6.49 - To Stand Together

The fight wore on. With Chen Fei and Li Heng at his side once more, He Yu was bolstered. Facing off against Jin Xifeng by himself had forced him to the absolute edge of his abilities. And once she’d released her actual techniques, the whole cause appeared lost. His saving grace had been her loss of focus and power. As the others did their work in Jiankang proper, her ability to hold both Li Heng and Chen Fei at once had waned. Her ability to shrug He Yu to the side had waned. Her ability to keep it all in the palm of her hand at once—had waned.

Inch by inch, their plan was working. The difference in potency, in weight, of Jin Xifeng’s spirit was now undeniable. That she hadn’t attempted to use the Eternal Whispers of Desire again gave him further hope. While she was still easily strong enough to overpower any of them individually, they didn’t give her the chance.

He Yu drew her focus, launching a headlong assault with his guandao. Heaven sparked along its length, while thundering cracks broke the sky at his passing. Nine swords closed in on themselves to form a defense far beyond what he could pierce, but that didn’t matter. With Jin Xifeng’s attention fully on him, Li Heng appeared beside her. The blade of his ancestral jian vanished, turning into a dark and frozen mist. Five black scars opened on the world, and Jin Xifeng grimaced.

She turned, her attention shifting toward her new attacker. Five of her blades broke away from He Yu, and all arced toward Li Heng. The Winter Moon Reflection caught two of them. Two more slammed into formation barriers called by Chen Fei. The last glanced off a formation of the Spring Rain Mirror. An instant later, a brilliant river of silver light flowed off Li Heng’s blade as he released the power of Jin Xifeng’s attack. It slammed into her remaining four swords, but in guarding against the assault, she opened herself to Chen Fei and He Yu both.

A gleaming silver star and a crackling golden dragon crashed into Jin Xifeng from opposite sides. She responded in a manner befitting her age and expertise; four blades for He Yu and four for Chen Fei. Her final sword remained engaged with Li Heng. That she could split her attention so effectively was almost beyond comprehension, but He Yu grew more familiar with both his Daoist Mind and his perception technique with each exchange. Such expertise was to be expected from someone like her.

Four blades hammered at Chen Fei’s defenses, but she held. Flying swords slammed into formation barriers time and again. Her barriers cracked, then shattered, but her armor held. She towered to the heavens, encased in the Titan’s Panoply and drawing strength and vitality from the earth itself via the Eternal Mountain Root. The second stage of her art, the Iron Fortress Redoubt, bolstered her other defenses to where she could endure such power, such an unrelenting assault. The White Mountain Body Art, the final legacy of the Shrouded Peaks Sect, served her well here, against the very foe the sect had been founded to guard against.

Li Heng took blow after blow on his ancestral jian, bequeathed him by his father and his grandfather. The very blade that had elevated Li Renshu from a talented nobody to the General of the West now beat back a false empress in service of his family’s future. Each hit he took, every strike he parried, caused the blade to gleam ever brighter. He vanished in a dusting of snow, and an echo of a silent moon, to appear above Jin Xifeng. The world darkened as hoarfrost hung in the frigid air. Spires of ice reached up from the ground like so many grasping fingers, and a chill mist obscured the eternal sunset, if only for a moment.

A river of silver light poured off Li Heng’s blade with his release of the Winter Moon Reflection. A tide of the dead rose around Jin Xifeng, as she called up the power of her servants to protect her. A power that dwindled even now. The instant her defenses dropped, He Yu struck.

He surged forward on the Sky Dragon’s Flight, wind and thunder and rain heralding his approach. His guandao gleamed in the unnatural twilight as he held it before him. The Rushing Wind layered with Heaven’s Descending Blade formed a shell of heaven and wind around his outstretched weapon, and the Fist of the Heavens formed around his free hand.

Blade, technique, and fist struck home. The heavens opened, and their fury poured down. Wind screamed all around him as the rain lashed at the exposed skin on his face and bare arm. Nine manifestations of the Spring Rain Mirror flashed into the space between him and nine flying swords. The mirrors shattered one by one. Steel parted flesh, but He Yu pushed yet more qi into his meridians to heal his ravaged limbs.

His wasn’t the only defense that failed in the exchange. The Fist of the Heavens slammed into Jin Xifeng, just below her armpit. Bones gave way beneath the strike, and the fury on her features gave way to pain. Short-lived as it was, evidence that he’d landed a good hit gave his spirits a much-needed boost just the same.

Although the three of them closed in inch-by-inch, their presences taking over ever more of the crimson sky and dead-covered ground, Jin Xifeng’s spirit still proved itself the stronger. Her bloody sunset blazed a brilliant red, and the grasping dead beneath her feet confounded far too many of their attacks. But her sun slowly dimmed, the dead became more sluggish, and her techniques came with slightly more delays between them.

Shadows curled around her swords as she launched them, one after the other, in what seemed almost random directions. For an instant, she opened herself completely. Her defenses were too far away, and her stance was relaxed. It was too good an invitation to pass up. He Yu shot into the gap, heaven crackling along his robes and weapon.

Jin Xifeng reached out with a perfectly delicate hand and gripped He Yu by the throat. Nine swords pointed at him, each of them trailing shadow. More shadow, more blood surged up around him. It crawled down the length of her arm, to pool at her wrist before wrapping around He Yu’s spirit. All around him, grasping hands belonging to the corpses rose from the mass of bodies they now stood upon.

She looked into his eyes, hers ancient and carrying the weight of time beyond He Yu’s experience. His life lived a hundred times over and more. Her gaze was dispassionate, cold. To her, he was just another expert standing in her way. For all the time he’d spent focusing on getting strong enough to defy her, thinking of ways to finally defeat her, she met him with a crushing ambivalence.

“You could have been so much more,” she said.

Blood wormed its way into his mouth, up his nostrils. A thousand hands grasped at his robes, his armor, his arms and legs. He felt himself pulled down, descending into the depths of her spirit, where he would surely be overwhelmed.

Howling winter arrived. The crimson sky went dark, lit only by the silver light of the full moon. The limbs of the dead froze, creeping frost choking the unlife from their grasping fingers. In an instant, winter covered the world in darkness and silence. Serenity. Peace. Li Heng stood between He Yu and Jin Xifeng. His jian, held out before him with immaculate form, gleamed in the moonlight.

“I will not surrender my dearest friend to you without a fight,” he said. His words carried with them the sound of cracking ice. “Even if it costs me what worthless life I yet posses.”

The unnatural stillness brought by Li Heng’s spirit smothered the world. In the silence of a moonlit winter’s night, he struck. The vastness of the taiji slowly rotated behind and above him. A thousand dark scars opened on the world, and a thousand gleaming rivers split the night. The brilliant release of power lit the winter night, and He Yu felt the frozen hand’s of Jin Xifeng’s servants release their grip as they crumbled to crystals of ice.

Chen Fei was at his side, pulling him from the shadows and the grip of the grasping dead. Formation characters shone around him, driving back the blood and darkness. A bubble of warmth and safety and comfort formed around them both as she called on her connection to the Dao of Protection. He Yu cycled his own cultivation, pulling himself the last of the way out of Jin Xifeng’s overwhelming spirit.

“Thanks,” was all he could manage as he took another restorative pill.

Her smile sent warmth surging through his spirit. “We can’t do this without you.”

They stood, and he replied, “I couldn’t do it without either of you.”

Together they threw themselves into the flashing cacophony of silver and steel. A mountain, a storm, and a winter moon stood against the tide of dead and the setting sun. For every surge of shadow and blood, they met it with a bulwark of their own. Whether it was formation backed by the might of a solitary mountain, the relentless grip of winter’s chill, or the roaring fury of heaven’s wrath, they turned back the weight and experience of a thousand years.

And with each exchange, they inched closer to their ultimate victory. He Yu cast the Peerless Judgment toward Jiankang. Over half the city had been culled by now, and it was evident in Jin Xifeng’s spirit. She felt closer in raw strength to how Long Tingguang had felt when he’d faced them on the journey here. Although she still had the same potency to her qi, it was as if she’d lost access to her full use of it. Almost like they times He Yu had trained with Zhang Lifen, and she’d purposefully suppressed her own cultivation.

As her sunset dimmed fractionally yet again, Jin Xifeng turned toward Jiankang. With a burst of power and speed, she shot off toward the horizon, trails of shadow billowing out behind her.

He Yu cycled his cultivation base and pushed wind and heaven through his meridians. The Sky Dragon’s Flight carried him forward on howling winds, and his skin shone the color of bronze as heaven crawled over him. He swooped in front of Jin Xifeng, and slammed his guandao into her midsection.

Heaven exploded from his strike, and a trail of blood followed her all the way to the ground, hundreds of feet below. Her flying treasure shot off to the horizon, leaving a gleaming trail wrapped in shadow as the only evidence of its passing. As she fell, she sent her nine blades at him again. With the Spring Rain Mirror he turned them aside. For the first time since the battle started, he did so easily.

Pointing his guandao at Jin Xifeng as she fell, he called Heaven’s Descending Blade. A column of heaven unlike any he’d summoned before split the sky as he cycled the whole of his cultivation base into a single technique imbued with his full connection to the Dao of Heroism. Chen Fei swooped down on her flying disk and then leaped. A gleaming sun of mountain qi formed around her fist, and a brilliant, lonely star hung above a solitary peak. When she connected with Jin Xifeng, the world shook.

Li Heng left a hundred black scars upon the world, and Jin Xifeng passed through them all. She slammed into the ground, bloody, broken, and with creeping frost blossoming out from her wounds. Shadows surged from where she impacted the ground, a thousand hands of darkness and blood reaching for every one of them.

He Yu formed the Fist of the Heavens. As he hung in the sky above the setting sun, with flashing clouds stretching out in all directions, Shenlong roared. All of heaven and earth trembled at the sound. With the thundering beat of Leigong’s drum surging in his ears, the blood surging in his veins, and his meridians bursting with power, He Yu fell upon the unjust.

Heaven lit the world, split the clouds and the very air. The crash of thunder was the only sound that came close to the roar of the great dragon of heaven. The explosion of power he released when his technique struck blasted a crater a thousand li across. In his spiritual sight, he saw the walls of Jiankang crumble, its protective formations failing at the last.

Jin Xifeng reached for him. “I should have had it all,” she said, as her fingers brushed against his robes. In the east, behind the imperial capital, the crimson sun dipped at last below the horizon. Shadows melted into the night. As the last of Jiankang died, so too did the one who for so long had survived on the life of others.

He Yu turned toward the city. Or what was left of it.

Li Heng appeared at his side. “You know what comes next, right?”

Taking a deep breath, He Yu nodded. Tan Zihao had been the first one to bring up the subject, and it had weighed on his mind ever since. For over forty years, much of it inside the final trial of Yunchang’s tomb, he’d struggled with what he was about to do. It wasn’t a decision he’d come to lightly.

He laced his fingers with Chen Fei’s and squeezed her hand. “Let’s go,” he said before rising into the air once again. “They’ll be expecting us.”