“The sword.
Three feet seven inches long, a little over seven catties in weight.
You hold it in your hand, and you stab the enemy with the pointed end.”
The woman in military dress beckoned lightly with one hand, and the sword answered as though it were alive – it rattled up off the weapon rack, sprang into her palm, left its sheath, and buried itself in the ground at Felutina’s side, humming on and on.
Felutina watched every bit of it.
Whether it was a side effect of the hundred-thousand Popularity Point loan or the result of setting foot on a Path, her body felt far more nimble than it ever had before.
Add her Photographic Memory talent on top of that, and the swordwork the woman in military dress had shown her was fixed in her mind, clear as glass.
“Have you got it?
If you have, then take the battle-beasts the Borisin rely on most in ground warfare as your opponents.
Kill ten Blood-Eyed Yazi and this first lesson is finished.”
Having finished her demonstration, the woman in military dress broke off the instruction.
Her gaze settled on Jingliu, and she added,
“Ten each.”
Felutina did not concern her.
This girl who had somehow set foot on the Path of Abundance was very nearly Jingliu’s opposite.
The first was breezy and loud, nothing like someone who had lived through a massacre.
The second brooded from morning to night, as if she wished the one who had died had been herself.
To the woman in military dress, there was something wrong with both of them.
Jingliu went without saying: a textbook case of survivor’s guilt syndrome.
Felutina was the more complicated one.
Felutina was very likely just as broken inside, but for Jingliu’s sake she had deliberately dressed herself up as someone untouched by any of it.
If Jingliu could not laugh anymore, then she would do the laughing in her place.
Cangcheng had fallen.
Not many had come out of it alive.
The woman in military dress had no intention of watching the few who had survive only to drown for the rest of their lives in the terror of the past.
“Did you hear me?”
Her tone gained an edge.
“Don’t be so hard on her.”
Felutina’s voice came from the side.
She had already run through the woman’s swordwork once herself.
She was breathing a little hard, but the faint smile was still on her face.
“How did it feel?”
The woman in military dress ignored what Felutina had said and threw out a different question instead.
“Mm…”
Felutina made a thoughtful sound and swung the seven-catty sword hard, the air whistling around the blade.
The way things stood, she had to complete her task on this timeline and claim the reward before she could cross over into the main story.
And since she had been rescued together with Jingliu, her personal arc ought to be on the Xianzhou Luofu as well.
So how did one stand out among all the fan favorites the Xianzhou had to offer?
Contrast.
The more confident and dashing she was now, the sharper her future ruin would land – though the ruin couldn’t be allowed to go too far, either.
Botch an artsy tragedy character and the readers would flay you twice as hard.
Felutina took the sword in both hands, her grin blazing.
“From the very first time I held a sword, I knew.
I’ll be the champion of the blade.
First under heaven.”
“…”
The woman in military dress said nothing at all.
She only looked at Felutina with the gentle patience one reserves for idiots.
“What’s that look for?
You don’t believe me?”
“You can’t shield her forever.”
“I don’t accept that.
I’ll shield her forever anyway.”
“You…
never mind.”
The woman in military dress let out a soft sigh.
She shook her head, left the rest unsaid, and simply turned away.
“If you think you’re ready, go finish the assignment instead of standing here running your mouth.”
She left, and Felutina and Jingliu were alone where they stood.
Jingliu watched Felutina’s profile, and something like light moved in her crimson eyes.
Felutina had gone back and forth with the woman in military dress for a good while, and Jingliu had absorbed almost none of it.
She had caught only that last line –
“I’ll shield her forever anyway.”
The young girl felt her heart begin to hammer, and her fingers closed tight around her sword before she knew she’d done it.
…
Blood-Eyed Yazi were not particularly formidable battle-beasts.
Cloud Knights with a stretch of training behind them could bring one down alone.
It was the number – ten – that would give even a well-drilled Cloud Knight trouble.
But the woman in military dress had hardly sent Jingliu and Felutina off to die.
The reports said Felutina had the strength to handle more than two Borisin on her own, while Jingliu was, quite simply, someone great things were expected of.
The woman in military dress was the Sword Champion of the Luofu.
Her judgment of people had never missed.
And in her judgment, Felutina’s declaration would have sat far better in Jingliu’s mouth.
From the moment she lifted a blade, destined to stand first under heaven.
“…Haa.”
Jingliu gripped her sword and pulled in a deep breath.
She fixed her eyes on the Blood-Eyed Yazi ahead of her.
Her hands still would not stop shaking.
“If you’re really that frightened, you don’t have to push yourself.”
Felutina’s voice sounded at her ear again.
She had already killed her ten Blood-Eyed Yazi, and had come to wait beside Jingliu long before this.
Jingliu glanced back without meaning to.
Felutina’s white hair caught the daylight and gave off a pale, floating glow.
Like a wheel of moonlight.
Beautiful, and easily broken.
The scene from that day flashed across her eyes once more – Felutina planted in front of her, a set of sharpened claws driven clean through her body.
Jingliu shook her head.
She had heard it said that most of a person’s suffering comes from rage at their own helplessness.
She didn’t want that.
She didn’t want to be someone who could do nothing.
She breathed the stale air out of her lungs and raised the sword.
Three feet seven inches of steel, holding a blurred reflection of her expressionless face.
By the time the breath was gone, a thread of blood had appeared on the blade from nowhere, sliding down the steel and gathering at the point.
Drip.
The bead struck the ground with a clear little sound – and in the same instant came the heavy crash of the Blood-Eyed Yazi collapsing in front of her.
“Rooooar-”
Several Blood-Eyed Yazi bayed together.
They were dull creatures, capable only of charging blindly, let alone of understanding a blade as frighteningly fast as Jingliu’s.
So fast.
Felutina let out a silent wail.
So this was the distance between a genius and an ordinary person?
She had burned every scrap of effort just to memorize the woman’s movements and reproduce them stroke for stroke.
Jingliu had not only grasped them through and through, she had folded her own understanding into them.
And having done all that, Jingliu still didn’t look satisfied.
She stared at the sword in her hand, her delicate little face knotted up in dissatisfaction.
The thinking lasted only a moment.
Then her blade came down again.
A silver arc flashed, like a crescent moon, and cut down every last Blood-Eyed Yazi.
…
As anyone might have expected, the woman in military dress took Felutina and Jingliu on as her disciples.
In line with Jingliu’s own wishes, she traded the girl’s blade for a heavier one.
Six feet five inches long, fourteen catties, forged in the Cloud Knight greatsword pattern, meant to be swung with both hands.
Lihuo Flame slept in its edge, enough to open the inert plating of a beast-machine the moment the two met.
The sword stood a good deal taller than Jingliu herself, and yet she found it only barely adequate.
Felutina watched with envy, but her own popularity growth hadn’t even reached 30,000.
She couldn’t pay off her debt, let alone upgrade herself.
“So.
Do you still believe you’ll be first under heaven?”
The voice of the woman in military dress arrived beside Felutina without warning.
It gave her a start, but she decided to hold the persona anyway.
“Heh.
I have one stroke in me.
It can move mountains, sever rivers, and overturn seas.”
“Nothing but hot air.”
The woman in military dress gave Felutina a long, searching look, and shook her head.
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