The stone beneath Shen Yi’s feet began to crack before he even moved.
Hair-thin lines spread across the stone floor, as though the weight of his energy alone was enough to strain the ground.
The nearby flames leaned away from him without any wind, as if the air around the man had grown dense enough to push everything aside.
His blue sword, its engravings alive with a restless glow, drew closer.
Yuan ducked.
The blue energy swept past his cheek like a candle brought close to his skin for a single instant.
It was not over.
Shen Yi turned smoothly, a second arc cutting through the air toward Yuan’s legs.
Yuan jumped backward.
Two steps.
Three.
He doesn’t fight like the guard captain, Yuan thought.
There’s no anger.
No wasted movement.
Nothing is thrown away.
“You’re fast,” Shen Yi said without praise or criticism.
“My father taught me that the man who counts his steps loses to the man who doesn’t.
But you count them.
I can see your lips moving.”
He was right.
Yuan hadn’t realized his lips were moving.
He surged into the opening after the second strike, driving a fist toward Shen Yi’s chest.
Shen Yi blocked it with the edge of his sword as casually as brushing an insect away from a cup.
Then his knee drove into Yuan’s ribs.
Yuan twisted and took the blow on his side.
A sharp burst of pain.
A short groan disappeared beneath the noise of battle.
He stepped back and breathed.
No time for pain.
Yuan opened the Soldier with greater force, pushing the pain behind his eyes and sharpening his focus until it became the edge of a blade.
Shen Yi attacked again.
His sword moved through a complex pattern, every motion bearing the mark of decades of formal training.
One cut.
Then another.
Then another.
Then a thrust.
Yuan saw it.
The thrust always came after the third rotation.
Three circles, then a straight line.
He noticed it the way an ear catches the wrong note in a melody repeated for the fourth time.
He waited.
Calculated.
At the third rotation, he did not retreat.
He advanced.
One step toward the blade instead of away from it, breaking Shen Yi’s rhythm for a brief moment, a moment the man had not expected from anyone.
Yuan struck his wrist with one hand and reached for the sword with the other.
Shen Yi’s grip was like iron.
A counter-kick slammed into Yuan’s chest, lifting him from the ground and throwing him onto his back.
The air burst from his lungs with an audible gasp, and the world became a swarm of black dots spinning before his eyes.
He saw the blue sword descending toward his chest.
Not now.
He rolled aside.
The edge of the sword bit into the stone where his heart had been a moment earlier.
The sound of metal striking stone vibrated through his teeth.
Yuan rose without thinking.
His body moved on instinct, driven by all three voices at once.
I won’t defeat him with strength, he thought as he retreated.
I need to play a different game.
Above them, a burning beam collapsed from the corridor ceiling and crashed between them in a shower of sparks.
Shen Yi reacted first.
He leapt backward without even looking and lost not a breath of momentum.
Yuan took the sparks across his face and felt the heat lick at his eyebrow.
A short, ugly laugh escaped him before he knew where it came from.
In this place, staying alive did not depend on logic alone.
A burning beam did not care about calculations.
But it gave him what he needed.
A curtain of smoke and flame separated them, giving him two seconds without eyes watching him.
And in those two seconds, Yuan saw the man before him differently.
Not an obstacle to be removed, but a devoted student.
Every movement was a lesson Shen Yi had mastered.
Every lesson had been taught by a father who knew exactly what he was doing.
As he caught his breath, Yuan wondered whether that father was alive somewhere right now.
He pushed the Soldier aside and brought forth the Hunter.
His movements changed immediately.
Less direct.
More curved.
He made use of the half-burned pillars and chunks of debris scattered among the burning buildings.
He disappeared behind one pillar, then emerged from the other side with a strike aimed at Shen Yi’s back.
The man turned swiftly and blocked it with his free arm.
“Trying to run?” he asked with quiet mockery.
“I’m trying to win,” Yuan replied, his voice far steadier than he felt.
He did not stop.
He circled Shen Yi again and again, like a bird that knew a hunter could not watch every direction at once.
Shen Yi turned with his entire body to keep him in sight.
Then his foot slipped.
A loose stone shifted beneath his boot.
A single moment he had not expected on his own ground.
A single moment was all Yuan needed.
He summoned everything the well-trodden paths of those countless nights had built within him and surged forward at full speed, delivering one strike toward Shen Yi’s exposed side.
It landed.
Deep.
Shen Yi cried out and staggered backward, blood bursting from his side.
He looked at Yuan, the disdain that had filled his eyes vanishing as quickly as water from an overturned palm.
“Who are you?” he asked again.
This time, there was no trace of mockery in his voice.
But Shen Yi was not finished.
Yuan saw it in the instant before he moved.
Anger appeared on Shen Yi’s face like a crack spreading across stone, and through that crack came something else.
Spiritual pressure began to rise around him with frightening intensity.
A reserve, Yuan thought sharply.
Something he was saving for an emergency.
The engravings on the blue sword brightened, their color deepening into a blue that edged toward violet.
The air around Shen Yi trembled, as if an invisible layer of pressure had wrapped itself around him.
A nearby flame suddenly went out, suffocated before it could even flicker.
A large stone beneath his foot split cleanly in two with a sound like breaking bone.
He surged forward.
Faster than anything Yuan had seen from him before.
There was no time to think.
Only raw reaction, driven by all three voices.
Yuan ducked, twisted, and barely avoided the strike.
Pain tore through his arm.
A new wound.
Deeper than the last.
This time he cried out.
No one stopped to listen.
Yuan retreated several steps, panting as blood poured from his arm.
Shen Yi advanced steadily, his sword growing brighter with every step.
I won’t last much longer.
It was the clearest thought Yuan had had all night.
I need something I haven’t tried.
Deep within the passage, at its very end, where the voices he had imprisoned beneath his strongest will lay dormant, he heard the scratching.
No words.
Only a long scrape against a wall of will, as if something were dragging its fingernails across stone to remind him that it was still there.
Open, the scratching seemed to say without a tongue.
Open for us.
No.
Yuan rejected the thought before it could fully form.
Not now.
The price is too great to calculate.
Shen Yi lunged.
The sword descended toward him with terrifying speed.
And at that moment, Yuan heard a voice from behind him.
This time, it was not inside his head.
“Move!”
He Long charged in from the side like a bull crashing through a fence, his sword intercepting Shen Yi’s strike at the last possible moment.
The two blades collided with an ear-splitting clang, sending blue and golden sparks flying.
He Long stood between Yuan and Shen Yi, breathing hard, his sword held defensively.
“I didn’t know you were facing this alone,” he said without turning around.
“I need your help, Yuan.
There’s no time to rest.”
Shen Yi looked at the two of them.
A new calculation appeared in his eyes.
“Two instead of one,” he said calmly.
“It doesn’t matter.
I’ll treat you both the same.”
He charged again.
By then, Yuan had already moved to He Long’s side, shoulder to shoulder with him.
Neither had planned it, yet it worked.
Each covered the other’s openings while Shen Yi fought with fierce determination, blood running from his side but his resolve remaining unshaken.
Over He Long’s shoulder, Yuan saw the distant horizon.
Flames rose from other buildings.
Screams echoed in every direction.
A battle far larger than his personal confrontation with this man was unfolding around them.
This night won’t end easily, Yuan thought, his injured arm throbbing.
And perhaps, just perhaps, this is the night my plan has been waiting for.