6.46 - Jin Xifeng

Nine gleaming blades flew toward He Yu, each laden with killing intent. Every one of his senses screamed at him. Begged him to run, hide, anything. Anything but stand there and face this monster.

As Jin Xifeng’s flying swords came ever closer, each infinitesimal moment reaching to an eternity in the sight of the Peerless Judgment and his Daoist Mind, He Yu felt the true weight of his opponent. Even now, as a heartless death reached for him, borne on black and withered hands and lit by an eternal sunset, He Yu struggled to defend. Struggled to defy. What right did he have, after all, to stand against the empress of the world?

Leigong’s drum thundered in his ears. Shenlong roared, and the storm spoke. This was his moment. This was what he’d come so far to accomplish. This was his legend.

He Yu called forth the Spring Rain Mirror. A formation of blue disks, each just the size of his palm, flashed into the space between him and Jin Xifeng. Nine flying swords struck, and nine disks shattered. He Yu called the Spring Rain Mirror again. With heaven and wind qi pulsing through his meridians, he activated the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering, and pulled himself away from the attack with the Sky Dragon’s Flight.

The extra speed granted by his body enforcement had always paired well with his movement technique. But it wasn’t enough. As he darted away from Jin Xifeng’s swords, they curved in their arc to follow. He called the Spring Rain Mirror for a third time. For a third time, the swords shattered his defenses, cutting through his storm to follow him unerringly.

For the first time since reaching Golden Core, he wasn’t fast enough. The swords closed in, nine shining blades heavy with anger and death. He Yu steeled himself. Maybe, with another flex of his spirit, a formation of the Spring Rain Mirror, he could endure. Maybe, with the bronze shine coating his skin, he could weather the strike. Maybe, his armor made from the hide of a Seventh Realm divine beast would be strong enough.

A circle of silver formation characters flashed into the empty air. The barrier held an instant longer than the Spring Rain Mirror had, its surface spiderwebbed with glowing cracks as it strained to hold back the assault of a Ninth Realm expert. But an instant was enough. Li Heng appeared before He Yu in a flash of moonlit snow, and held his jian at the ready. When the barrier fell, three of Jin Xifeng’s blades curved toward Li Heng’s own weapon, pulled in by the defensive properties of the Winter Moon Reflection.

The swords struck, and Li Heng’s jian shone with the light of a hundred suns. Even atop his own flying sword, the weight he’d sapped from Jin Xifeng’s attack pulled him to the earth, hundreds of feet below. As he fell, He Yu caught the strain on his features as he brought the tip of his jian to bear, aiming it at Jin Xifeng. The river of sword light he released was greater than any He Yu had seen him call before, but that was all the time and attention he could spare.

The remaining six blades closed in, even as He Yu poured everything he could into his movement and body enforcement in a desperate bid to escape. Even as he formed countless more activations of the Spring Rain Mirror. It seemed not to matter whether he simply blocked or tried to deflect—Jin Xifeng’s flying swords shattered them just the same.

Chen Fei slammed into the formation of flying swords, encased in the impregnable defense of the Titan’s Panoply and blazing with the power of her Falling Star Strike. An explosion of mountain qi managed to knock another three swords aside. Chen Fei called forth more formations using the Seventy-Two Blessed Symbols, binding the swords for at least a moment.

Another formation of the Spring Rain Mirror crumbled before Jin Xifeng’s assault, but dealing with three swords was easier than dealing with nine. It still wasn’t enough. The swords were now within arm’s length. Wind qi surged through He Yu’s meridians. A shell formed of the Bracing Wind expanded outward from him, and he called one final activation of the Spring Rain Mirror. He cycled everything else he had left into the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering, and placed his remaining trust in his armor. He laid his fortune at the feet of heaven.

Blood sprayed from three wounds, and He Yu fell.

He slammed to the ground with a thunderous crack. His impact left a crater nearly a full li across and kicked a plume of dust and debris hundreds of feet into the air. Every fiber of his being ached, and pain screamed through his meridians and nerves alike. But he lived, if only just.

Qi flooded his meridians and poured into his twisted limbs and shattered bones. As tough as his divinely forged body may be, he’d just taken an attack from an expert a full realm above him. And lived. He’d have called it a miracle, if not because he knew the reason why—Li Heng and Chen Fei had both come to his defense, and without their aid, he’d have been obliterated. At equal advancement, neither Elder Cai nor Sect Leader Zhou had stood against those blades. Together, He Yu, Chen Fei, and Li Heng had managed.

But the fight had only just begun.

He Yu grimaced as he hauled himself to his feet, using his guandao for assistance. Pain screamed in every inch of his being, even as his wounds closed and his bones knit themselves back together. The sheer amount of qi it took both to endure the attack and to recover from it was staggering. Although it was merely a fraction of what he had access to in total, Jin Xifeng would wear him—and the others—down long before they could make serious headway if she kept this up. He Yu couldn’t see any reason she wouldn’t.

Li Heng appeared next to him with the White Hare Dance, and Chen Fei arrived atop her bronze disc a moment later. Li Heng looked about as bad as He Yu felt. His features were set, and his robes were stained with dirt and blood from his own fall. But he held his head high and fixed a firm gaze on Jin Xifeng as her swords returned to hover around her once again. Chen Fei looked to be in the best shape of them all. The Titan’s Panoply may be cracked in places, but already it mended itself. Her formation barriers had taken the brunt of Jin Xifeng’s opening assault, and she would still have plenty of qi left for the next one.

From her perch atop her flying sword, Jin Xifeng looked down on them with clear disdain. She descended until she hovered a mere thirty feet above them, her nine flying blades once more arrayed like the rays of a silver sun. Behind her, the furious red of her spirit consumed the world, and the army of grasping dead stretched out from one horizon to the next below her.

“For what purpose do you defy me, inheritor of Cai Weizhe’s arts?” Jin Xifeng asked. “And what of you two? A child scion of the Li, and some nameless peasant girl. Is it loyalty that drives you? I am far more worthy of such devotion, don’t you think?”

As she spoke, the world trembled. Her words dug into He Yu’s thoughts like claws. Wasn’t she worthy of devotion? She was the stronger, after all. As much as he’d always hated to admit it, the world of cultivation was ruled by the strong. He’d felt the might of that single attack, the kiss of her blades as they parted his flesh. She’d always been the stronger. A thousand years ago, she’d proved as much when she stood against the entire empire arrayed against her, and brought it to its knees. Elder Cai hadn’t even truly defeated her. He’d simply delayed the inevitable.

Then she’d proved it again, when she broke free of her prison. She’d swept aside the whole of the Shrouded Peaks Sect arrayed against her as though it were nothing. And when the sect founded to contain her was no more, she taken the empire as easily as one pluck a ripened peach from its branch. And now she’d nearly killed them all with a single attack. Not even a proper technique. Just a flex of her immaculate will to send her treasures to do the job for her.

What hope did they have, truly? She would wipe them away, just as she’d said she would. They would be nothing but dust in the forgotten corners of memory when she was done—and there was nothing they could do to stop her.

He Yu looked up at Jin Xifeng. At his empress. Framed by her nine swords and the blood-red sun, she smiled and reached out a hand as if to beckon him to her. Her smile was as kind as it was cruel. Her hand was as welcoming as it was possessive. All he had to do was take it, and it would all end. The struggle, the strife. Perhaps once she had her way, when at last there was no one left to stand against her, she would restore order. Rule with the mandate of heaven and bring prosperity to the land at last.

Almost by instinct alone, he reached for the Dao of Heroism. His connection to the greater Dao trembled, and the Dao of Heroism sang in his spirit. He cycled the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment, and as if for the first time he saw the truth. This was the same as what she’d done to them all in the wilds so long ago. Somehow reaching into their deepest secret desires and promising them their ideal world.

This was the second pillar of her power, the Eternal Whispers of Desire. Knowledge from a battle a thousand years past flooded into him—remnants of Elder Cai’s inheritance and memories fell into place. A technique that let her reach into the heart of its target, then promise them the world. All she asked for in return was their undying devotion. Once they’d granted it to her, she used the Immaculate Monarch’s Boon on them, and the pact was complete. A sliver of her power, and access to her insights in exchange for their everything. The countless dead that littered her feet were testament enough to how effective this pair of techniques had been over the hundreds of years she’d lived. Even while having spent a thousand of those years sealed within the Dawn Palace.

With the clarity granted by the Peerless Judgment, boosted by Elder Cai’s inheritance and his own Daoist Mind, He Yu pushed back against the insidious whispers of the Twilight Empress. He reasserted his own will, his own Way, and the grasping claws recoiled. A storm raged outward from him, great bolts of heaven sundering the corpses closest, reducing those dessicated husks to piles of ash to then be carried away by the howling winds.

To either side of him, Li Heng and Chen Fei stood transfixed. Motionless as they looked up at Jin Xifeng, still held within the thrall of her technique. He Yu reached back to their time in the valley, searching his distant memories for a way to break Jin Xifeng’s hold. How she’d used her technique then had been different. Still sealed within the Dawn Palace, she’d been unable to bring its totality to bear. But they’d been within lands that had given themselves wholly over to her. She’d used her influence to creep into their thoughts, perhaps over the course of days. It had taken a formation barrier from Chen Fei to break her hold. He Yu glanced to her, standing tall and still in her lion-embellished armor. He grimaced.

There was nothing for it then. If this confrontation was to be a direct clash of wills, of power, then he would meet her on those terms and none other.

Galvanic arcs of a thousand colors exploded from He Yu. The storm expanded to cover his half of the sky—the darkened west flashing with the fury of heaven. In his hands, his guandao crackled with his own power. The winds rose around him, and rain whipped at his robes and hair. Lifted on wings formed of the Sky Dragon’s Flight, He Yu rushed a foe he’d no business facing head on. But had never stopped him before; he’d be damned if he let it stop him now.

Nine swords came together, crossed before Jin Xifeng in a lattice of steel. Lighting arced off the blades, discharging into the air with the sharp, acrid scent of an afternoon thunderstorm. She tilted her head to the side and met his gaze from behind her blades. Unconcerned and disdainful, her lips quirked ever so slightly upward in an amused and arrogant smirk.

“Is that your plan?” she asked, her voice sounding almost bored. “They fight me, you know. Valiant of them. Admirable, even. But they’re already mine. And when I finally break them, I will turn them against you. Cai Weizhe was twice the expert you are, and he barely managed to seal me away. But what did it cost him? Thousands of lives, and his own advancement. What do you have to turn against me, child? A shadow of his arts? A flimsy blade and armor made of a beast barely awakened to the final tier of power?”

Behind her, the sunset dimmed. It was slight, and were it not for the focus and sight granted by the Peerless Judgment, He Yu never would have noticed. Around her, the eternal twilight brightened imperceptibly.

“It took me a long time to figure out what Cai Weizhe really meant when he said no single expert could defeat you. I may not have his power, but I do have his guidance.”

As he spoke, Jin Xifeng’s smugness fell away, turning to disbelief tinged with a shadow of horror. Slowly she turned, her attention focusing on Jiankang perched on the horizon, black and squat against her bloody sunset. In the sight of the Peerless Judgment, five presences—all of the Seventh and Eighth Realm, fell upon the capital and wrought their bloody work.