6.47 - To Stand Alone

Jin Xifeng’s spirit flexed, and she shot off toward Jiankang. He Yu saw it before the motion had truly begun, and by the strength of his perception technique, he was ready. If there was only a single advantage he’d always been able to count on, it was his speed. He was faster than anyone at equal advancement, and he had been for years at this point. Faster, it seemed, than even a newly made Ninth Realm.

With the Sky Dragon’s Flight and the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering, he practically flickered from place-to-place, like the flash of lighting in a summer storm. He pulled ahead of Jin Xifeng in an instant, and came to a stop with a crack of thunder. A sweeping strike from his guandao forced her to divert from her intended course, forced her to shift her focus back to him. She locked eyes with him, and he saw nothing but fury.

“You think you can stand against me alone? That you can endure long enough for this foolish endeavor to do anything meaningful? I have achieved the Heavenly True Immortal stage! Even should you slaughter all the souls in Jiankang, my strength is far beyond what you can deal with.”

But she’d stopped. Once again, she turned her nine flying swords on him. She gave him her attention. That alone spoke greater truth than any of her words. Even as he admitted to himself that she was the stronger, she saw him as a threat. She wasn’t willing to leave him at her back.

Still, he was alone.

He said nothing in response. In part because there was little to say, if anything at all, but also because he didn't trust his voice to not betray him. This was supposed to be three-on-one. This was supposed to be He Yu and his closest friends against Jin Xifeng. Instead, she’d locked them away with her technique, the Eternal Whispers of Desire, and even now she endeavored to turn them against him. They fought, to be certain, but she was still the stronger.

So the plan remained as it was. Delay. Fight. And hold her back. Let the others in the city do their work. With every one of her servants they slew, her power waned. Chen Fei and Li Heng would break free, he was certain. They had to. Otherwise, he was already dead. But how was this any different than before? Than the times he’d faced foes he’d no business standing against. He’d come out alive then, so he had to trust he could do it one last time.

“A hero never gives up,” he said. The words had been meant for himself only, but Jin Xifeng clearly heard them, regardless.

She laughed.

He Yu attacked.

The Shearing Wind arced out from his blade, forming a broad crescent carrying a formation of Heaven’s Descending Blade. Jin Xifeng’s flying swords closed in front of her again, forming a bladed shield. He Yu’s attack struck, and sparks flew as heaven arced along her defense. Before the effects of his attack had fully faded, He Yu was upon her. Each of the sweeping strikes of his guandao was met by one of her swords. Each blow from her swords crashed against the Spring Rain Mirror. The sound of metal against metal rang below the thunder of He Yu’s storm, and the silence of Jin Xifeng’s field of the grasping dead.

As he had countless times before, He Yu stood atop the infinite stair. This time, however, his opponent wasn’t below him. She towered to the heavens, the red light of her eternal twilight bathing his world in the color of blood. Countless withered hands reached through the storm and corpses pulled themselves up the stair. For every punishing strike of the heavens that rendered a corpse to dust and ash, ten more took its place.

Wind and rain beat against the endless tide ascending the stair as guandao beat against jian. Jin Xifeng fought unlike anyone He Yu had ever met. The closest he could think of was Zhang Lifen and her graceful, flowing movements. Jin Xifeng was similar in that she fought with an unconcerned ease and grace, but not with the same sudden and powerful strikes that Zhang Lifen frequently unleashed.

Instead, Jin Xifeng stood atop her flying treasure, a sword of immaculate make, and directed her nine other treasures with lazy, almost contemptuous gestures. The swords looped and whirled as they flowed one after the other into a complex and weaving dance of flashing steel and edge-shine death. As He Yu’s attacks increased in tempo and ferocity, Jin Xifeng merely floated away, her flying treasure carrying her easily away from great columns of heaven qi, and the raging winds of He Yu’s storm. So far as he could tell, she hadn’t even used any proper techniques, except that first use of the Eternal Whispers of Desire that still gripped Chen Fei and Li Heng.

But He Yu held on to hope. With each exchange, her sunset dimmed. It was small. A fraction of what even the keenest of divinely attuned senses could detect. Only the Peerless Judgment showed him this singular, hope-filled truth. The others were doing their work, and he just needed to continue doing his.

If only it were that simple. As casual and unconcerned as she was, Jin Xifeng pressed him to his absolute limits. The sheer weight of her presence battered against his will. Although he used the Peerless Judgment freely in most of his fights, he had to keep it active the entire time, lest her presence and its insidious whispers take hold of him once more. How much of it was a manifestation of her Dao of Sovereignty and how much was the ongoing effects of her Eternal Whispers of Desire, he couldn't have said in truth. But either way, he had to fight off the constant assault on his mind while still maintaining enough focus to beat back her martial arts.

It was no easy task. Fighting against a single blade wielded by an expert was hard enough. Not to mention nine at once, each one capable of independent movement. Her blades would come at him from different angles all at once, much like Long Tingguang’s techniques had. But her mastery of these blades saw them changing direction in an instant—feinting and then striking from impossible positions. All Long Tingguang did was stab.

The Spring Rain Mirror was He Yu’s saving grace. The defensive technique had grown so far, and his mastery so complete, that he could form its blue discs with hardly a thought now. It had been ages since he’d been limited to just the one, and now he could handle a mere nine as easily as he breathed. As many disks as he called into the space between thrusts and swings, Jin Xifeng shattered them all. Still, somehow, she overwhelmed his defensive technique, and He Yu had to form two, or sometimes three, instances of the Spring Rain Mirror for each of her attacks. And even then, he only avoided grievous wounds by darting away on the Sky Dragon’s Flight.

Their battle dragged on, and He Yu fell into his Daoist Mind. He acted without acting, moved without thought. He was one with his qi, his weapon, his Way. It still wasn’t enough. A thundering triplet beat of sword strikes cracked, then shattered nine formations of the Spring Rain Mirror three times over. He Yu’s guandao flowed from sweep to strike and back again, but Jin Xifeng found a blade to block, a flat to deflect, and none of his attack found their mark or purchase.

His arms ached. Leigong’s drum thundered in his ears as his heart thundered in his chest. His meridians strained. Shenlong curled around the sky, crackling horns dull under the blood red sun. His blade shone. But for all the strength he brought to bear, Jin Xifeng met him in kind and always remained just beyond his grasp.

Lips curled into a cruel smile, she spoke. “How does your spirit not buckle under the weight of your companions’ deeds? How many citizens of Jiankang have they killed, I wonder? Thousands, at least. I’m a little preoccupied, otherwise I’d take an inventory to be certain. Will it ever be enough? Or will you break upon your own folly, fighting against the strictures of such a noble Dao?”

He Yu’s spirit trembled at her words. He’d known from the start this plan carried risks. Not just in its audacity and the necessity of keeping Jin Xifeng occupied while the others massacred her servants. But in the weight he would have to bear for proposing it. He’d convinced himself there was no other way. That this was the path forward, and that through this single act, they would save countless more. That he could bear the weight of this, that he had the judgment and clarity to see this through.

No. As terrible as it was, he had to. From his place atop the infinite stair, and with the Heavenly Palace rising behind him, he looked out over the world. The storm churned all around him, with Shenlong diving through the clouds and trailing lighting in his wake. The thundering steady beat of Leigong’s drum gave him strength as he steeled himself against what must be done.

Below and before him, an endless field of corpses stretched. And framed by her scarlet setting sun, Jin Xifeng reached out a hand once again. Not in supplication, not in welcome, but in condemnation. Her beatific face concealed hate and rage in equal measure. The dead at her feet were all those spirits she’d claimed. All those who had pledged themselves to her, willingly or out of desperation or false devotion. Much as with those cultivators who accepted the demon cores, hers was a power stolen. Power, siphoned from the spirits of others.

He Yu thought back in that moment to a distant, half remembered conversation with Yi Xiurong. Hers was the Dao of Radiance. She had called it neither kind nor cruel—a Dao that burned away the impurity of the world. Had he followed a Way similar to hers, defined a Dao with a stark a remit as she had, he may have found this easy.

Nothing in his life worth doing had ever been easy.

As he reached out once more with Heaven’s Descending Blade, cycling the churning mass of his cultivation into yet another strike from heaven, he reached for his Dao connection. The Dao of Heroism sang a mournful song. Mournful, yet triumphant. For so long he’d been told, by friend and mentor alike, that as his Way shaped him, he as well shaped his Way.

The time he’d spent in the final trial of Yunchang’s tomb had been instructive. It had been in preparation for this moment in more ways than one. Had the Just Minister, the God of War, anticipated He Yu’s need, tailoring his challenges to prepare him for what must be done? In the end, did it matter? He Yu was prepared. To shoulder this burden was well within his capabilities. Well within the ideals he sought to embody. And if he were wrong, if heaven saw fit to punish him for this transgression, he would gladly spend the rest of his immortal life in penance for this deed should justice demand it.

Steel clashed against steel and lightning arced across the heavens. He Yu did battle with an unconcerned Jin Xifeng. Her nine blades to his one. As their battle ripped apart the central plains of the empire, Jiankang died under the attacks and techniques of He Yu’s companions. The eternal sunset hung low in the sky, never moving even as it beat back the storm. But as the fight dragged on for what must have been well over a day, the first crack in Jin Xifeng’s demeanor showed itself.

Her smile dropped. Her unconcerned and slightly amused expression turned to one of intense attention. Her eyes, ancient and uncaring, turned hard and focused. Was it truly any wonder? They’d been fighting far longer than He Yu had any right to stand against her. While he’d never managed to land even a scratch on her white-jade skin, or disturb a single hair on her head, he lived.

Was her Eternal Whispers of Desire so taxing a technique that in order to maintain it, she couldn’t fight with her full strength? Or was the plan so effective that already she’d been reduced to a level where simply killing He Yu outright was beyond her? The answer was neither, and one far simpler.

It was arrogance, and nothing more.

“Enough,” she said after catching a column of heaven with one of her swords and turning it aside as though it were nothing. “I’d have thought your Dao connection would wither by now under the weight of this many lives. But my patience is at its end.”

Blood and shadow surged up around her feet. Lined the length of her nine flying swords. Her spirit expanded, its presence battering at the gates of He Yu’s will. Silent sun hanging low in the sky grew angry. It seemed Jin Xifeng was done holding back.