"Is this everyone you've got?" Li Yanqing mocked, repeating Wu Hao's words at a higher tone. The words rang out oddly into the night.

  Zhu Yelin smiled slightly, but Shan Kong didn't. Wu Hao's head moved from side to side, trying to keep them all in view, but they were at least clever enough to try and surround him. To his left was Zhu Yelin, that stupid hollow smile still on his face, while to his right stood Li Yanqing, who looked superior.

  "Don't try to run," Zhu Yelin said. "Shan Kong's father has all the guards -"

  "Shut up," Shan Kong commanded. His sword raised slightly. "Let's get this done. Don't give him time to scream."

  "Come on," Li Yanqing goaded wu Hao. "Show off that Sky-tier technique again. Let's see how good you really are."

  "I said shut up!" Shan Kong barked, and he cast a venomous glare at the other boys. "Don't underestimate him."

  Wu Hao grinned. "The way you did? How did Yu Xiong's arms feel?"

  Shan Kong glared, and the next moment his qi surged, coalesced, crashed like a wave into Wu Hao's senses. It was weaker than it had been a few days beforehand - before Wu Hao had beaten him. Frustration and hate tinged every current of Shan Kong's qi, and when his blade began to buzz with its usual metallic grating, he had the sense that it was nothing more than a hound barely held at bay by a leash, baying for his blood.

  Zhu Yelin and Li Yanqing shared a glance, before they shut their mouths.

  "Ocean Devil's Teeth Art," Shan Kong said. The look in his eyes changed, and his saber was pointed at Wu Hao without wavering. "Wave Cutter!"

  Wu Hao inhaled the night air, rolled his wrists, and ignited his qi. The tiger's roar that he was growing used to sounded in his ears, and now it sounded hungry.

  "You wanted to see my technique?" he asked Li Yanqing. "Here it is."

  Qi poured through his meridians, a flood of power that made his blood sing and his heart pound. He forced it all into the bandit's saber, pulling it into a tight pattern that burst into the metal in dizzying loops and whirls of qi.

  The bandit's saber awakened with a keening noise, a growl that seemed to come from everywhere, and Wu Hao held it up slightly.

  "Storm Cutting Art," he declared. "Tempest Slash!"

  He lowered himself, bending his knees slightly to let himself fall and then sprinting forward at a low angle, saber held to his side. He couldn't yet use two techniques at once, or he'd have used his improvised movement technique, but all the same he was on them in the space of a few breaths.

  Saber held high he twisted on his feet, pouring more qi into his saber, and then let himself spin into a tight circle. The qi spun out from his saber in a cutting arc that lashed out around him.

  "Bloodbound Saber Art," Zhu Yelin managed. "Scarlet Boundary -"

  Zhu Yelin blocked with his own qi, thick rust patterns forming at the edge of his saber, but they were swept away by Wu Hao's saber brushing by. Zhu Yelin's technique was torn apart and Li Yanqing was forced back, but Wu Hao had to twist again, tighter still now, to have his saber block the stab that Shan Kong had just made for his side.

  Wu Hao pushed qi to his feet and detonated it, soaring up higher into the air and away from the three of them, feeling a few lines of pain trace shallowly across his chest. Shan Kong's technique had teeth still.

  It wasn't an injury worth worrying about.

  He landed hard, shattering elegant stone tiles with the impact of his landing, and watched the three of them turn to him even as he rushed forward again.

  Metal flashed as he moved his saber and as it caught the light, the glint seeming impossibly bright. Wu Hao didn't force a technique - no time - and slammed into Zhu Yelin feet-first, riding the other boy down to the ground and then rolling into a confused blur of steel and cloth.

  Wu Hao came to a stop, took a breath, and rolled to the side instinctively. When he'd turned he looked back over, and Shan Kong vanished into another flicker of movement as he charged at Wu Hao.

  They met in a clash of steel meeting steel. The buzzing of both of their blades sounded like the roars of a hundred beasts ripping into each other.

  And for once, Shan Kong had the advantage. His movements weren't quicker than Wu Hao's but they were less circuitous, more angular, more suited to the skin-to-skin range. He landed several quick slashes on Wu Hao's arms that spurted some blood, whereas Wu Hao only managed to smash the side of his pommel into Shan Kong's face, get some breathing room, and back up a single step. A muted yell resounded, and Wu Hao panted for a breath before it clicked.

  Then something crashed into his side, and he grunted with pain, feeling metal flicker past unprotected skin and cut another line in his robe. He didn't let it stop him and set his feet, exploding with another improvised movement technique that pushed him across the ring, skimming above the stone.

  He turned, feeling his stomach roil from the impact to his side. Fighting off the instinctive reaction to check the damage himself, he did watch Li Yanqing pull back the pommel of his saber, coated in a metallic glint that caught the light oddly.

  The technique pulsed as he watched it for a moment more. Li Yanqing's technique flickered like that because the qi wasn't evenly applied. It couldn't be more than an Earth-rank technique, but that was the first thing that'd wounded him all day.

  Wu Hao smiled, forcing himself to show that he hadn't felt the blow at all.

  "Is that all you've got?" he asked.

  "Shut the fuck up!" Li Yanqing hissed. "When we're through with you, we're cutting your tendons, you shit-eating peasant! Let's see who's arrogant then!"

  Wu Hao didn't bother responding. There was a momentary impasse as he got his breath back and as the other two waited for Shan Kong to scrabble back to his feet, touch at his cheek, and spit out some blood onto the ring, mixed with fragments of teeth. The other boys had a muted discussion, occasionally looking out at Wu Hao.

  But at least now he knew the stakes. This wasn't a children's duel, stopping at the first sign of blood or if either fighter was obviously defeated.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  This was combat, pure and simple. No rules, no intervention, no stopping.

  Good. So long without true combat had dulled his nerves, and now it felt like he was coming alive again. His mind worked, even as Shan Kong pulled qi from his core and pushed it into his saber to keep the technique going. If Wu Hao wasn't wrong, he'd then send it down to his feet to charge again.

  Pull them down to your level, he thought. Advice from years from now, but still applicable.

  Wu Hao pulled the first of the knives that he'd prepared just in case. It was a dull kitchen knife, ones he'd stolen over the course of the week, but he'd made his mark on them. Ever since he'd gotten qi back, he'd carved lines into the knives. Rusty patterns etched across the blade and the hilt, encrusted with his blood.

  The result of the knowledge of arrays that he'd picked up from the library burglary, these knives were the first product he'd ever attempted to make. He hadn't had a chance to test them yet. It'd been inspired by his earlier attempts on Father's life, by the throwing knife technique that he'd rifled through on the second level of the library, and a desire to hurt someone.

  He poured qi into the patterns, sending a thin white light running across the knife's blade, and threw it as hard as he could, forcing qi into his muscles to enhance the power with which he flicked his wrist. It launched out like an arrow.

  Shan Kong spotted the edge of the knife hurtling at him and dodged, flickering into a haze as he was forced to use his movement technique to avoid the thrown knife. It went wide, but even without Shan Kong moving it might not have hit him.

  That was fine, though. Wu Hao hadn't been aiming for him.

  Instead, the knife smashed into the nearest lantern and exploded upon impact, shards of glass and stone and metal scattering everywhere with as much force as Wu Hao had been able to pack into the patterns. The hail of shards lanced into Zhu Yelin, whose saber was quick enough to block several of the shards, but not quick enough to block all of them.

  Zhu Yelin stumbled, red lines appearing all across his arms and his face as several shards slipped past his hasty guard. None had inflicted a severe wound, though.

  But with the smashed lantern, the light had gone out in that small area. In that moment, they were blind, and Wu Hao felt his breath quicken slightly even as he watched their surprise run through their qi signatures.

  He could still see. Not perfectly, of course. He could only see qi, imperfectly, tracking the biggest concentrations - the boys' cores, the boys' sabers. His vision was fouled further by the trails of qi that were left as their sabers swished.

  This was what he'd planned, but it worked better than he'd thought.

  "He's trying to run," Li Yanqing snarled. His head whipped about, and his eyes glowed momentarily as he reinforced his eyesight with some sort of technique. Interesting. Wu Hao hadn't known that was possible. "He's going to run to Jin Qilong."

  "The guards won't let him in," Shan Kong snapped. "My father's people are there. Shut up. Get to the next lantern."

  Just as Li Yanqing spotted him, Wu Hao paused for a moment more, gathering qi, and then poured it into his wrist again. His other succesful knife rocketed forward like a firework, the array already coming apart as it spun in midair and qi leaking everywhere.

  It exploded, shards ripping through the air. Li Yanqing flinched back, and the rain of metal clanged into the metal armguards he was wearing and ripped soft lines throughout his robe.

  But those same shards did hit the lantern, smashing it with the loud sound of shattering glass. Fire leapt momentarily out of the wick, as if in surprise that it was free, before returning to its confines, cowed.

  Sharp intakes of breath again as more of the plaza vanished into the darkness.

  "What the fuck is that technique?" Li Yanqing hissed. Zhu Yelin swallowed, feet almost stumbling.

  "I don't know," Shan Kong said. Wu Hao could hear his shallow breaths and could see a thin spike of fear every time the shadows moved even slightly. "Keep calm."

  Easier said than done. Li Yanqing's qi was a mess.

  Wu Hao fingered the last two knives that he had. He'd only made two that he'd have called a success. These were the failures, and he didn't know yet in which way they'd fail.

  Back to more reliable methods, then, he thought, and stowed the knives away again. Shan Kong's mass of qi fluttered with a faint panic as he tried to rally his friends. They got over to the lantern, but then they stalled, uncertain what to do.

  "He's going to try and shatter it," Zhu Yelin said urgently. "We should -"

  "Formation!" Shan Kong barked. A good decision, Wu Hao supposed. A better decision to not have challenged himself at all, though. "Fall in, fall -"

  Wu Hao launched himself forward again, gathering qi the moment he'd pushed off from the side of the roof that he'd landed against and forming it into another technique.

  "Storm Cutting Saber," he whispered into the night air, overshooting his target slightly. Zhu Yelin turned slowly and the qi crackled in Wu Hao's veins as he shed the previous loop and forced the qi into another in an instant. It hurt, but he found himself grinning anyway. "Tempest Slash!"

  Whirling, he tore into Li Yanqing, landing a slash first that cut the other boy's arm almost to the bone, then pushed more qi into the technique so that it flowed into another wild slash, this time tearing straight through the last of Li Yanqing's guard. The saber twitched in his hand like a living thing, almost too fast for his eyes to see.

  "Storm Cutting Saber," Wu Hao spoke, using the technique that he'd gotten days ago. "Heart of the Storm."

  Wu Hao's saber came away red. Li Yanqing collapsed with wide eyes, staring down at the red ruin where his heart had been. His throat bubbled with unspoken words. Maybe an apology, or maybe something else.

  Then he fell over slowly like an oak struck by lightning.

  Before Li Yanqing had hit the ground, he was dead.