"Charge four in the kun, fall back six in the li," Li Changshou murmured from his snug, warm shelter in the old cypress's trunk, feeding words without cease into Youqin Xuanya's ear. "The beast has begun gliding left."
Xuanya was three hundred zhang from the cypress. The cliff jutted outward; the Three-Eyed Ripple Snake had slid clear of its crevasse, its head poking up beside the trunk. Stirred by Xuanya and her six pursuers, it had not once been seen by Yuwen Ling on high—which saved Li Changshou a good deal of scheming. He ran a dozen threads of thought at once: crushing his aura, whispering fresh directions, watching the beast. He could not let 'Toxin' Xuanya come to grief. You did not kill the ox to make offal stew before you had ground the dough.
Here they came. Xuanya was a hundred zhang from the great cypress!
The snake's full attention fixed on the fighters, sealing the road to the grass without drifting far from it—a hunter old in the craft who had already set Xuanya and those rushing her down as its meal. Li Changshou could picture that three-zhang serpent bursting out without warning. This world, after all, was precisely that horrible. "Three forward in the kan, nine back in the zhen," he guided. "When I say 'leap,' throw yourself at the sky."
Below, Xuanya's fire-wreathed blades darted about her, long gown whipping, a maiden dancing in flame. Above, Yuwen Ling held Yuan Qing's shoulder, shielding him from the miasma; Yuan Qing watched her, gaze brimming with infatuation. "General! This time she must not slip away!" "Never fear, Fourth Young Master. Last time she had a displacement treasure talisman," Ling answered low. "Her qi is nearly spent. When she reaches the cliff's edge I'll press her, then you appear at her side. If she holds only disgust for you, the gu worm's pull may lose half its strength." Yuan Qing's face soured but he nodded.
Below, Xuanya had reached the edge, about to enter the crown's shadow. A fierce glint flashed behind Li Changshou's eyes. 'Leap!' Fire gushed from her swords and her lithe figure shot skyward, sending the bolts streaking her way clean into the empty air. The six pursuers, never dreaming of the danger ahead, plunged straight into the crown's shadow—for they meant only to bound after her, never realizing that edge was a line drawn in blood.
Whoosh—the air cracked. The Three-Eyed Ripple Snake burst out without the least warning. Yuwen Ling roared "Break off!" on high, but the far-left masked man was already caught in that yawning maw—and half his body was gone. Biding in the roots, Li Changshou reckoned a straight match he had no real way to win.
The remaining five wheeled to flee, but the snake would not pass up sweetmeats at its jaws. Its tail lashed out, slamming one man down and sealing the rest's retreat, while its fine scales flared open to spew rank poison-fog over the survivors. "Beast, how dare you!" The hulking figure smashed down through the clouds, hurled down his battle-ax, and flung his body at the snake.
The snake felt the threat and reared to smash the falling ax aside—that absurd, malicious knob was in fact its hardest part. Clang! The great ax was batted away, a hairline crack splitting the knob, gold blood seeping. It sprang upright as Yuwen Ling, already plunging, called the ax back and swung it down against its head.
At the roots, Li Changshou's right hand closed around three paper-cut incarnations, hesitated, took a fourth, then a fifth and sixth. His left gripped the super-grade Immortal-Weakening Powder, waiting for the snake to buckle first. It feared no venom; Yuwen Ling, however, did.
On the far side, Xuanya had slipped, by his guidance, behind the cliff. With Yuwen Ling gone, Yuan Qing at last acted in person, dropping toward her with a three-foot azure blade. But she had no mind to flee; she seized her swords and pressed him down in a breath, high as his rank stood. Yet she split most of her attention on the fierce duel above, reaching for the voice that whispered—and finding nothing of Li Changshou.
But the whole field sat in his palm. The snake took this early-stage Primordial Immortal for the gravest threat and would not yield an inch; Yuwen Ling, hewing without pause, sheltered behind him the three men snake-struck and lost to madness. Li Changshou lurked patient at the roots, ready at any breath to vanish. It had all been snapped together in haste, pure reaction—so he forgave himself some exactness. Why, an 89.8-percent certainty would do.
The crown was hewn near in half, the cliff gashed and a third crumbling. The snake, not yet immortal, could not hold long, its body riddled with gashes and on the verge of dying. 'Good man, big fellow,' Li Changshou said in his heart. His left hand flicked, and the colorless aura of the soft powder was wrapped in his qi, sent up the trunk, and spilled, silent, over Yuwen Ling. Soon his strokes slowed a shade, and a dizziness crept over him. 'The serpent's venom is fierce!' He could not linger; he bounded to mid-air, pinned the dragon-serpent with his immortal force, and swung the ax for its throat. But the snake was already thinking of flight. It wheeled to go—yet cast one hesitant look at the three blades on the cliff's edge. That single moment of hesitation cost it its life. The great ax cut down from its nape; the head flew free, venom spraying. Yuwen Ling touched down, stumbled, caught himself on the ax, and poured a bottle of antidote pills into his mouth. His motions only grew slower. A weak cry came from behind—"General... we..."—but as he turned his feet reeled and the world spun. The pills had done nothing. At that very moment the air broke beside him. A wooden bolt slashed in and pierced his neck. He wheeled and glared toward the cypress. There 'Li Changshou' came shoving out of the tree, cast off the Heaven-Exchanging Treasure Umbrella, took up the bronze crossbow, and with a flick scattered three paper men. They split into clones and hurled at him while another bolt was loaded and loosed; a second pierced his neck, immortal blood gushing. The three paper men took the points of a triangle and cast the green mist of their porcelain vials over him.
The green mist coiled about him like something living and swaddled him; his body began to hiss, and all his strength he spent on a bellow torn with agony. The umbrella's array had walled the whole scene in—not a scrap of sound could escape. His immortal body was eaten through at terrible speed, bones showing. He fought a heavy, slow swing of the ax that the paper men leapt away from. Thwack! A third bolt drove through his corroded chest. Three jets of white flame swallowed him whole. Only then did he recognize Li Changshou: "So... it was you..."
But an immortal is an immortal. Within the white fire he shut his eyes, and several threads of immortal light gathered above his ghastly, half-gone form into a faint phantom. His nascent soul slipped free. "Die!" He forced through the powder's drag and drove a palm strike like a mountain's weight at Li Changshou.
Li Changshou made to dodge—but a hand had seized his ankle in a death-grip. He looked down: a masked man, reeling with both serpent-venom and powder, burning through its three souls and seven spirits, only to snuff out Li Changshou's last breath. Tsk. A misstep. He shook his head a little, and the palm came down, shattering the whole upper half of his body. A faint sneer traced Yuwen Ling's soul. Clever arts and cleverer schemes, this boy—but in the end no immortal. Whizz! Whizz-whizz-whizz! Beneath the cypress the air cracked, and seven long nails flew in, driving at a stroke into every point of his nascent soul, each traced with ban-drawing sigils, pale dread flames pulsing. His soul looked down, dumbfounded: the three paper clones had never stopped their flame, and from the moment he slipped free his body had burned to nothing but bone. And the masked man who had burned out his spirit stared vacantly at the half sheet of paper-cut man tumbling in the wind—he had spent every hope of his next life and bought himself half a sheet of paper for a grave-mate.
Beneath the cypress, the newly risen 'Li Changshou' opened his palm toward the soul, drew his fingers gently closed, and the seven soul-destroying nails blew apart in one instant. At the roots, Li Changshou watched the skeleton that would not finish burning, worked the Number Five paper man to lob out the soul-capturing bead, and bade One, Two, Three pour on the flame. This cold, dark mystic fire bit too weakly against immortals—he would have to get hold of the sect's Threefold True Flame. After a while the skeleton crashed into a mound of ash, and the three paper men, per protocol, began to chant sutras. Only then did Li Changshou move at last: scattering the ashes was a rite he would see to by no hand but his own.