In the wind, a girl's stifled cry carried faintly across the clearing.
Wei lifted a hand and wiped at the corner of his mouth.
When he pulled it away, the back of his fingers was slick with blood—warm, almost comforting in its heat.
He was breathing hard. Then, suddenly, he started to laugh.
The sound came out broken, ragged, tinged with the metallic taste of blood in his throat.
"Hey, bastard," he called, raising his head. His eyes were bright, too bright.
"Didn't you say you'd concede after three moves?"
He grinned, teeth red.
"What's wrong? Can't afford to lose?"
"Hah!" The Black Warrior threw his head back and laughed, utterly unconcerned.
"Don't flatter yourself. This kind of backwater farm-boy technique? I don't even count it as real swordsmanship."
He stepped forward. One step only—
but the air shifted with it.
His gaze turned cold.
"I just wanted to see what else you had. Looks like you stole a couple of tricks and never bothered to finish learning them. Disappointing."
Wei slowly straightened. His voice was hoarse, but every word came out clear.
"I knew it. You high-and-mighty warriors—your words are worth about as much as a fart."
It was true. This was the first time he had ever faced a real opponent with a blade in hand.
Before this, he had fought mountain goats. Wild dogs. At worst, that half-mad boar that nearly gutted him last winter.
But never—
Never a man who had survived battlefields.
A man who killed for a living.
"Afraid?"
The voice rose in his mind.
Low. Steady. Familiar.
His father's voice.
"If you want to master the blade," it said,"you must first have the spirit to press forward without hesitation."
Wei clenched his jaw.
His fingers locked around the hilt so tightly his knuckles went white.
Afraid?
Of course he was.
But in this moment, it felt as if his father stood behind him. As if Chun stood there too.
He could not stop.
He raised the blade again.
This time, he did not follow any memorized form.
He did not think about which stance came next.
He did not ask himself how the cut should fall.
His body moved first.
The blade followed instinct.
The techniques he had once drilled into himself—copied, repeated, forced into memory—seemed to break apart inside him, unraveling and reforming into something new.
His bones remembered the rhythm.
His muscles remembered the weight.
The blade in his hand was no longer a sequence of actions.
It was breath.
It was reflex.
Still, Wei shouted out the names of moves as he attacked—
"Split the Wind!"
His voice exploded into the night.
The next instant—
"Neck Press!"
But though he shouted"Neck Press," his blade dipped low, then snapped upward at a strange, twisting angle—
It was a thrust to the heart.
Sound and steel parted ways.
Feint and truth reversed.
The Black Warrior's pupils shrank.
By instinct, he reacted to the shouted call. His arm dropped to block where the attack should have come—
And in the same heartbeat, he realized—
Wrong.
Too late.
Screeeech—
Metal screamed against steel. Sparks burst in the darkness.
Blood sprayed from the seam of the silver armguard.
Beneath the polished metal, a thin red line appeared—sudden and sharp—
Like a streak of lightning carved into cold iron.
The Black Warrior's arm trembled. Just barely. But it trembled.
"Hahaha!"
Wei threw his head back and laughed, his chest swelling so violently it almost hurt.
"This isn't some army blade art," he shouted.
"It's a pig-slaughtering knife style."
"I made it up myself!"
The wind swept over the ridge.
The saber in his hand gave a low hum.
Somewhere behind him, he thought he heard the girl again—this time no longer gasping, but cheering, unable to hold it in.
Wei's chest rose and fell sharply.
But for the first time—
His eyes truly shone.
His father had been right.
A real blade—
It could only be forged between life and death.
His father had also once joked: if you're lucky enough to have a girl watching from the sidelines, your swordsmanship will instantly rise to another level.
Well.
The old man hadn't lied.
Wei kept running his mouth, tossing out taunts and swagger. If he could rattle his opponent—even for a fraction of a second—
That alone was worth it.
-----------------
But the Black Warrior was clearly not a man who could be led around by cheap tricks.
For the first time, his brow drew together in a visible frown.
He did not rage as Wei had expected.
If anything, he seemed to grow calmer.
"So…" he said slowly.
He let out a long breath. His gaze traveled over Wei inch by inch—his stance, his footwork, the way he held the blade. The look was clinical, detached. Like a hunter dismantling prey in his mind before the knife ever touched flesh.
"There's a skilled swordsman in your village. Someone trained in the army."
His lips curled into a cold smile.
As he spoke, he clasped his hands behind his back, adopting the posture of an instructor evaluating a student.
"It seems we came to the right place."
He paused.
Still smiling, he ran his tongue across his lips.
"At first, I only wanted to taste the flesh of a young man."
His eyes lifted, drifting toward the faint outline of the village down in the darkness below the ridge.
"But now…" he murmured.
"If I slaughter your entire village, I might even earn myself a commendation."
The mountain wind rose again from nowhere.
It skimmed low across the ground and struck Wei like an invisible hand.
His soaked clothes clung tightly to his body. The cold seeped in through his spine, threading its way into the marrow of his bones.
Wei shuddered.
This was a devil.
A real one.
Rage flooded his chest.
And at the worst possible moment—at the one moment he could not afford to lose control—
He made a fatal mistake.
In that single flicker of emotion, the Black Warrior's eyes turned ice-cold.
His left hand shot forward. The sharpened nails drove straight for Wei's eyes.
"Boy," he said, his voice low and dangerous,"I'll start by tasting those eyeballs of yours."
Wei reacted on instinct.
He raised his blade and slashed backhanded at the man's palm.
It was both defense and attack—forcing the Black Warrior to adjust.
The man withdrew half a step as expected.
But at the same time, his right fist drove forward.
Wei twisted aside instinctively.
The punch seemed to fall short—still half a foot from his chest—
Yet it carried a strange, tearing sound through the air.
Then—
A narrow seam split open along the silver armguard.
A flash of cold light burst out without warning.
From within the silver armor on his forearm, a short bolt shot forth.
Wei did not recognize it.
Just moments earlier, the Black Warrior had subtly twisted the mechanism inside the armguard, cocking the concealed weapon into place.
A device reserved for senior cavalry officers and nobles in the army.
Designed for one purpose only—
To kill in a single strike.
How could a village boy have ever seen such a thing?
The arrow had not yet reached him.
But its wind had.
The night air was violently compressed, releasing a dull, explosive crack.
In that instant, Wei did not feel as if he had been struck by a projectile—
It felt as though a massive stone, hurled at impossible speed, had smashed straight into his chest.
The force tore through him.
His ribcage seemed to cave inward.
Pffft—
A sharp, brutal sound exploded in his ears.
The sound of bone snapping.
The pain came a heartbeat later.
Then dizziness.
Wei's entire body was blasted backward, hurled through the air like a rag doll.