Chapter 55: Slaughter Begins

Crouched atop the limestone crag, I let my divine sense ripple outward, completely silent and invisible.

With a faint flick of my wrist concealed inside my wide white sleeves, I channeled a thread of Late-Stage Golden Core essence into the air surrounding the entire eastern spur. The spiritual energy expanded smoothly, weaving a dome of sound-dampening law across a two-mile perimeter.

Beneath that invisible barrier, a thunderclap could detonate and the four hundred and fifty soldiers resting by their bonfires down in the central valley wouldn’t hear a peep.

Beside me, Bai Ling’s amber eyes flickered toward the enemy encampment below. Even without spiritual perception, her dormant Eyes of Providence granted her an innate reading of danger. She raised two fingers, silently gesturing toward three rocky paths cutting through the pine brush.

Ninety rebel scouts dissolved into the pitch-black shadows like mountain wraiths.

The two hundred imperial light infantry had grown sloppy. Having marched through rough gorges for half the night, their perimeter guards were leaning against wooden pikes, yawning into the chilly mountain breeze, their torches casting long, jittery shadows against the limestone walls. They assumed the rebels were trembling in the caverns, awaiting death at dawn.

Snap.

A dried pine branch gave under a boot, but before the sentry could turn his head, a scarred rebel scout lunged from behind a boulder. A calloused hand clamped over the soldier’s mouth while an iron dagger drove up beneath his ribcage.

Five sentries on the outer rim were butchered in absolute silence.

However, Governor Yan’s soldiers weren’t raw conscripts, they were trained border infantry. When two patrols failed to cross paths at their scheduled mark, a squad leader spotted a dark trail of blood slicking the limestone.

"Ambush! Form the line-!"

The sergeant’s shout rang out, followed by the frantic clatter of iron breastplates and unsheathed sabers. The camp came violently alive. Men scrambled out of rough canvas tents, grabbing round shields and notched spears as they tried to assemble their ranks in the gloom.

"Kill!" Bai Ling’s voice cracked through the gorge like a whip.

From the high rocks, forty recurve bows twanged in unison. Iron-tipped arrows rained down into the flickering torchlight, finding gaps in leather armor and pinning imperial infantry to the dirt. Behind the volley, Tie Shan roared, leading the burly rebels down the slope, their notched broadswords hacking into the disoriented soldiers with desperate, savage fury.

The brawl turned vicious in seconds.

The rebels held every advantage of the home ground, they knew every slick rock, every loose patch of gravel, and moved through the dark without needing light. Yet the imperial soldiers had numbers on their side, outnumbering the outlaws nearly three to one.

Once the initial shock faded, the imperial infantry formed three interlocking shield walls, their long spears thrusting out like an iron porcupine, slowly grinding the rebels’ charge to a halt.

Standing on an elevated boulder with my arms folded behind my back, I watched the chaos with detached amusement.

I didn’t draw my flying sword. Sticking my nose into a mortal brawl would ruin the trial, but I wasn’t about to let Bai Ling’s men get needlessly slaughtered either.

Down in the thick of the fighting, an imperial spearman thrust his weapon toward the unprotected neck of a young rebel whose footing had slipped on the shale.

I casually flicked my index finger.

A pebble no larger than a grain of rice shot from my fingertip, whistling through the dark at invisible speed.

Clang!

The pebble struck the spearhead with pinpoint precision, deflecting the iron point two inches to the left. The strike caught only empty air, allowing the startled rebel to regain his balance and drive his short sword into the spearman’s exposed armpit.

A few yards away, another imperial soldier swung a broadaxe toward Tie Shan’s wounded flank. A stray wisp of wind-attribute qi brushed the man’s ankle, causing him to stumble over a root just long enough for Tie Shan’s backhand strike to take off his jaw.

Small, subtle adjustments, unnoticed by mortal eyes, but keeping the casualty count firmly tilted in the rebels’ favor.

In the center of the carnage, Bai Ling was an absolute whirlwind of lethal elegance.

She was at the peak of the Body Strengthening Realm, her twin short swords flashing like silver vipers in the moonlight.

Guided by her instinctual Eyes of Providence, she read the flow of battle before it unfolded. She ducked beneath a spear thrust before the soldier even braced his feet, her right blade severing his hamstring while her left blade spun around to parry a descending saber.

She slipped between three men, cutting tendons, shattering jaws, and barking tactical orders that kept her fighters moving as a cohesive, flowing meat grinder.

"Vermin of the crags! Die!"

A furious roar tore through the melee. Bursting through the canvas tents came the detachment commander, a hulking, scarred man clad in heavy iron scale-mail, wielding a massive five-foot executioner’s blade that whistled through the air with terrifying force.

He was at the peak of the Body Strengthening Realm, possessing the brute, bone-crushing strength of a veteran slaughterer who had butchered hundreds on the border. Spotting Bai Ling carving through his men, he lowered his shoulder and charged like an enraged rhinoceros, his heavy blade sweeping horizontally toward her waist.

Bai Ling’s twin blades crossed to parry, but the sheer force behind the strike threatened to shatter her wrists.

CLANG!

A blinding shower of sparks exploded against the dark limestone. The heavy executioner’s blade was halted dead in mid-air.

Standing between the commander and Bai Ling was Shen Qingxue.

Her slender frame hadn’t budged an inch. Holding her steel sword in a two-handed diagonal guard, she absorbed the terrifying impact through her heels, the stone beneath her boots fracturing into a spiderweb of fine cracks.

Her posture was straight, unyielding, and completely relaxed. Beneath her dark traveling veil, her obsidian eyes were as calm and still as a frozen mountain lake, the eerie stillness that preceded an apocalyptic storm.

"A little girl?!" the commander snarled, his veins bulging in his neck as he pushed all his weight down on the hilt. "Get out of my way, wench!"