The Fourth Fall - Chapter 31 preview (Patreon)

"My apologies, that the delay is taking so long, Cultivator Long," Colonel Lang said, bowing a little to Wu Ying as he faced him across the other end of the stage they stood upon. It still smoked, even the stone having heated and remnant dirt and debris having caught flame. High above, Wu Ying could sense the last of the steam dispersing back into the environment, the updraft conjured from the earlier battle fading away.

A small shift of Wu Ying's own wind dao and cultivation method had utilised the sudden flow of energy, allowing him to cultivate at greater efficiency than normal. Now that it had faded, the wind cultivator altered the flow of winds again across multiple li, adjusting his control once again.

As he did so, he could not help but note the competing and complimentary daos in play. Not the Patriarch of the Eight Stanza's, for his own dao was different. Conceptual on a level that Wu Ying could not touch. And while there were a number of others who had dispersed their will into the surroundings - the late combatant, Colonel Bai being the least among them - they too were not of concern. No, there were only two that he regarded with any degree of curiosity.

The first, the domineering King Cai. His dao sought to control everything, sought to own it all. Wu Ying's minor manipulations of the wind had to sneak past the man's watchful gaze, the grasping hand that sought to hold everything tight. The second was a familiar one, a dao of the beneficient heavens mixed with a cloud element. His own Sect Head's, a dao he had long learnt to work with.

"The prior combatants were much more taxing on our formations than expected," Colonel Lang continued easily. "And while it would normally be fine to allow some wear, in our circumstances..."

"No apologies needed," Wu Ying said with a smile. "And I shall endeavour to reduce the burden on your formations as best as possible. We are most grateful for the Cai's largesse in powering these formations."

"Not at all!" A smile. "It is the Cai's pleasure. We are most joyous when we cross blades with a worthy opponent."

"Even in faux battle like this?"

"Especially this," Colonel Lang said. "For here, we have no cause to weep, no losses to grieve."

Wu Ying smiled, then glanced down. The referee was waving at them, announcing the readiness of the platform once more. The pair exchanged a look, and then Wu Ying drew his sword, brought it to his head as he saluted.

"Long Wu Ying, Long family sword style."

"Lang Jian Hong. The Seeking Flame."

Like before, by unspoken agreement, neither party utilised their dao or the energetic strength of their cultivation. Instead, they circled one another, carefully testing measure and reactions, guards shifting to cover different lines. Wu Ying took in his opponent's base style, noted the way he moved, the openings he offered to lure Wu Ying close. The way he closed off lines or gave himself outs with a simple dodge.

Long minutes, as they tested one another with touching blades, and then Jian Hong engaged. A step, a feint, a disengage around Wu Ying's sword as he moved to block. A parry via the rolling of the hand, even as he sought the disengage, his opponent twisting and twisting, his back leg coming up with a sweeping roundhouse.

Wu Ying dodged the attack by bending backwards, kicking outwards with his own leg to threaten the stability of his opponent. He watched the other skip backward, watched him retreat and then the wind cultivator was spinning back in, a hand on the ground as he pivoted in the air with leg and then blade leading the way. He skimmed forward, seeking his opponent's weakness, threatening to enter with the man's measure.

Intent on engaging, on pressing him. On learning what he could. Because this battle, this entire engagement and the ones preceding and following were all a ruse, a play to gather information. To pull off tricks of sight and skill, to showcase abilities while hiding others. And the winner would walk away with knowledge, greater knowledge.

He sought this knowledge now, pinning his opponent close, weaving his blade and his strikes in close quarters. He utilised an old style, the Northern Shen kicking style, the footwork of the elusive close-ranged melee form combining with the first and second forms of the Long-family style. He pressured his opponent, knowing that he was faster, so much faster than his opponent. More than that, he was more skilled.

In the first clash, he had understood it. His opponent had the Sense of the Blade, an unsurprising element after spent so many years as a guard. The man understood his blade, even jians in general. But Wu Ying also sensed something else - that the Seeking Flame style was not his first style. He could see hints of the original style, the man's normal method of fighting in the way he moved, deflected at times. Minor mistakes, from a style not fully integrated.

Now, he pushed his opponent. Striking from obtuse angles, pressuring him in-close so that he never had time to consider his responses. Drawing forth reactions, instinctive reactions that had been honed by thousands of hours performing the same form, over and over again. He knew it was there, even if it only came out in pieces.

The original form, the one they taught soldiers all across the battlefield and the armies of the Cai. The one that each of the soldiers of the vanguard used as their base form, because they had not started as the famed vanguard. Once, they had just been soldiers, training in the army, training with the same movements.

In his mind, Wu Ying pulled the form together. Hints, motions and completed attacks. Instinctive reactions, all of it forming. He knew, from the start, what the shape of it would likely be. A soldier's form was different from a martial artist. They could not expect clear grounds or simple terrain, they could not expect to have space to swing their weapon or to step aside. Their motions had to be short, brutal and quick. Efficient, because a battle could be tiring, the waiting for the battle might be exhausting in itself. Conservation of energy, efficiency in killing. A dozen thrusts maybe, all working around the  shield that they wielded. A system meant to work for individuals of all sizes, though it might prefer a certain type.

Not individualised, never that. It could not be.

In this, Wu Ying formed the style, pulling from his past experiences, from his study of martial styles. Tearing apart his opponent's defences, always a step behind, so that he drew out the battle. He could have ended it in three passes, even without borrowing the extra grace of the wind. He forewent the quick victory.

Instead, he fought on, carefully. He pulled the man's martial arts apart like a Sword Saint had once torn apart his own style, except with less kindness.

In time, Colonel Lang understood what was happening. He shifted, pulling at the energy of his core, drawing it forth. He expanded his sword, widening the size of the blade, expanding the edge of it so that Wu Ying could no longer stand next to him. But this wide martial blade, drawn from the man's understanding of the jian was flawed.

A wide, flat weapon, so big that it covered half his body. It was no graceful jian, no flower of the sword arts. The flat plane of power that he formed, it was imperfect and so vulnerable. Wu Ying spun, a hand forming with the sharp edge of blade intent as he thrust. He struck the blade, watched it shatter under his finger tips. Then, as his opponent pulled back, he thrust again with his other hand. Sword flipped around in reverse form, the pommel moved ahead.

Touched a throat. Dimpled the flesh.

Then Wu Ying was retreating, turning his arm, tucking in his elbow just a little. A blade's kiss, a second mortal blow, if he had finished it. A warning and a point won.

A battle won, the first. And he had yet to show anything of import.

***

The second fight, Wu Ying sought another piece of information. He knew their style well enough, and so Colonel Teng that approached him was met not with his blade, but with a different style. A fist style.

"Southern Seas Gu Family, Water Cannon Fist."

He was not profficient with the fist style, not in the same way he was with the sword. He had studied it, sufficient enough to understand the concepts. Made it part of his style, for when he had to journey under the water, when he had been forced to wade deep within the watery surface. Had never needed to use it, because he had never lost his sword.

It was less efficient here. The wind was not water, though it had some of the same properties. It struck with less force, had no form like the waves themselves. A gust of wind had not the strength or the structure of a wave. But here, now, it had its use. To pummel an opponent from a distance, to strike at them, from all angles.

To force a battle, not of blades or fists but of elements. Of control, of aura. Because that was what Wu Ying tested now, judged and studied. Not just the first suppression of aura when he crushed down on Colonel Teng's aura, or the instinctive reaction of his companions to reinforce it - before they pulled back - but for how far, how easy it was to penetrate.

Each wind fist that struck at his opponent had to be opposed, each blow that landed drilled energy into his opponent. It went for meridian points, areas of vulnerability that all cultivators shared. You could not just strike a single point and win a battle, that was a lie. Nor could infusing them with one's chi do much, unless said infusion happened over and over again. Then, an opponent's own chi cultivation, the flow and reinforcement of the body might be blocked, altered and eventually ended.

Not an easy thing to do. Not even something Wu Ying expected to be able to manage. If not for the fact that his opponent had no answer to his attacks, no method to return his strikes. Blade strikes were easily sidestepped, dodged. The few flickers of elemental power that escaped the aura he crushed down broken away by the gusting wind.

It was a wasteful form of fighting, and for any other wind cultivator, possibly even impossible. To control the wind, to dictate its movements to such an extent, even Wu Ying might have found impossible before his recent ascension. Wind friend or not, the sheer requirements of the fist form was too great.

Now, it was a small matter. And yet, he dared not progressthis too long. Or else show too much of his hand.

And so, after a half minute, a minute of constant attacks, he ended it. A single strike, rising from the ground, thrusting his opponent upwards and outwards to land outside the ring. Ending the battle, after he learnt what he needed.

Another battle, over.

And then, one last one.

His final opponent was different. He came in, ready to do war. He came in, power coursing through him, his aura combined with the others already, energy from his Core pouring outwards. His last opponent understood what Wu Ying was doing, and rather than try to dissuade him, to previcrate or trick, he sought to stymy Wu Ying's design the way a soldier would do so, knew only how to do so.

He did it by facing Wu Ying head on, intent on tearing the wind cultivator's secrets from him and send him, bereft of the secrets he had intended to steal.

All of which suited the wind cultivator. He grinned as he joined battle, moving with the wind, dancing away from the ponderous attacks, the simplistic moves the other man utilised but with the weight and inevitability of a mountian behind them. Each strike, though simple, but a refinement of the attacks and style that they had learnt to begin with, somehow encompassed the area of the ring. Each swing of the blow ground forward, such that it was impossible for one to avoid, no matter where one moved.

Dao, the dao of a moving earth's inevitablility. The impossibility to escape a landslide, the constantly bucking earth or the eruption of a volcano, throwing ash and fire in the sky. So long as one resided upon this world, there was no escape. Not from the moving earth that carried one all around the rotations of the sun.

Pity, then, that he fought the wind.

In any other time, any other fighter, he would have been a dangerous combatant. For the wind, the passing blade cut through the air, at Wu Ying. It parted the sky, and left it, unhurt. After all, sky and earth, they lived together. They could no more take one over than the other.

Swing and swing again, and still Wu Ying dodged. Dao tried to impose itself on dao, forcing Wu Ying to stand still, to take the blow and the results. And the wind cultivator, he slipped it. As a man with the dao of the wind, who embodied the wind, he had no fear of the earth. When dao's clashed, he won, by not being there.

In the clash, he learnt. He studied the cracks in his opponent's understanding, he grasped the degree of his commitment to his belief system. It was a simple matter, as easy as counting all the grains of rice in a field. After all, the Dao was the same. It encompassed everything, all of the daos ever envisioned by the immortals and everything they had never thought of. In understanding one part of the Dao, in encompassing it, one had to begin the process of understanding it all.

It was this understanding that Wu Ying wielded, that knowledge to pry at his opponent's own edge of knowledge. He pushed, he pulled, he prodded and fought his opponent, never clashing more than a little to grasp what he needed.

Earth heaved, the wind rose and pounded the very ground and the pair blurred across the small space as they did battle. Techniques were exchanged, so fast that many of the attendants could only grasp bare glimpses of the motion behind, when the fighters paused in the clash of blades. The very air shivered, as chi was poured from the Core of the cultivators and splashes of colour formed and dispersed.

Not just noise, but sound - of the roaring earth, of the howling winds - , scent - of burnt earth, dry dessert air, swampy marshland, cold northern wind or floral south - and even taste - of ground ash, of dense clay and the crisp salt air of the east - pounded the walls of the ring, such that even the watchers sensed it.

After effects of clashing daos, clashing elements that churned within. Refereers and attendants, formation masters and cultivators scrambled, working the protective formations to keep the battle contained. And from outside, the cojoined auras of the vanguard slipped through the rings.

Now, here, was the trick from the Cai. Only auras could enter, but theirs was a technique that centered upon their auras. The shared power of similar cultivation methods, manifested and passed through their auras. Wu Ying could sense them mixing, bolstering his opponent. Feeding his opponent chi, supporting weaknesses in the man's understanding of the Dao and his own dao. The break in the man's commitment.

As the battle grew more heated, Wu YIng noted the energy stores in his own Core drop. Though his style, his methodology was one of low commitment, of efficient use of what he had, even then, he could not match forever the energies of so many. Well, not without tipping his hand, utilising the stores in his wind.

And that was not the plan, not right now.

The plan was to learn, to study his opponent. There was one more thing, one last matter that he needed to test.

He was not his Master. He had not his understanding, not of karma or the threads that bound one to another. That had never been his path. Yet, he was his Master's student, he was his Master's heir of the sword. At least, for one small part of it. He had learnt something, and though he could not use it in-full, he could use a portion of its intent.

The Sundering Blade made its appearance once more.

Wu Ying cut. Not at the threads of fate this time but at the shared auras that intruded upon their battle. He sliced that cojoining apart, and in the backlash, saw the group sway and stagger.

And then, and then, it was the simplest matter in the world to put a blade to his opponent's throat and finish the duel.