Chương 154: Chapter 151 Interlude 24

Jiang Lei leaves right on the heels of the patrol, with the impatient haste of one who cannot wait to begin. Lianhua follows him a few steps behind, without any haste, with the backpack still on her back and her face as serene as if instead of to a duel they were taking her to buy rice.

The journey is short, since they cross the esplanade of the Pavilion, turn down a flagstone path and, in barely a few minutes, arrive at a place Lianhua recognizes immediately, because it is one of the few corners of the Sect she retained clearly the day before, when she was pushing the Zhāohuán's chair up the slope behind the disciple of stony countenance.

It is a circular stone platform, raised a couple of hand-spans above the ground, smooth and bare, situated right beside the great training field of packed earth where a score of disciples were repeating over and over again the same movement with wooden swords. That day the platform was empty and Lianhua wondered in passing what it might be for, but today she has the answer. Jiang Lei does not wait for anyone to indicate anything to him.

The moment they arrive, he leaps up onto the platform, plants himself in the center and unsheathes a sword, letting the blade catch the light so that everyone sees it. The patrol leader then turns toward Lianhua.

"If you are still disposed to fight, you have only to climb up onto the platform", he tells her, and in his tone there is now a note that was not there before, as if telling her that this could be her last opportunity to back out without dishonor.

Lianhua does not hesitate, she simply takes the backpack off her shoulder, leaves it on the ground, to one side, beside one of the members of the patrol, with an almost domestic care that turns out to be out of place in such a moment, and then climbs up onto the platform with a clean movement.

The surroundings, by then, are already beginning to fill up as the disciples who have followed them from the Supply Pavilion distribute themselves around the platform, and to them are added, little by little, the curious ones who were passing by and who, upon seeing the crowd, approach to find out what is happening.

The word runs from mouth to mouth, a duel between Jiang Lei and an outsider, and in the space of a moment the throng around the platform has multiplied, a ring of tunics and craned heads that push to make a gap from which to see well. The patrol leader climbs up to one end of the platform and raises his voice so that both the duelists and the public hear him.

"Listen well to the conditions", he says.

"This duel will be prolonged only until one of the two surrenders or is left incapacitated to continue. It is not a duel to the death, and it will not be, because only an Elder can authorize something like that." He runs his gaze from one to the other.

"Have the two of you understood?" he asks.

"I have understood", says Jiang Lei, and into his voice slips, poorly disguised, a hint of disappointment, because a part of him was counting on being able to go further.

"I have understood", repeats Lianhua as she closes her eyes an instant after, with a tone in which, whoever knew how to interpret it, would perceive an identical disappointment. The leader observes them both, nods, and takes a step back to the edge of the platform.

"Then, begin", he says without further delay. He has not finished pronouncing the word when Jiang Lei has already launched himself. Because he does not intend to grant the outsider a single second of advantage, not an instant to prepare herself. In his head, the way to humiliate her is fast and forceful, to finish the matter in a single exchange and to demonstrate once and for all the abyss that separates a disciple of the Sect from a simple maid who, on top of it, dares to close her eyes.

So, the moment he hears the order, he activates his movement technique and his body shoots forward with one of those brief and abrupt accelerations that allow him to cross the distance all at once, the sword ahead, seeking victory in the first blow.

But the victory does not come, because, in the exact moment in which Jiang Lei launches himself, Lianhua is already moving, and not backward, as one would expect of someone surprised, but to one side, sliding out of the trajectory of the thrust with an economy of movements that borders on the insulting. The sword cuts the air where she was half a second before, and Jiang Lei, dragged by his own momentum, overshoots.

And in that precise instant, without anyone in the public quite managing to see it, something makes him trip. It is not that he slips, there is nothing on the floor. It is as if, mid-stride, a foot had caught on something that is not there, and suddenly he sees himself obliged to take two quick and clumsy steps so as not to fall flat on his face. He recovers his balance with difficulty, spins on himself, and charges again furious, without understanding what has happened.

What has happened, although he doesn't know it, is that Lianhua has begun to weave. Because Lianhua is not a swordswoman who seeks the clash, nor does she have the least interest in measuring her strength against Jiang Lei's in a clean exchange.

She fights another way, and while she dodges her hands barely move, but from between her fingers, tense and almost invisible under the light, come the finest threads that she deploys across the platform with precision thanks to the Myriad of Hands, Qi hands invisible to everyone that grip the threads, tense them, displace them and place them again in a constant dance that Lianhua directs with a single thought.

It is a strategy born of a limitation, since Lianhua knows all too well that the strength of the technique's Qi hands cannot restrain a cultivator, so she doesn't even bother to try. Instead of gripping him, she hinders him. Instead of stopping him, she entangles him.

The threads, guided by the Qi hands, tangle around his ankles to make him trip in the middle of a run, tense at the height of his wrist just when he is going to unleash a blow to deflect his sword barely enough for it to miss, catch on the folds of his clothing to slow a turn, cross in front of him at the most inopportune moment. None of those hindrances, on their own, is any great thing.

But together, chained one after another without rest, they turn each of Jiang Lei's movements into a struggle against an enemy he does not see and does not comprehend. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

Jiang Lei, for his part, attacks over and over again using his accelerations to try to close the distance and corner the outsider against the edge of the platform, confident that, sooner or later, one of his blows will land and that when that happens, when he finally reaches her, he has another card saved, because he has also activated the technique that reinforces his Skin Tempering making it even more resistant.

It is his insurance, his net, the certainty that, even if the outsider carried a hidden weapon and managed to touch him, she would hardly manage to give him a scratch of importance. And indeed, Lianhua carries a hidden weapon. Two, to be exact.

Because, at one moment of the combat, when Jiang Lei launches himself with one of his fastest accelerations convinced that this time he really will be able to reach her, Lianhua lets him come closer than he should and from her sleeves, as if arising out of nowhere, there suddenly appear a pair of Shuang Bi Shou, two short blades that until that instant were not in anyone's view.

One of them rises in a short and precise arc toward Jiang Lei's side, and although Jiang Lei's technique fulfills its function making the blade slide over his body without coming to wound him gravely, the fright of feeling the edge so close makes him leap backward, where a thread tensed at his back catches his heel and sends him to the ground on his back. From there, the outcome is only a question of time.

Because the difference between the two, the one Jiang Lei refused even to conceive, becomes ever more evident in the eyes of everyone. The outsider almost never attacks, she has no need to, since she limits herself to moving, to dodging, and nevertheless she dominates the combat from beginning to end with a tranquil authority that turns out almost humiliating to watch.

On the other hand, each of Jiang Lei's assaults ends the same way, with him stumbling, veering off, falling or being left mid-blow, ever more frustrated, ever more exhausted, ever farther from comprehending what is happening.

His accelerations gradually become slower, his thrusts more desperate, his breathing heavier, and in the ring of disciples that surrounds the platform the whispers gradually change tone, from the initial mockery to an ever more attentive silence, the silence of one who has just realized that they are watching something they did not expect to watch. The end arrives without any drama whatsoever.

Jiang Lei, blind with rage and with fatigue, launches one last desperate attack, a frontal onslaught into which he pours everything he has left. And Lianhua, who had been waiting for that error for a while now, receives it without altering herself.

One thread traps the wrist of his sword to deflect it, another thread catches his ankle, and in the gap of half a second that opens between the frustrated momentum and the fall, Lianhua enters his guard, closes the distance she herself had maintained throughout the whole duel and delivers a single blow to the back of his neck with the handle of one of her Shuang Bi Shou. After the blow, Jiang Lei collapses onto the stone without a single sound and stays motionless.

For a moment, in the training field nothing is heard save the echo of that fall, but the patrol leader steps forward, leans an instant over Jiang Lei to check that he is only unconscious, and then straightens up to declare what by that point is already evident to all those present.

"Incapacitated", he says in a clear voice.

"The victory is the outsider's." Then he turns toward Lianhua, and when he speaks to her, his tone has changed. It is still not warm, because he is not one of those who soften easily, but there is in it something that was not there before, a residue of respect in spite of himself, the kind of respect that a man accustomed to weapons cannot help feeling when he sees things done well.

"You may return to the Supply Pavilion to finish what you had gone to do", he tells her.

"But listen to me well, do not get into any more trouble. This one I can let pass, despite the duel, because he provoked you and the rules protected you. But a second time would oblige me to take measures, and it does not suit you for that moment to arrive. Understood?"

"Understood", replies Lianhua.

"I thank you for your justice and your patience. It will not happen again on my part." And she says it truly, because the last thing that interests her is to give the Sect more motives for attention than she has already given. She puts away her Shuang Bi Shou, which disappear among her sleeves with the same naturalness with which they had appeared, comes down from the platform with a silent leap, recovers her backpack from the ground and throws it over her shoulder again.

And when she sets off back toward the Supply Pavilion, the disciples who crowded in her path, the same ones who a while before looked at her with disdain, now step aside to open a way for her, and they do so in a silence that says much more than anything they could have said aloud.

Lianhua crosses the throng without looking at anyone, with the same tranquil step as always, and only when she leaves the multitude behind and heads down the path that descends again toward the esplanade does she notice that someone is approaching her at a brisk pace from one side. She turns her head barely, and comes across a familiar face.

It is Song Yan, the only female disciple of the group that escorted them during the trip, the only one of all of them who treated the Zhāohuán with something resembling courtesy, and the one who, over the course of those five days, ended up getting along with her. Song Yan reaches her level with her eyes shining with enthusiasm and a smile from ear to ear.

"It was impressive!" she tells her without further preamble.

"I watched you from the beginning. Well, rather I tried to watch you, because one could barely distinguish what you were doing, but I saw enough. Congratulations on the duel, truly." Lianhua inclines her head barely without stopping walking.

"Thank you", she replies succinctly. But Song Yan is not one of those who settle for a single word, and she keeps at her side, talking for the two of them.

"If I had known you were so good I would have asked you for a few training combats during the trip", she continues, and into her voice slips a sincere lament.

"Five days having you at my side and it didn't occur to me to propose it to you a single time. What a waste, truly, what a lost opportunity." Lianhua, who has not stopped walking for a single moment, limits herself to making a brief sound that could be an assent or could be nothing, and does not say much more, because she doesn't have much more to say either.

Song Yan, for her part, does not seem to need too much encouragement on the part of her interlocutor to keep the conversation alive, and so they continue a good stretch, the one talking and the other walking, until Song Yan finally arrives at what truly interested her.

"Listen, by the way", she says, changing tone.

"Where have they lodged you? I need to know where the Zhāohuán Sun Wen is residing."

"In the upper part of the Sect", replies Lianhua.

"In one of the caves reserved for the Inner Disciples, beside the slope." Song Yan furrows her brow upon hearing that, but not out of displeasure, rather out of calculation, like one who has just stumbled upon a small logistical inconvenience and immediately sets about finding a way around it.

"The zone of the Inner Disciples", she murmurs.

"That is a problem." She reflects an instant, and right away decides.

"Look, if you don't mind, let's do one thing", she says.

"I'll go running for my book right now and then I'll come down to look for you at the Supply Pavilion to go up with you. It's that I am an Outer Disciple, you know?, and I cannot enter the zone of the Inner Disciples on my own. But if I go up accompanying someone who resides there, as is your case, then there is no problem."

Lianhua meditates on it for barely a second, because she remembers perfectly that the Zhāohuán invited Song Yan to come with her book and that, for some reason Lianhua does not quite manage to comprehend but which it is not her place to question, the Zhāohuán seems to have a genuine interest in that visit taking place. So that, if Song Yan wants to go up with her, that is not only not a hindrance, but exactly what the Zhāohuán would want.

"I don't mind", she replies.

"I will be at the Pavilion, so come when you have the book." Song Yan's face lights up.

"Perfect! I won't be long at all, I promise you", she exclaims, and without waiting for a reply she turns around and shoots off up the path, losing herself among the buildings. Lianhua watches her leave an instant, and then resumes her way toward the Supply Pavilion.

And while she descends the last stretch of the path, with the backpack on her back and the matter of the duel already filed away in some corner of her mind as a minor and resolved nuisance, she surprises herself harboring the hope she had before, which is that that Supply Pavilion, besides food, also offer another kind of supplies, such as for example beds.