Huang Rong's request seemed reasonable enough to Yin Zhiping, and he agreed.
It wasn't his wife or his child, after all. As long as Guo Jing had it well in hand, that was that.
Over the following days, the Mongol army came up against the walls daily—and every assault petered out into nothing.
The much-rumored masters never showed so much as a shadow.
It left Guo Jing and Huang Rong unable to guess what medicine the Mongols were selling in that gourd of theirs.
Everyone knew the old rule: defending a city is easy; taking one is hard.
Day after day, Mongol losses ran far beyond the Song's.
Only on the third day, when a subordinate reported the city's arrows running short, did Huang Rong finally see the Mongols' true aim: to bleed Xiangyang's stock of defensive matériel dry.
And by the time she saw it, it was already too late.
Her brows stayed knotted the whole day after that.
"No wonder. So that was the abacus they were clicking."
Guo Jing fretted beside her. Arrows meant little against jianghu masters, but against common soldiers their work was devastating.
The reinforcements hadn't come; the garrison was plainly outnumbered by the Mongol host. If the two armies met blade to blade in the open, things would go hard.
"Brother Jing, the Mongols will surely learn of our situation too. The next assault may well be the one that decides Xiangyang's fate."
Huang Rong refused to believe Xiangyang held no Mongol eyes. And even if it didn't—if they had conceived the plan, they had some way of learning its results.
"Rong'er, trust me. We will hold Xiangyang. And I will protect you—and our child who hasn't yet seen the world."
Guo Jing held his wife's hand, his other palm passing slow and light over her belly. Their child was in there—a child who hadn't yet had one look at this world—and Guo Jing would sooner die than let anything touch the two of them.
Yin Zhiping, meanwhile, received the news by Huang Rong's messenger.
She had hidden nothing, and appended her own read besides: the next assault would very likely be the decisive one.
Yin Zhiping felt no worry that Xiangyang might fall.
In the original story, Guo Jing had held this city nearly twenty years, and it took a teammate of the pig variety before wall and man went down together.
With his own help added to the scale, Yin Zhiping refused to believe Xiangyang would fall sooner instead.
That was not how the butterfly flapped its wings...
He called Li Zhichang in, gave his instructions, and then there was nothing left but to wait.
Sure enough: the day after the arrow shortage bit, the Mongols committed to a general assault.
Where every previous push had come in trickles and squads, this time the army rolled forward entire.
And the masters who had never shown themselves finally appeared.
At their head: a foreign monk bearing a golden wheel.
Behind him followed five masters in strange and motley dress.
Had the Golden Wheel Dharma King been made State Preceptor of Mongolia yet, or not? No way to know.
No time to wonder, either. The Dharma King led his five across the field in a few great bounds, tapped lightly up the face of the wall—and all six were a breath from cresting the parapet.
Yin Zhiping's sword left its scabbard. He picked out the Golden Wheel Dharma King and opened with One Qi Begets the Three Purities.
This was nothing like the sparring with Ouyang Feng. This was a true fight of life and death—and the Dharma King's strength was no rumor.
The Esoteric Sect's crowning art, the Dragon-Elephant Prajna Skill, was called the mightiest body-tempering method in existence.
At his debut in the original story, the Dharma King had already trained it to the ninth layer.
The man before him now might not be ninth-layer yet—but eighth, without question.
So Yin Zhiping opened at full strength and held nothing back.
His sword-tip flickered at three points—left shoulder, right shoulder, chest—leaving the Dharma King no way to know which was the true strike.
It did not trouble the Dharma King in the least.
An art did not come to be called the strongest body-tempering skill by being easy to deal with.
True essence surged through the Dharma King's whole frame, and somewhere beneath it rang the faint cry of a dragon.
Yin Zhiping's sword arrived—a clean thrust at the left shoulder.
The point split cloth—and stopped dead against the sheath of true essence, unable to sink a hair further.
Yin Zhiping felt no discouragement. If he could be taken that easily, he would not be the Esoteric Sect's Golden Wheel Dharma King.
Across the wall, Guo Jing had taken on the five who followed him.
Not Innates, those five—but Acquired-realm perfection, every one, and joining forces they genuinely managed to hold up under the enormous pressure Guo Jing brought down.
Guo Jing ran through a full circuit of the Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms; the five weathered it in shifts, driven back step after staggering step.
Yet like cockroaches that refused to die, each time they were beaten off they came scrambling back—and were beaten off again.
It wore at Guo Jing's patience like grit.
Yin Zhiping had no attention to spare for Guo Jing's side of the wall. His own blood was up.
One Qi Begets the Three Purities came back empty-handed; the sword-form turned—the Yang-Steadying Needle.
The long sword drove out like a great spike, true essence wrapping the blade, a point of pure breach-everything sharpness aimed at the Dharma King's chest.
The Dharma King was ready. The golden wheel came up, the dragon-cry rang again—and for an instant a dragon's head seemed to surface on the wheel's face.
DING!!!
Wheel met sword; true essence burst and scattered. Yin Zhiping slid back six steps, each one stamping a footprint into the stone, and only stopped when the last of the force had bled away.
The Dharma King fell back only three—but his prints ran deeper, and an unhealthy flush shot visibly across his face.
He had cut his recoil short by main force before the impact was fully spent; the backlash drove his blood surging upward, and he crushed it back down with raw internal power.
Yin Zhiping clicked his tongue and drawled: "Why do that to yourself? Vanity's a heavy thing to carry."
The Dharma King declined to engage with the question. He asked his own instead: "Might I ask your school and sect? To think Xiangyang held a master of your caliber besides Guo Jing."
His first true battle since coming down the mountain—and against an Innate. Yin Zhiping decided the Quanzhen Sect's name would not sag on his watch.
He returned the sword to rest behind his back, feet set, arms loose at his sides, body angled a precise forty-five degrees; chin up, a slight turn—offering the Golden Wheel Dharma King one exquisitely handsome profile.
The pose was very nearly the real thing. Shame no one but the Dharma King was watching.
"Third-generation disciple of the Quanzhen Sect—Yin Zhiping."
"And you?"
Yin Zhiping was privately certain this was the Golden Wheel Dharma King. But he'd never actually met the man, so better to ask—if he pulled a Guo Jing and named the wrong person, the embarrassment would be terminal.
Li Zhichang had recounted that little episode as an amusing anecdote, and Yin Zhiping had laughed about it for a long while.
He, however, did not have Guo Jing's lovable-dullard persona to hide behind. It would just be humiliating.
"This seat is of the Esoteric Sect. Golden Wheel. Men call me the Golden Wheel Dharma King."
The Dharma King didn't posture the way Yin Zhiping had. He put up his wheel and offered a small salute—greeting given, courtesy observed.
Two men at the summit of the age; naturally, each appreciated the other.
Then Yin Zhiping leveled his sword and charged back in—Wandering the Ends of the Earth.
The Dharma King met him without a flinch. The golden wheel's rim was set with sawteeth: a shield that was also a saw.
Teeth and blade met, and the air filled with a rattling chorus of ding-ding-ding.
Yin Zhiping's left hand hadn't been idle either. The sword locked the wheel; the left palm pushed out, true essence gathered and undispersed—the Vast Heaven Palm.
The Dharma King's experience ran deep; crisis found him calm. His left hand closed into a fist, true essence scrambled together in the scant instant left, and the punch met the palm head-on.
Fist and palm collided. To everyone nearby it was a single thunderclap in both ears—a heartbeat of blank-eyed stagger.
One had answered in haste; one had lain in wait. Yin Zhiping did not move an inch. The Golden Wheel Dharma King flew backward several paces.
The verdict, written plain!