Chương 11

The vortex swallowed Lodin whole. It was a column of wind no wider than the span of his arms, screaming up from the stone to seal shut above his head like a coccoon. Lightning arced through the walls. The air tore at his clothes, his hair, his skin, and his boots slid on the polished stone as the force pressed inward from all sides. Lodin squinted through the blur and caught Lau's silhouette beyond the wall. The Divine Gale disciple circled the column, chains gathered, hammer heads cocked back.

He hadn't pulled out his Stream Entry abilities yet, which told him Lau thought he was still holding back. Because he still thought he had a chance at winning. Lodin chuckled. Electrified metal shrieked through the wind wall. Lodin twisted toward the sound and the spiked sphere caught his shoulder mid-turn, struck skin and bounced off with a dull clang. The wind spun him sideways. Before he could reset, the second head came through from the left and cracked against his ribs.

It rebounded into the gale like a rubber ball off a wall. The hits stung. He would give Lau that much. Each impact carried the voltage of the storm behind it, and the spines scraped across his flesh like dull nails. But Lau could throw those hammer heads all night and the result would be the same; torn cloth and faint pink marks on his skin. The real problem was his feet. The vortex had carried him aloft and, at least for the moment, turned him into a target that could not punch back. Lau knew it, too.

He pressed the advantage, sent both heads screaming through the wall, right side then left, and each strike spun Lodin further from the ground. A hammerhead caught his spine. The next cracked against his jaw. The one after that found the small of his back. Lightning crawled across his chest and the clang of soulsteel on bone rang inside his skull. Lodin tucked his chin and drew his knees to his chest. Neither the hammers nor the wind were doing great damage.

But he refused to float here like a punching bag while Tong Lau played percussion on his ribs. His boot scraped stone. He planted both feet, drove off like a bolt from a ballista, and blasted through the wall of the vortex. Wind shrieked and split around him as he breached it head first. Lightning arced across his shoulders and grounded out through his boots. The technique collapsed behind him, shredded to nothing, and Lau stood five feet away with slack chains and an open mouth.

Lau's gaze swept Lodin's body, searched for the damage his technique should have carved into him from head to toe, and he found none. Lodin, meanwhile, landed six punches in the blink of an eye. His jab snapped Lau's head back. His cross followed before Lau's skull finished its rotation, caught him flush on the cheekbone. A left hook dug into the ribs he'd found before, the same spot, and he felt something give beneath his knuckles. His left uppercut clipped Lau's jaw from beneath, lifted him off his feet.

An overhead right landed flush on his bald head. Lodin stepped and threw another left hook to the body that folded him in half and sent him backward across the stone. Lau caught himself mid-skid; his boots carved grooves in the ground and blood poured from his nose, his mouth, and a gash above his eye. He screamed, and the sound was less agony than outrage, the howl of a man who could not believe the previous exchange of blows had just happened. Lightning exploded from his body in a sphere of blue-white fury.

The chains rose around him as if alive, wreathed in arcs that snapped and spat, and both hammer heads shot toward Lodin at once, one high, one low. The air behind them split and thundered. Lau came right behind his weapons. He leapt, spun, and his heel carved an arc of lightning toward Lodin's skull. Lodin slipped beneath the heel. Lightning scorched across the top of his scalp, close enough to singe hair. His left hook slammed into Lau's flank like a cannonball. Lau was mid-spin, committed, his whole flank open.

Bone cracked beneath Lodin's knuckles. The air rushed out of Lau in a wet, strangled sound, and his rotation died. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. Lau flew backwards, feet barely touching the ground, and managed a staggered recovery at the last moment before his balance failed him. His hand found his ribs. Blood ran from his teeth. His eyes found Lodin, and the rage in them burned like cold fire. Lau whipped the chains into a horizontal spin.

The hammer heads blurred into a disc of soulsteel before his chest, and the air around it began to scream. A horizontally oriented vortex formed, aimed at Lodin like the mouth of some hungry beast. Wind tore at his clothes, his hair, yanked him forward off his planted feet. Lodin leaned back against the pull, but his boots slid on the polished stone. The vortex dragged him in, heels scraping shallow grooves across the yard. Closer and closer… Then the vortex died and Lau's side kick met him in the same instant.

The kick connected flush, and Lodin skidded backward a few paces. Lightning crackled across his ribs and grounded into the stone beneath his feet. All around them, the outer disciples watched with wide eyes and open mouths. The inner disciples did a somewhat better job of containing their shock. Above them all, Chief Inner Disciple Dian looked on with raised eyebrows. Lodin grinned.

"You finally landed something, good work," he said. Lau's face twisted with rage. When he spoke, blood and spittle flew from his lips.

"I am Tong Lau of the Divine Gale! When they scrape what's left of you off these stones, I'll piss on the stain!" Lau drew both chains back. Lightning wreathed the right hammer head until the spiked sphere blazed white-hot. Wind qi coiled behind it, compressed into a cone that tapered to the head like the point of an arrow. He thrust his arm forward and the technique launched. The hammer head shot toward Lodin's chest, lightning-wrapped steel at the tip of a wind-driven lance. Lodin charged straight at it.

The sphere streaked toward his chest. At the last instant he dipped his shoulder, bent his knees and let it pass over him, close enough to feel the lightning on the back of his neck. The wind of its passage shoved him sideways but he kept his feet, pressed forward. Lau's eyes went wide. Lodin's right hand caught him flush across the jaw. The crack echoed across the yard. Lau's head snapped to the side and he spun once in the air, arms limp, chains slack.

He hit the stone and rolled, came up on one knee with blood on his teeth and murder in his eyes. The chains snapped taut in his grip as he rose. Lau whipped both chains in a horizontal arc, steel screaming at neck height and knee height. Lodin stepped back and let them pass, then closed before Lau could reset. His left hook cracked against Lau's floating ribs. His right cross caught the hinge of his jaw. Lau reeled and Lodin followed, drove a shovel hook into his liver that doubled him over at the waist.

Lau snarled and swung the chains overhead, brought both heads down in a vertical smash. Lodin shifted left and the heads split the stone beside his foot. Three punches landed in the space of a breath. Lau's head whipped left, right, left, and teeth and blood scattered across the pale stone. Lau spun and swept both chains in a wild circle meant to clear the space around him. The chains swept overhead and Lodin came up beneath them. His left hook tore into Lau's ribs.

Another left, same spot, and bone cracked beneath his knuckles. A third left buried itself in the liver. Lau's mouth opened but no sound came out. His hands dropped. His chin hung open. Lodin set his feet, turned his hips. His left uppercut started at his knee and ended somewhere past the top of Lau's skull. The crack of it rang like an axe on a chopping block. Lau rose ten feet into the air, arms limp. The chains floated behind him like streamers.

At the peak he seemed to hang, suspended, a broken puppet with cut strings. Then he fell. He hit the stone face first and the impact shook dust from the lantern posts. The dust settled. The chains cooled with soft clicks and pings. Somewhere a lantern creaked on its post. Then the murmurs began, soft at first, a ripple at the edges of the crowd, then louder. Disciples turned to one another, their faces pale, their voices low. Someone laughed, high and nervous. Someone else cursed.

The sound swelled and filled the yard, a hundred voices that could not believe what they had seen. Chao Wei stood among them. His arms had fallen to his sides. His jaw hung slack. He stared at Lodin across the broken stone. Something moved behind his eyes, recognition maybe, or the memory of his own fight seen in a different light. Yi Dian stood where he had stood before, near the main hall entrance. His hands remained clasped behind his back. His posture remained straight.

But the air of composure and cool amusement about him had cracked. His eyes were wide, fixed on the crater, on the fallen Lau, on the outlander who stood above him with a grin on his face. Lau lay face down in the crater, arms limp at his sides. A dark pool of blood spread around his head. His jaw was clenched, face twisted into a look of profound loathing. The face of a man who had fallen into a latrine pit and could feel the filth as it soaked through his robes. His hand opened.

The air beneath his palm twisted, rippled, tore into a dark distortion, a wound in space itself. His fingers closed around something within it. Tong Lau rose to his feet and pulled the chain of his meteor hammer through the rift, link by link, until the spiked heads emerged and the weapon hung whole at his side. His eyes blazed with qi. Blue-white fire burned in his pupils, bright enough to cast shadows that flickered down his body. He fixed that baleful stare on Lodin.

"You do not deserve to see this," he said. His voice came out flat, scraped raw.

"I cannot believe I am forced to use it here. Now. On the likes of you." He straightened his spine. Blood dripped from his chin. More rifts tore open in the air around Lau, dozens of small wounds in space, each no larger than a fist. They scattered in a sphere that enclosed both fighters and hung there like dark stars, edges that rippled and bent the light. Lau whipped his arm and hurled one hammer head through the nearest rift. It vanished. An instant later it burst from another rift ten feet away.

The chain shrieked behind it. The head plunged through a third portal before Lodin could track the motion, shot from rift to rift in a blur. Each transit came faster than the last. The chain followed, stretched and multiplied as the weapon wove through space, passed through portals that fed it back upon itself. Within seconds the air between them filled with soulsteel. Electrified links crisscrossed in every direction and formed an insane lattice that crackled and thrummed with lethal power.

Lightning jumped from chain to chain. The pattern grew denser, tighter, until the space around Lodin became a cage of metal and voltage with no gaps large enough to slip through. Tong Lau's eyes blazed with electric fire.

"Be grateful to bear witness to this power before you die."