Chương 36

Han Yuan's blade whispered into its scabbard. – DRAW PROPOSED Han Yuan (Divine Gale Sect) has proposed a Draw Accept? [Y/N] – Lodin accepted. The tension left Yuan's shoulders. The set of his jaw loosened, and when he turned to face Lodin again he was not the crazed swordsman who had leveled the arena around them. He wore the composed, genial smile of an imperial official.

"I like to take the measure of exceptional people when they pass through my jurisdiction," he said. Lodin had to restrain a laugh. The blood on his arms had yet to begin to cool. His skin burned in all the places where the blazing lattice of razor sharp qi had opened it. Yuan raised a hand toward the broken tier and gestured, two fingers, a casual flick of the wrist, the way a man summons a waiter. The two figures who had been watching them leapt from the wreckage of the top tier.

They covered the distance in a single bound and landed on the broken stone a few paces from where Lodin and Yuan stood, and the impact of their arrival barely stirred the dust. Up close, the resemblance to the statues at the entrance was unmistakable. The man was broad through the chest and arms, thick-bearded, his shoulders squared beneath black robes. Bands of gleaming soulsteel clasped his forearms, and a chain of the same metal hung around his neck.

The woman stood slender and straight beside him, dark eyes level, clad in green and black silks untouched by the dust that covered everything else in the arena. Both of them had powerful auras, just as Han Yuan did.

"Allow me to introduce two of the founders of Dragon's Rest," Yuan said. He gestured with his uninjured arm.

"Patriarch Jorin Shen of the Steel Serpent Sect. Matriarch Mayari Lakan of the Jade Nettle Sect." Lodin gave them a stiff bow, which they both answered.

"Good to meet you," said Lodin. Jorin Shen folded his arms across his chest and looked Lodin over. At first his face was stoic, but then a grin curled the corner of his mouth.

"Those fists might just hit as hard as my hammer," he said. Mayari's eyes were on the thin red lacerations covering Lodin's arms.

"Your tissue refused wounds that should have opened you to the bone," she said. Her dark eyes lifted to his.

"Your body is remarkable. I would very much like to know what constitutes your build."

"Good food and exercise," he said. Jorin laughed, a short, hard bark that bounced off the rubble. Mayari's expression did not change, but something in her eyes sharpened. Yuan cleared his throat.

"Dragon's Rest has had a difficult few days. Tianlong Castle was attacked, and the governor is dead. I've assumed provisional authority until the imperial house appoints a replacement. In such times, I must take note of exceptional people such as yourself." Then Han Yuan's expression softened, and he gave Lodin a sad smile.

"I am told you came to Dragon's Rest to rescue your brother from an evil fate." Lodin's gut tightened. He glanced between the three of them. Jorin Shen and Mayari Lakan did not appear to be moved by Han Yuan's show of compassion.

"That's right," he said. Yuan nodded.

"Then I propose a simple arrangement. I will place the full resources of the Divine Gale Sect at your disposal. Access to our intelligence on the Burning Lotus. Weapons, training, alchemical products, assistants in your search, should you require them." He tilted his head.

"In exchange, you keep me informed of what you discover. That is all I ask." Yuan's smile thinned at the edges.

"If I knew where your brother was, I would have retrieved him myself." He let a measured breath pass through his nose.

"I inherited a crisis and a great deal of ignorance along with it. The previous governor spent decades concealing the scope of the problem. What intelligence we have is fractured, incomplete, and likely outdated." Lodin rolled his shoulder and felt the torn skin pull. The cut Yuan's lattice had opened there was the deepest one, and it throbbed in time with his pulse.

"Thanks all the same," he said, "but I don't need assistants or weapons or treasures. I have what I need." Yuan studied him. The genial smile remained, but the eyes behind it recalculated.

"Admirable," Yuan said.

"But consider this. When you find your brother, and I believe you will, what then? The spirit bound to him is a fragment of a dead god. It cannot be beaten out of him. It cannot be reasoned with, bargained with, or starved. It must be excised." He paused. His voice dropped half a register.

"I possess the God-Slaying Threefold Cut. The same technique that felled Wandering Flame on this world centuries ago." His gaze did not waver.

"The original wielder botched the execution, and we are all still living with the consequences. I have spent a long time ensuring such a mistake will not be repeated." A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"You can find your brother on your own. I believe that. But when the moment comes to free him from what holds him, you will need me." The patronizing smile returned.

"So I ask again. Keep me informed. That is all." The arena rubble settled around them. Somewhere beyond the collapsed walls, the murmur of the scattered crowd carried on the wind. Lodin looked at the smile on Yuan's face and felt the place on his shoulder where the man's blade had bitten deepest.

"I'll think about it," he said. Yuan held the smile a moment longer, then dipped his chin.

"Of course. A wise man deliberates." He pressed his palms together and gave Lodin a bow that was precise, correct, and entirely without warmth.

"Find me at Tianlong Castle." He turned on his heel. His robes settled around him without a crease, and then he was gone. One step, a blur of white and blue, and the space where he had stood held nothing but stirred dust. The silence he left behind had weight to it. Lodin exhaled through his teeth. The cuts on his arms had begun to stiffen as the blood dried, and the deeper wound on his shoulder sent a slow pulse of heat down through his back. They would mend, but it would take a while.

He looked at the two founders and found them both looking at him. Jorin Shen unclenched his jaw. He glanced at Mayari, and something passed between them, brief and wordless, the kind of exchange that belonged to people who had known each other for centuries.

"We should talk in private," Jorin said. His voice was low and blunt. Mayari's gaze swept the rubble around them. Broken stone, collapsed tiers, the gouges Yuan's lattice had carved into the arena floor. Her eyes paused on a cluster of Divine Gale disciples gathered at the far end of the wreckage, too distant to hear but close enough to watch.

"This is certainly not the place," she said. She looked at Lodin, and her dark eyes held the same clinical focus they had when she studied his wounds.

"Tonight we will send someone to collect you from your lodgings." Lodin nodded.

"Sounds good." - - - - Kang Dae Han found the Juniper Library right where he remembered it, in a quiet corner of the Terraces, set back from the main road behind a courtyard of swept flagstone and tall, pruned juniper trees set in an orderly row around the building like sentries. Latticed windows ran the length of the upper floor, and the afternoon light fell through them in clean geometric patterns across the reading tables below. He had been here twice before, on previous passes through Dragon's Rest.

Most cultivators, being energetic types, made brief and infrequent visits to these kinds of libraries, and only when absolutely necessary, whereas Dae Han could lose a week in a place like this. He pushed through the heavy wooden doors and let his eyes adjust to the cool interior. Shelves ran floor to ceiling along every wall, divided by carved wooden partitions into labeled sections.

The air smelled of lamp oil and old binding glue and the particular dry sweetness of paper that had been stored well for a very long time. A small old man sat behind the front desk, his white hair cropped close to a spotted scalp. He wore a plain gray robe and a pair of wire spectacles that sat low on the bridge of his nose. A cup of tea steamed at his elbow. He did not look up when Dae Han approached.

"I'm looking for information on a technique," Dae Han said.

"The God-Slaying Threefold Cut." The old man set down his brush and looked Dae Han over.

"You're a bit young to be hunting divinities."

"Just satisfying a curiosity," Dae Han said. The old man's eyes stayed on Dae Han's face, and one thin eyebrow rose a fraction of an inch.

"Follow me." He came around the desk, and he was even smaller on his feet than he had been seated, the top of his head level with Dae Han's chest. He moved at the pace of a man who had never been in a hurry in his life and saw no reason to begin. Dae Han followed him down a long aisle between shelves, past sections on elemental theory and formation architecture, past a row of scrolls sealed in glass cases, until the old man stopped at a wall of thick leather-bound volumes and reached for the third shelf.

He pulled a book free with both hands and held it against his chest.

"The Canon of Sanctioned Imperial Techniques As Taught at the Plum Blossom Academy, Fifth Volume." He offered it to Dae Han.

"Handle the spine with care. The binding is older than you are." Dae Han took the book to a reading table by the window. The leather cover had gone dark with age, and the title pressed into it had faded to a faint gold impression. He set it down, opened to the contents page, and ran his finger down the list until he found it. – God-Slaying Threefold Cut. Page four hundred and twelve.

– The pages were thick and stiff beneath his fingers, the paper coarse at the edges where centuries of hands had worn the margins soft. A faint smell rose from the binding as the spine cracked open, old glue and dust and something like dried flowers. He found his page, and began to read.

– The God-Slaying Threefold Cut was commissioned in the Second Year of the First Cycle by a joint council of the Nine Mandarins, for the purpose of preserving the sanctity of the celestial order established by His Divine Majesty Odoshinko upon His ascension. The technique was first employed on the eighteenth day of Shèngyuè, fourteenth year of the First Cycle, upon the person of the rogue cultivator Ren Baiyun, who had attained the threshold of divine ascension without the blessing of the Triarchs.

The Threefold Cut was executed upon his person in the presence of the nine patriarchs. His Roots, Gates, and Seals were separated in a single motion. His cultivation was rendered null. His mortal remains were interred without ceremony. The God-Slaying Threefold Cut is a technique of the jian. It may not be executed with any other implement.

The jian must be forged of soulsteel no lower than Sovereign grade, ninth stage, for lesser metals cannot sustain the tripartite qi pattern the technique inscribes upon its edge during execution. The practitioner must possess a Holy Root of no less than S grade, for the technique carries the divine mandate of the celestial order and draws upon the Holy element as its medium of authority.

The practitioner must have attained Grand Mastery in an Art of the jian, for the execution tolerates no imprecision and permits no correction once begun. The practitioner's Blade Gate and Seal of Precision must stand in perfect equilibrium, a ratio of fifty parts to fifty. Any deviation, however slight, will produce an incomplete severance.

The practitioner's Void Gate and Seal of Awareness must stand at a ratio no less than thirty parts to seventy, favoring the Seal, for the technique demands that the practitioner perceive the target's cultivation architecture in its entirety during the span of a single breath. The technique consists of three cuts delivered in a single continuous motion. The first cut severs the target's Roots from the Gates. The second cut severs the Gates from the Seals. The third cut severs the Seals from the Roots.

Upon completion, the three foundations of the target's cultivation exist in isolation from one another, and the architecture collapses. What remains is a body stripped of all cultivation, and a soul stripped of all power. An incomplete severance has the potential to produce unpredictable and catastrophic results. – Dae Han sat back in his chair, stared out the window in thought. The old librarian settled into the chair across the table, his teacup cradled in both hands.

He glanced at the open page and then at Dae Han.

"Heavy reading for a pleasant afternoon," he said. Dae Han nodded, smiled wryly. The technique was explicit in its function. It separated the Roots, Gates and Seals of a mortal cultivator. And while its history spelled out some grim implications for its intended use, it didn't sound like it could be used to excise the malformed, demonic spirit of a dead dragon from a mortal host. Not without some exceptional skill over and above what was required to simply execute the technique in the first place.

Maybe that was why that Jin Shenlei fellow fucked it up. Not that Lodin or anyone in his group possessed the exacting requirements of the technique to begin with.

"Looks like this wasn't the technique I was looking for," he said.

"But thanks for your help." He left the book on the table, gave the old man a nod of thanks, and walked out the library and into the late afternoon sun.