Chương 12

The lattice of soulsteel shifted around Elder Lau as he advanced. The chains parted for him, sealed shut behind him, an electrified cage that moved with its master. His eyes blazed with qi. Lodin noted three things. First, the chain of that meteor hammer appeared to have variable length. It fed through the rifts and extended as needed, either by some trick of spatial manipulation or by an enchantment on the weapon itself. Second, Lau controlled it without touching it.

His hands were free and the lattice still moved, pulsed, crackled with voltage. He directed it with his will alone. Third, he was calm. The kind of calm that came after anger burned so brightly it collapsed into something denser and hotter. Here was the power of a Stream Entry cultivator; rifts in space, the chain that seemed to grow and shrink unnaturally. Tong Lau had begun to grasp what Master Yan called the 'higher elements.' Lodin felt a small pang of jealousy that he would never get to play with those toys.

But he had his own unique advantages. Lau exploded forward and Lodin shot in to meet him. Lodin caught Lau's head kick, answered with a right hook to the jaw that stopped the Divine Gale disciple's assault before it began. Lau tried again. He was faster without his weapon in hand. The observation made Lodin grin as he cut off his opponent's attempts to find openings, to start combinations. He threw Lodin a low sweep that carried through and became a jumping, spinning wheel kick to the head.

He came straight at Lodin with a flurry of punches, palm strikes, sword hands and elbows. He mixed up his attacks, high and low, short and long, fast and powerful. He hit air. And then Lodin struck him across the jaw with a right cross that echoed against the walls of the sect compound and sent him staggering.

"You good?" said Lodin.

"Shut the fuck up," said Lau. Lodin grinned. Lau grimaced and charged at Lodin anew, and this time he brought his Stream Entry powers to bear. Rifts in space opened around his body as he closed the distance, and as he threw his first punch a hammer head came hurtling out of the rift to Lodin's left. Lodin slipped the punch and the soulsteel clanged off his shoulder. The impact hummed through the bone, familiar as a handshake by now.

Lau followed with an elbow and a second hammerhead screamed from behind Lodin's skull. He ducked the elbow and the sphere passed over his head. Lau settled into the rhythm. He threw a knee at Lodin's ribs and a hammerhead burst from a rift at his ankle. He threw a palm strike at Lodin's throat and a hammer head screamed toward the back of his skull. Every combination carried a third fist of soulsteel from nowhere, and Lau's eyes burned brighter each time one connected.

Lodin ducked, slipped, let the hammer heads bounce off his forearms and shoulders, kept his chin tucked against the elbows and palms. The soulsteel stung where it connected, nothing more. Part of him wanted to let this go on, see what Lau tried next. The man had a mind for combat, and Lodin could appreciate that even as he picked it apart. A rift tore open at his right and a spiked sphere shot toward his temple. Lodin caught it. His fingers closed around the spines and the soulsteel slammed to a stop in his palm.

The chain snapped taut behind it. Cold metal bit into his skin, a pressure that went nowhere, and the vibration of arrested force traveled up his wrist and died at the elbow. Lau's eyes went wide. Lodin palmed the sphere, cocked his arm, and hurled it back at Lau's chest. The hammerhead crossed the distance between them before Lau could blink. It struck him square in the sternum and the impact folded him forward, drove the air from his lungs in a wet bark.

The chain whipped wild behind it, tangled through three rifts at once, and the lattice around them flickered and sputtered as Lau fought to regain control of his own weapon. Lodin gave him a moment. Lau wrestled the lattice back under his control. The rifts stabilized. The chain pulled taut and both hammerheads snapped to his sides like obedient hounds. He spat blood on the stone and came forward. This time he held nothing in reserve.

His fists and feet worked in tandem with the meteor hammer, and lightning crackled across every striking surface. A side kick drove at Lodin's hip while a hammer head screamed from a rift at his back. Lodin shifted off the kick and the soulsteel clanged off his spine. Lau followed with an axe kick that dropped toward Lodin's skull while both hammer heads screamed in from his left and right. Lodin stepped back and the heel split the air in front of his nose.

The hammer heads crashed together where his ribs had been with a clack that echoed across the stone. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Lau kept pouring it on. Bolts of lightning shrieked from his palms between combinations. The rifts blinked open and shut, repositioned with each exchange, fed the hammerheads through to attack Lodin at creative angles. A palm strike, a bolt, a hammer head from below, a knee, a hammer head from behind, another bolt.

The yard filled with the stink of ozone and the scream of chains through torn space. Lodin slipped what he could, tanked what he could not, and studied the architecture of the assault the way a carpenter studied the frame of a house. Lau was putting effort into this. Every combination found a new angle, a new pairing of flesh and soulsteel and voltage.

The man fought like he had rehearsed this technique a thousand times, so that every elaborate sequence came out effortlessly, from muscle memory, and Lodin respected the craft behind it even as he walked through it. Lau planted his feet and threw everything into a final sequence. Bolts of lightning shrieked from rifts at Lodin's left and right. A hammer head plunged from a rift above his skull. A second hammer head screamed toward his spine from behind.

And Lau himself spun into a turning side kick aimed square at Lodin's chest. The lightning found Lodin's arms and crackled across his skin. The hammer head from above clanged off his shoulder. The one from behind struck between his shoulder blades and bounced away. He felt all of it, voltage and steel and blunt force, and none of it mattered, because Lau had committed his whole body to that kick. Lodin caught the foot. There was an audible gasp from the crowd.

Then Lodin set his feet, turned his hips, and drove a left uppercut under Lau's chin. The crack of it rang across the yard. Lau rose ten feet into the air, arms limp, chains slack. At the peak he hung for a heartbeat, and then he fell. He hit the stone face first and the impact shook dust from the lantern posts. The audience was as silent as a cemetery. Lau lay face down on the stone. Blood pooled around his head. His fingers twitched. His palms found the stone and he pushed, got one knee under him, then the other.

He rose like a man who had forgotten how his legs worked, one joint at a time, and stood there with his arms loose at his sides and blood on his teeth.

"I'd ask if you're good to keep going, but I feel like you'd just tell me to eat shit," said Lodin. Lau's chest heaved. His eyes found Lodin and the pupils blazed with qi, bright enough to cast shadows down his broken face. Lightning erupted across his body in a shell of blue-white fire. The chains rose around him, alive with voltage, and the rifts tore open in a sphere so dense the air itself seemed to crack. The lattice screamed back into formation.

"I'll kill you…" Lau said. The words came out wet, ragged, stripped of everything but conviction. Lodin smirked, shrugged. He closed the distance in a single step, quick enough to make it look to the mundane eye like he'd disappeared and reappeared right in front of him. His right hand found Lau's jaw before the Elder could throw a punch. The impact turned Lau's head sideways and his knees buckled. Lodin hit him again, a left hook to the body that folded him at the waist. A right cross straightened him back up.

A left hook sat him on his heels. Lodin set his feet one final time and put a straight right through the center of Lau's guard that sent the man hurtling backward across the stone like a sack of grain tossed from a cart. Lau hit the ground, skidded on his side, and lay motionless. The rifts closed and the chains of his meteor hammer clattered to the stone in loose coils and they too were still. Lodin rolled his shoulder, stepped over Tong Lau and walked out of the arena.

– FORMAL COMBAT CONCLUDED Victor: Lodin Lundgren (Unaffiliated) Defeated: Tong Lau (Divine Gale Sect) Method: Incapacity Wager Conditions to be Fulfilled: Tong Lau must invest five hundred gold taels into the business of Chen the food merchant of Saltside. – - - - - Kang Dae Han wished he had two brains. One to soak in the spectacle of the battle unfolding in the courtyard of the Divine Gale compound, and another to solve the riddle of Lodin Lundgren's Jianghu Registry sheet.

He crouched on a nearby rooftop which was just high enough to afford him a view down into the courtyard of the sect compound, Moon Presence wrapped around his aura like a camouflage shroud. Lundgren's Seals had not changed. They sat where they had sat since the first time Dae Han laid eyes on them, an impossible wall of numbers that defied every known principle of cultivation. The configuration of Lodin's Roots, Gates and Seals was an absolute enigma. So he'd moved on to what he hoped were simpler things.

The other half of a cultivator's build; Arts, Techniques and Disciplines. They were equal parts straightforward and baffling. Lodin Lundgren was trained in precisely one Art. Nemean Boxing. Dae Han knew little about the world of Nemea, except that it was known for pleasant weather and philosophers. The style was a good fit for his stature and build, to be certain. His Techniques were where things turned baffling. Dae Han perused the short list and found that he knew the function of none of them.

– Techniques: Sustenance Ninefold Root Transmutation: Jirou Pattern Heart's Blood Sacrifice – That was it. Three Techniques. And Dae Han hadn't heard of even one. And since his possession of this special eye did not come with the rank of Imperial Auditor and its attendant credentials, he lacked access to detailed Registry files on the specific function of any particular Technique.

'Sustenance' was perplexingly simple in its naming, which gave him little clue as to its function beyond, presumably, providing sustenance.

'Ninefold Root Transmutation: Jirou Pattern' was a bit more evocative. It sounded alchemical. And his Roots were indeed strange, all cultivated to grade C. Perhaps this Technique was what necessitated that unusual choice.

'Heart's Blood Sacrifice' sounded like something from the Beast Court. It wasn't much to go on, but it was a start. As for Disciplines, there wasn't much out of the ordinary. Meditation. Body Conditioning. Athletics. Survival. His scores were all quite good, but his highest rating was in… Cooking. Kang Dae Han stared at that impressive Cooking score, scratching his head, when his heart skipped a beat. Someone had just tapped him on the shoulder.

He wheeled around to find a man with long white hair, vivid blue eyes, and blue and black robes staring at him with a raised eyebrow. He'd seen right through his Moon Presence.

"And who are you?" he asked.