Zhu did not waste it. Her left hand rose with the same movement and wrapped toward the waist and hip-line beside the kicking leg, taking, binding, and leading all at once, clearly meaning to drag the rhythm of his whole body down with it.
"You want death!"
Qi Zhenyue was beyond furious. The white robe snapped. His returning leg lashed back in immediate retaliation.
Feng Zhu had already withdrawn half a step.
The moment the edge of the kick cut past the hem of her robe, her right hand turned again. Rending Feather Talon shot out, not at the centerline, but for the leg-root and the ribs, the places hardest to guard together. The move lacked Feng Hong's dazzling brilliance. It was heavier, nastier. One felt that if it landed, it would not merely scratch skin but tear into tendon and flesh.
Qi Zhenyue had no choice but to withdraw half a step himself.
And in withdrawing, he lost the very opening by which he had meant to rejoin the fight around Long Tianxiao.
So white and red knotted together in another corner of the hall.
The more Qi Zhenyue fought, the angrier he became.
He had intended to strike at Long Tianxiao. Instead he had been intercepted halfway by a woman his father had only just flung aside. Worse, Feng Zhu's style was the exact opposite of the bright violence he knew how to hate. She did not dazzle. She did not force a great exchange. She only kept entering the places where he most hated to be touched—wrist, elbow, leg-root, tendon, joints—wrapping him, cutting off force, binding rhythm, until his anger had no satisfying road to take.
Feng Zhu, meanwhile, only grew steadier.
The injury in her chest had not eased. Each step, each shift of force, drove the dull ache in her back deeper. The blood at her throat rose again and again, and again and again she swallowed it back. But she knew one thing with perfect clarity: whatever else happened, she could not allow Qi Zhenyue to re-enter the greater clash around Long Tianxiao and Feng Hong. If she failed in that, the line her sister stood on would truly become desperate.
So she sought not to win, but to entangle.
Not to crush him outright, but to drag his breath, drag his timing, drag his next move until the fire in him burned itself down.
All around them, the firelight shook harder.
And elsewhere in the hall, Long Tianxiao and Feng Hong were now truly fighting side by side.
Qi Jianfeng had plainly seen what they intended. One to hold the front. One to work the flanks. If they were allowed to connect their breathing and rhythm properly, he could still suppress them—but at greater trouble than before. So the white robe shook once, and his leg-shadows accelerated. The slow, crushing oppression of before now carried inside it a sharper, deadlier edge.
Long Tianxiao met two legs head-on, and the numbness in his arms worsened at once. The churn in his energy center deepened as well. Still he refused to retreat by even half a step. The Myriad Dragons Palm rolled out one level after another, steady and square, locking down the center. Feng Hong, meanwhile, used the smallest spaces his palms created to drive in from the sides. Flying Phoenix Finger went for the throat. Rending Feather Talon for the tendons. Heavenly Phoenix Grasp for ankle and knee. The Phoenix Dance Body Art made her red shadow flash before, behind, left, and right.
They had only just met.
They had certainly never practiced combination-work together.
And yet, the more they fought, the more they seemed as though they had always been meant to stand like this.
Long Tianxiao's palms were heavy enough to take the front for her.
Feng Hong's body-art was swift enough to seize the flanks for him.
When Long Tianxiao's palm drove out, her red shadow was often already half a foot deeper into the opening it created.
When Feng Hong's fingers or talons forced Qi Jianfeng's leg-line to tilt by the smallest degree, Long Tianxiao's heavy palm was always already there to drive into the exact place he least wanted to meet force head-on.
This was not combination-work born of prior drill.
It was the kind that appears only on the line between life and death, when one man's breath, steps, and instinct suddenly fit into another's by sheer necessity.
Feng Hong felt the shock of it herself.
At first she had thought only that this young lord of Azure Dragon Isle was hard-mouthed and harder-tempered. Only now, standing with him, did she realize that the man not only struck with grand and steady force, but even when he shielded another, he measured the act perfectly. He did not simply push her backward for safety. He did not grandstand and try to fight everything himself. He took the heaviest and most dangerous line onto his own body, and left her the road that still remained.
In all her life, she had never truly fought beside another person like this.
The thought had only just risen when Qi Jianfeng's next leg struck again.
This kick was heavier, fiercer still, and when the white robe moved, it seemed the whole level of firelight in the hall dropped again under the pressure of it. Long Tianxiao's eyes darkened, and his palms had only just risen when Feng Hong moved before him, her red shadow cutting along the edge of the kick as Flying Phoenix Finger snapped toward the opening at the side of the ankle. Qi Jianfeng's leg-line shifted slightly in response. And in that instant Long Tianxiao's Dragon Battles in the Wild came crashing straight through the center.
Palm-force like a mountain.
Leg-force like a tide.
Boom—!
The collision sent dust and gray powder swirling through the hall so violently that even the shattered tiles above the broken eaves trembled. Long Tianxiao's feet sank half a step into the dust under him from the force of it—but Qi Jianfeng too was denied the line of further pressure he wanted. Feng Hong used that half-instant at once. Her red shadow slipped to his side and behind, and Rending Feather Talon drove straight for the space beneath the ribs.
For the first time, Qi Jianfeng truly looked at her.
There was no longer the faint cool interest with which a senior hand measures a younger one.
What stood in his eyes now was the recognition of a fire that had truly caught and that had, to make matters worse, twined itself with a dragon-shadow.
The wind in the hall sharpened.
Along the eastern line, the white-robed disciples were still pressing the red and blue disciples into a desperate holding struggle, blade-light and palm-shadow bursting again and again among them. Far to the south, Bai Suling and Feng Jiuyi were still tangled together, nails and finger-shadows flickering in the dark. Toward the west, Helian Chi and Long Boyuan continued to clash with the weight of colliding tides. And here, the brightest and fiercest point of white, red, and blue had finally twisted together into one burning knot.
Dragon-shadow entered the fire.
And the fire borrowed the dragon's force.
For a time, it seemed even the ruined hall of ancient Tianmen—abandoned for centuries—had itself come alive again under the force of this same-blood schism.
Poetic Coda
In the ruined hall, the lamps shook over a covenant torn apart;
White robes pressed low like snow in sweeping ranks.
A city of leg-shadows smothered breath from every side;
Half the hall rang with dragon-force and phoenix-fire.
Feng Zhu, blood in her throat, still barred the raging Unicorn;
Long Tianxiao turned back into danger without a thought.
The old oath endured until tonight—and tonight it shattered;
The four sacred beasts looked on in silence as the same blood split.
(End of Chapter Seventeen)