No thickness of fog could swallow so blazing a red light. At that moment Zhao Rucheng had only just scraped himself up from the ground, and the surging tide of wandering souls was almost upon him, poised to swallow him whole.
And then Du Yehu arrived!
He did not even need to move. The sheer blast of Vital Qi striking outward scattered every specter that drew near, sent them fleeing before him like mist before a storm wind.
Du Yehu was brisk to a fault. He simply caught Zhao Rucheng by the collar, hoisted him, and made for Ling He.
Zhao Rucheng had taken a savage swipe from the wraith's claws, and all the elder brothers were sick with worry — yet the man himself showed not the least sign of injury, only squawking in vexation, "Oi, oi, oi, I can walk by myself!"
Du Yehu paid him no mind. He ran halfway, then tossed the yammering Zhao Rucheng at Ling He, and turned on his heel, a fist wrapped in dense Vital Qi driving straight into the wraith.
Set aside, for a moment, how Ling He leapt into the air to catch Zhao Rucheng. Consider only Du Yehu's fist.
Compared to the Sword Art of Purple Qi from the East, the fist technique he had cultivated was hardly refined, looked down on even among the outer sect of the Dao Academy. But in his hands it became something utterly savage.
This was no opportunistic strike slipping through a gap. It met the wraith's enormous claw head-on, force against force, attack against attack. A rightness of iron-hard ferocity, beyond all polish.
Vital Qi, almost tangible, wrapped the iron fist and slammed against the blue-black talon, and for a moment the two held fast, neither giving way.
Just then, Jiang Wang swept past again. A flash of sword-light, and he had gashed the wraith's other eye.
"Fall back!"
Jiang Wang, having won his strike, retreated at once; Du Yehu likewise launched himself away.
And there the blinded wraith went mad, its twin claws flailing wildly, churning the air into violent eddies about it.
Only when its fury flagged did Jiang Wang double back once more, his long blade cutting a beautiful arc through the air, drifting down onto the wraith's right claw light as a falling leaf, almost soundless — and yet the instant it touched the blue-black talon, it burst into an incomparable, shrieking keen.
The third killing stroke of the Sword Art's Three Moves. Its essence lay in sharpness.
One sword-stroke, and the wraith's right claw was severed.
Jiang Wang had no taste for lingering battles. He was already retreating even as he struck.
The wraith, blind now, could only vent itself against the empty air before it, and meanwhile Du Yehu, burning with billowing Vital Qi, had circled behind it and leapt high, left hand clasped over right, both hands swinging like a sledgehammer, smashing down onto the wraith's hideous head.
Boom!
The Vital Qi Beacon had always been a bane to the undead, and Du Yehu's blow was brutal beyond measure. That fist, layered in Vital Qi, blew the wraith's whole head apart in a single strike!
Du Yehu could not dodge in time and was splashed head to foot in blue-black noxious blood, yet it was at once burned clean by his Vital Qi.
Only when the headless carcass toppled did the red light about Du Yehu at last die down — and his face went instantly ashen.
Jiang Wang leapt to his side and caught him, steadying him. "Brother Yehu, this..."
Vital Qi was the very root of a man. Jiang Wang, who had now condensed his Dao essence, drew on it for every step of supply as well. Du Yehu's might of a moment before had burned through his self with every breath. And he was no martial artist by trade; he could not lock down such a flood of Vital Qi. After this battle, he would need at least five years of rest to recover.
Five years, at the very start of cultivation — how brutally long! To say nothing of the decline Vital Qi suffers in later years. One step slow, every step slow. This might mark the end of eternal transcendence for him.
And yet Du Yehu, a moment before, had not hesitated in the least. In mortal danger, there is no room for thinking; and all the more, such instinctual choices are the truest test of a man's heart.
"Petty business." Du Yehu adjusted his breathing without being noticed, recovered a little strength, and shoved Jiang Wang away. "I'm not yet to the point where I can't walk. Let's go. It'll be far worse at the Central Palace."
Ling He, for all his deep concern, judged this no moment for admonition. He shifted Zhao Rucheng onto his back, went up, and lifted his own sword from the wraith's carcass, then fell in silently at Du Yehu's side as his protection.
He, too, had burned Vital Qi earlier, but only a trickle, nothing that touched his foundations. And so he still had strength for a desperate fight.
Jiang Wang, as the only one of the four still whole and at his strongest, had to stay limber, ready to strike at any moment. So he only drew his sword and led the way ahead, making no move to lend a hand.
Only Zhao Rucheng kept grumbling, with no end in sight: "The boss knows how to treat a man, I'll say. Tiger's all thumbs and feet, I swear, hauling me about like a chick in his fist — what sort of picture's that? If Miaoyu ever got wind of it, my heroic image would be ruined in a single stroke!"
Miaoyu was the top flower of the Pavilion of Three Parts Fragrance, the most sought-after beauty in all of Fenglin City's pleasure quarter. To win her favor, Zhao Rucheng had already flung over a thousand taels of silver at the Pavilion, and still lay empty-handed to this day.
Du Yehu said nothing at all — not because he was loath to pound him flat, or at least curse him out, but truly, he had no strength to spare.
"Enough, enough." Jiang Wang said, impatient. "Around here there's nothing but mindless specters and half-mad wraiths. Who are you keeping up appearances for?"
"Well, who can say?" Zhao Rucheng got more animated for it, sprawled on Ling He's back and waving his arms about. "What if somewhere a pretty female ghost is lurking to peek at me? A perfectly good romance, gone to waste just like that. Can Tiger make good on that loss?"
Du Yehu nearly sat bolt upright from his deathbed, summoning a shred of spare strength to burst the mouthy fellow apart.
But Ling He rode out ahead of his flare-up, and jabbed upward with the pommel of his sword.
"Hsss..." Zhao Rucheng sucked in a sharp breath, and all his swagger died in an instant.
...
Past the wall of thick fog, in the exact center of Little Grove Town — the Central Palace of the Nine Palace Array — a vast whirlpool was turning, slow and silent.
What this place had once been could no longer be made out; everything had dissolved into that unblinking vortex, and nothing remained but the whirlpool itself. At its heart was a pure blackness, one that seemed able to draw a man's very gaze inward, and from which no one could break free.
Beside the whirlpool stood four cultivators of long, deep breath, each rich with Dao essence, all in black robes, eyes fixed straight ahead and never straying.
Not far before the vortex lay a house battered to ruin, nothing left of it but a single wall of brick.
Against this wall the red-robed woman leaned at her ease, languid in her pose.
She was wrapped tight from head to toe, and yet she could not help but stir unbounded temptation. In her hand she held a small oval mirror — but what it reflected was not her own ravishing face. It showed the figures within the Nine Palace Array still locked in battle with the wraith.
"This batch from the Fenglin City Dao Academy isn't much to speak of. Only those few sword-tricks were worth a look." The red-robed woman muttered, and with a turn of her hand tucked the mirror away.
"Very well. The hour has come. Had I known it would go so smoothly, I would have slept in through my afternoon nap." Yawning, the red-robed woman drifted with an elegant sway before the whirlpool. "So sleepy..."
It was not until she reached the mystery of that vortex that a sliver of seriousness crossed her face. She angled herself and performed a proper, courteous bow. "The Elder is humbly requested."
The four black-clad cultivators bowed low along with her.
And out of the thick fog stepped an old man with white hair. His face was creased like the bark of an ancient tree, his eyes clouded and dim; he was stooped, his step unsteady.
Yet with each stride he took, his back straightened inch by inch, and the whole of his bearing swelled without cease.
He ignored the red-robed woman and the rest, staring fixedly at the whirlpool as one stares at his immortal beloved, his gaze beyond all devotion.
By the time he stood before the vortex, his presence had grown to the depth of an abyss and the breadth of a sea, pressing down until it was hard to breathe.
The red-robed woman bent her head lower still.
The white-haired elder drew in his ring finger and little finger, set thumb, index, and middle finger together in a triangle over his heart, and softly intoned: "At the depth of the River of Forgetfulness, in the abyss of the Yellow Springs. When the honored god returns to the world, he lights the realm of men."
Then he produced a white-bone dagger, and without ceremony drove it into the crown of his own skull, and went over, stiff and straight, into the whirlpool!