Draw the Blade!

"Three!?" The other six burly men froze at the same instant; suddenly, one after another, a prickling numbness crept over every scalp. If there was one below, Captain Liu Zhen and Buck Teeth could handle it easily between the two of them. If two, one apiece would do. But three? There was absolutely, absolutely no way to put down all three at once. One way or another, one of them would escape! But the intelligence had shown one, so they had brought two ropes—enough, with a spare, going by that count. There was no third rope. "You're certain?" No sooner had Liu Zhen asked than he stopped himself. On every mission so far, Xu Yao's eyes had never once been wrong. If he said three, then there were three! "What do we do?" Everyone was frantic. "Captain, take me down on your back!" Xu Yao said calmly. "You?" Liu Zhen's eyes narrowed. "Who else is there? Those others... could you even carry them?" Xu Yao pointed at the five remaining men, each built like a black bear. The five broad-shouldered, thick-waisted nine-chi giants all twisted their mouths into bitter grins at once; crack—a flash of lightning lit up ten rows of teeth. "Then it's you." Liu Zhen cast one glance at his men's ten legs, thick as carrying poles, and made his decision on the spot. Carrying anyone else meant three hundred jin of extra weight. Never mind whether he could even bear it—the real question was whether the rope could take it, because they would be hanging from that rope, swinging back and forth against the cliff face while swinging a blade with all their strength. Liu Zhen shuddered at the mere thought: one crack, and they'd drop and become a smear of mud... It would have to be Xu Yao. The kid weighed just over a hundred jin. "Tie him to my back!" Liu Zhen pulled himself back up the rope and crouched down. With practiced hands the big men trussed Xu Yao onto the captain's back like a hog; then, with two crisp taps, they planted a dagger in his hair on each side of his head, loosened his saber from his waist, and pressed it into his hand. "Big Fatty, you be careful now. Don't go panicking and stabbing the captain before we've so much as struck the mountain demon..." "Piss off!" Amid the cursing and grumbling, Liu Zhen began the drop with Xu Yao on his back. Only, his movements were more careful than before. Banging himself up was nothing—he must not knock the precious treasure. Xu Yao went completely slack, spending no strength at all, making of himself a block of wood. Buck Teeth had already dropped down while everyone was lashing Xu Yao to Liu Zhen; he was to scout the way first. The downpour only grew heavier; everything before their eyes was a blank white haze. Sight was useless here, but as their bodies sank little by little, in Xu Yao's eyes three balls of green glow swayed below the cliff, flickering like will-o'-the-wisps. "Can you see it?" Liu Zhen asked between hard breaths. "I see it—three peach trees, all right," Buck Teeth hollered from below. "How far?" "About five zhang below your feet. There's a recessed hollow—nowhere to set foot." "Mm." Liu Zhen was not the least surprised; he had been fully braced for this. Mountain demons favored exactly such spots. "Has any green glow spread yet?" "No." "Then we still have time." Liu Zhen bellowed, "Buck Teeth, move it! First see if you can pound out a spot big enough for a pair of feet to stand on—and gouge a few handholds above it, so a man can pin himself in place with his hands." "Quit your damn hollering," Buck Teeth's disgruntled voice floated up from below. "I'm already digging." At last, Buck Teeth came into view—and with him, the spot where the mountain demon lay. "It's a peach-blossom demon! Big Fatty, we'll eat well off this one. Don't move—clamp onto the rope and hang clear. Stay off the rock." Liu Zhen let out a breath of relief, hooked one hand into the cliff face, and hung free of it. Then, in a flash, he threw his torso back, wound one leg around in a deft twist so its knotted, muscle-corded calf cinched the rope, hooked his boot tip into one of the pits Buck Teeth had chiseled into the cliff—and in a blink his whole body turned over, leaving him and Xu Yao hanging head-down together. Xu Yao felt the sudden inversion, and then—woosh—the rain ran the length of his body and poured off his head in a small waterfall, rushing and drumming... A shiver shot through him in spite of himself: what a rush. Liu Zhen's other hand had already drawn the pick—clang, clang, clang, rising and falling like the wind, hacking savagely into the cliff face. Bolts of lightning came crashing down one after another, blazing white and dazzling. They flashed past right beside him, right before his eyes, so incandescent that to Xu Yao everything blurred into a many-colored shimmer. In the space of half a quarter-hour Liu Zhen rained down several hundred furious blows; then he shoved the broken stone away in a clatter, and a platform emerged below—just big enough for one person standing on one foot. He righted himself, undid the ropes binding Xu Yao, and clamped Xu Yao's body between his own two legs. Then he hauled up the rope that had dangled to the base of the cliff, left out a working length, and with practiced one-handed ease tied the rest around Xu Yao. "Stand here on one foot and grip this stone hollow with your left hand. See the root of that peach tree? In a while, a ball of green vapor will rise out of that root. At that moment, all you have to do is cut!" "Right!" "Remember it: not too early, and not too late. And don't be afraid of falling—the rope will hold you!" "Right." "And you must cut that root clean through!" "Right!" Liu Zhen paid out two zhang of rope between the two of them and let it hang slack, then shuffled sideways along the cliff face toward another of the demon peach trees. He didn't need to chisel a platform under his own feet, which made things easier for him. As he shifted along, he said, "In these mountain forests of our Southeast Circuit, the trees most apt to form mountain demons and wood demons are four: peach, plum, apricot, and locust. Don't ask me why—these things take spirit easily. And once one forms, it's always partway up a cliff face like this one. Remember that." One hand on his saber, the other hooked into the cliff, Xu Yao listened intently. His eyes stayed on the three wood demons. What Liu Zhen and the others could not see, he saw plainly: three balls of green glow surging, gathering. And within the glow, grotesque faces kept forming and shifting, like the vengeful ghosts of legend—savage, twisted, horrifying to behold. The longer he watched, the more Xu Yao saw that the three glows were linked: the two flanking ones seemed to be feeding the middle one without pause, while the middle one fed them back in turn, a current cycling to and fro. "Captain." Xu Yao spoke calmly. "These three seem to be one family, with the middle one as the head. The two on the sides are sustaining the middle one, and the middle one is sustaining the two sides." His voice was perfectly even, and he shaped every syllable with such clarity that anyone within hearing would catch each word clean. This was what Liu Zhen appreciated most. He laughed. "The moment you said three, I was afraid we'd run into one of these mother-child demon sets. And now it looks like we have. Buck Teeth—you hear that?" Over there, Buck Teeth had already finished making ready to draw. He bared his teeth in a grin. "Heard it." Liu Zhen said, "With mother-child demons, all three of us have to draw at once—no going first, no going after. When the time comes, you listen for me counting one, two, three. On three, everyone draws." Buck Teeth said, "Captain, just saying 'on my command' would sound so impressive. One, two, three... how corny can you get." Liu Zhen grinned wide. "Command, my ass. Who do you think your big brother is, some grand officer?" "How much longer?" "About half a shichen. Now that we're here, there's no rush. We wait." Liu Zhen hadn't brought the water clock down—just as he'd said: once you're here, there's no hurry. "Big Fatty, can you hold on?" Buck Teeth's laughter came through the pouring rain. "This is your first real swing of a blade, you know. Blessed indeed—first time out, and you get a storm." Xu Yao calmly metered out his strength and pressed himself steady against the cliff face. He had trained at martial arts for three years before this; though he had only ever drilled the forms and never entered the ranks of true martial artists, his body was sound and a good deal stronger than most men's. "I can hold on just fine," he said. "Just waiting for the captain's command." Buck Teeth laughed aloud. "This rain is a freak thing—it's hammering my scalp sore." Liu Zhen tipped his face up, caught a mouthful of rain, and drank it. "This time we truly owe Big Fatty. Without him, the two of us would have left our lives on this cliff for certain." Buck Teeth's fright hadn't faded either. "Damn intel said one, and out come three—isn't that a setup? Thank heaven for Big Fatty." "You can't blame the brigade captain for that. The demon-catching compass only points direction; it can't fix the number. And it's usually one—in the whole Southeast you can go eight or ten years without meeting twins. Our luck was just rotten enough to run into triplets." Liu Zhen was in mid-sentence. Suddenly, all three of them felt the sky brighten. They jerked their heads up in alarm: hundreds upon hundreds of lightning bolts came plunging down in crooked, lurching zigzags. Wherever the electric light reached, heaven and earth turned searing incandescent white—and this lightning was striking straight toward the three of them! "Holy hell—dodge!" Liu Zhen, an old hand at this, let go of the cliff, bent both legs hard, hauled Xu Yao across from his side in the same breath, and slammed one foot savagely against the cliff face. With Xu Yao clasped to him, he flew outward like a swing. Over there, Buck Teeth did the same. BOOM! The lightning struck the cliff dead-on. Crash and clatter... shattered stone sprayed everywhere. It battered the three men's swung-out bodies with dull smacks. The pain was vicious, and all three howled like ghosts and wolves, necks rigid, screams without end. "Back!" Liu Zhen shrieked. "The lightning is feeding it—the mountain demon takes form any moment!" His legs powered hard; he flung Xu Yao back toward his mark, then swung after him. Over there, Buck Teeth had already swung back too. The ropes shrieked against the cliff face with a sound that turned the blood cold. The instant the three men had gotten their hands clamped onto the rock, they saw it: the three gnarled peach trees on the cliff face, having taken the lightning strike, swiftly swelled with pink buds. In a heartbeat the air turned sweet—a fragrance so piercingly pleasant it could be smelled even through this downpour; for an instant it was as though they stood in a peach orchard. "They're blooming! Draw! Ready! One! Two!" Liu Zhen's roar tore out. Shing! Xu Yao and Buck Teeth drew in the same instant, hands on the hilts, blades raised in position for the downward chop. Under the lightning, the edges gave off a jade-green light, a hue wholly unlike the rest of the blade. This edge belonged to the Demon Suppression blades of the Demon Suppression Bureau alone—the particular bane of demons, monsters, and all things evil. The next instant, the peach blossoms burst into full bloom. A single moment of glistening fragrance. Then they withered and fell at once. On each of the three trees appeared a green-skinned peach, swelling with shocking speed—ripening in a blink, pink and crystalline, nearly transparent under the lightning's glare, breathing out an alluring fragrance. Wandering souls gathered from all around in a frenzy, pouncing and surging at the peaches. At the same moment, three balls of green vapor rose together from the roots of the peach trees. Three ghastly, uncanny faces were slowly taking form within their balls of vapor, rising from the cliff face and wrapping the tree roots like a pancake molded out of smoke; just as it was about to creep upward, a huge mouth suddenly gaped wide and sucked with all its might—and the wandering souls gathered on every side were dragged toward that mouth in the same instant, like a hundred rivers running to the sea, like moths flinging themselves into flame. "Three!" Liu Zhen's roar cracked out. White light flashed. Three blades fell together. Shff! Xu Yao's mind was crystalline and calm; the blade in his hand kept perfect, absolute lockstep with the two veterans! The blades fell! The deed was done! And in the same moment Liu Zhen bellowed, "Pick the peaches! We're in luck, hahaha..."