The city gates still held.
Yin Zhiping and the Golden Wheel Dharma King's duel stayed confined to the wall itself—however high they bounded, they always came down on the parapet again.
Guo Jing was another matter. He had taken his five opponents straight off the wall with him.
Which meant Guo Jing now stood outside the city, alone.
With the jianghu masters committed, the battle boiled over in earnest.
Beyond the Dharma King and the five Acquired-perfection masters, the Mongols had brought others—Acquired, first-rate, a whole spread of them.
Give them the smallest opening and they'd be up and over the parapet.
That was where the Central Plains masters who'd come to help earned their keep, throwing them back.
Guo Jing, having beaten back his five, took one measuring look at the field. The Central Plains fighters, led by Zhu Ziliu and Wu Santong, were locked hot against the Mongol masters, casualties on both sides.
On the whole, though, the Mongols bled worse. Xiangyang's side showed no sag—if anything, they fought hotter the longer it ran.
Yin Zhiping and the foreign monk were trading blows to a standstill, no winner in sight.
For the defenders, that sufficed. As long as the Mongols' strongest man stayed pinned—no chance to break the gates from within—the advantage belonged to Xiangyang, and the one sweating was the Mongol general.
So Guo Jing didn't rush to reinforce the wall.
He set his sights on the common soldiery below instead.
Huang Rong had said it true: on a battlefield of this scale, Guo Jing's Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms were nothing short of a weapon of mass slaughter.
His palms rose and fell, and gouts of qi-force erupted outward, bowling over the Mongol soldiers wave upon wave, men and horses alike thrown skyward. The assault's momentum sagged visibly.
Which meant the masters up on the wall slowly lost their feed of reinforcements. Given time, they'd be stranded—cut off, alone, unsupported.
Yin Zhiping read the field the same way.
"Golden Wheel Dharma King! Your helpers have been beaten by Hero Guo. This battle is lost—do you truly mean to keep fighting?"
In any contest between two camps, attack the heart first.
Yin Zhiping wanted the Dharma King rattled. One flare of impatience, and openings would bloom.
And if the Dharma King fell, this defense of Xiangyang was as good as decided.
Without a hundred thousand troops—and with two Innates left unpinned—no army was breaking into this city.
"Yin Zhiping. Put away your little tricks—this seat is not so easily baited. If you have the ability, then keep me here."
As if the Dharma King couldn't see through Yin Zhiping's game.
But his confidence in himself ran deep. The battle might be lost; he would not be. He could always walk out whole.
"And here I was, being genuinely considerate. Have it your way—again, then!"
Yin Zhiping wasted no more breath. Keep that mouth stiff—when Guo Jing's hands come free, you'll have your tears ready.
He had the Dharma King's measure by now: the two of them stood shoulder to shoulder, neither clearly above.
And measuring himself against the true summit—Ouyang Feng, Guo Jing—Yin Zhiping knew a gap remained.
Not a gap wide enough to break him quickly, or cost him his life against them. But barring accidents, winning was off the table.
By that arithmetic, the Golden Wheel Dharma King was certainly no match for Guo Jing.
Add Yin Zhiping himself to the scale—two on one—and the Dharma King's dream of strolling home untouched was exactly that. A dream.
Now it was just a question of when Guo Jing came back up to collect him.
Yin Zhiping and the Dharma King crashed together again.
Sword-light and fist-force interwove and flared; astral qi sprayed in every direction, whipping up gale after gale of qi-wind that no one else could stand inside. For twenty paces around, the wall held no third living soul.
Yin Zhiping brought out everything he had—Quanzhen Swordplay and Quanzhen Palm Technique together, sword in the right hand, palm from the left, closing from both wings at once.
The Dharma King answered in kind—astral qi armoring his body, dragon-cry and elephant-trumpet never fading, golden wheel in the right hand, iron fist on the left, matching edge for edge.
Sword rang on wheel; palm broke on fist. The two locked, and locked, and would not tip.
Elsewhere, the scales were tipping fast.
Guo Jing stood alone at the base of the wall. Arrows meant nothing to him; common soldiers couldn't get within three zhang before they were slapped spinning away.
He stood upon the earth with something of the air of: here I am, and here none may pass.
Along the parapets, position after position swung Xiangyang's way.
The twenty Quanzhen disciples held to Yin Zhiping's instructions: Li Zhichang led, all twenty clustered into a single formation, watching one another's backs, and penned ten first-rate Mongol masters in their center. The five first-rate disciples—Li Zhichang at their head—carried the attack; the rest supported from the flanks. Total advantage; victory only a matter of time.
Zhu Ziliu's and Wu Santong's opponents were on their last legs too, hunting for a window to flee down off the wall—reach the Mongol lines below and they'd be safe.
None of them had noticed Guo Jing standing at the bottom, the entire Mongol army dammed up behind one man.
Batur could read a field as well as anyone. This assault, he knew now, would die on the stones.
Half a month of patience had finally bought him the moment the city's defenses ran dry—and then some master no one had ever heard of surfaced out of nowhere, tied down the opponent he had prepared specifically for Guo Jing, and left Guo Jing's hands free to do exactly as they pleased.
Pressing on had no meaning. Every further hour just stacked the dead higher. That one man standing at the wall's base—how many lives would it take just to walk past him?
Not worth it.
"Sound the gong. Withdraw."
The aide at Batur's side took the order and rode.
The conch-horns moaned; the Mongol soldiers heard the signal for what it was.
They stopped hurling themselves at Guo Jing's line.
The Mongol masters on the wall had long since lost their taste for the fight; at the first note of the signal they broke off, shoved their opponents back, and leapt for the ground below.
Zhu Ziliu and the others coiled to give chase—Guo Jing's voice stopped them.
"Let them go. Holding the city is enough. Beware an ambush."
The Mongol losses ran heavier than the defenders'—but against the mass of an army that size, they hardly signified.
All told, today had cost the Mongols something under ten thousand men.
March out to meet them in the open, and Xiangyang's defenders stood no chance at all.
If anything, Batur would have thanked them for opening the gates and offering a pitched battle face to face.
With no wall to lean on, Guo Jing's free hands or not, Batur would gladly have drowned him in bodies.
The withdrawal signal reached the Golden Wheel Dharma King's ears as well.
One fist drove Yin Zhiping back a step, and the Dharma King let out a long breath.
The pressure on him had been enormous. He'd come expecting his opponent to be Guo Jing—not this Yin Zhiping of the Quanzhen Sect, a name he had never once heard.
The gulf between Innate and Acquired, the Dharma King understood perfectly. Those five wine-sack rice-bag mediocrities were never going to hold Guo Jing.
So he had spent the whole fight braced for the moment Guo Jing's hands came free and the two of them administered a righteous two-on-one...
At which point his only option would have been to run for it. Rather hard on the dignity...
No need now. The commander had ordered withdrawal. He was obeying orders—not fleeing a beating.
"Yin Zhiping. This seat has marked you. When the chance comes I will seek you out again, and we will settle the account."
Nearly everyone leaves a fight tossing hard words over their shoulder; the Golden Wheel Dharma King was no exception.
"Any time! Safe travels now! Bye-bye, good sir!"
The fight with the Dharma King had been razor-work throughout—and even so, it was the most gloriously satisfying bout Yin Zhiping had ever fought. His whole chest felt scoured clean, his body light—like biting into iced watermelon at the peak of the dog days.
And so, entirely by accident, the tail of it came out a little unhinged...