Chapter 11: Wind on the Cliff
Li Cangfeng chose high ground—the Knife-Edge Cliff, where wind learned to cut. Disciples gathered on ledges; gossip fluttered like prayer flags.
Li wore gold-threaded robes and hate like a pearl under his tongue. "You humiliated me," he said. "Kneel and hand over your token. Or fly without wings."
"You forged a lure that got our people killed," Qin Mo said.
Li's eyes flicked, then slid away. "Accidents happen to ants."
He launched. Wind wrapped his sword: Tempest Gold Slash—light arcing, edges squealing. Qin's world narrowed to geometry and patience. He slid. He lent his body to the cliff's wind, becoming less important than dust. The first ten strikes bit nothing.
Li screamed, and talismans awoke, coaxing invisible currents. The eleventh came from below. Qin stepped off the cliff.
Gasps. He did not fall. He walked the vertical air as if down a stair none else could see, placing feet on the wind's hardened tongues—Reed-Boat Slipstream taken to madness. Li pursued, blade biting at toes. Qin made no waste: three movements, three taps on Li's wrist, elbow, heel—tiny interruptions. The twelfth strike faltered.
Qin rose with the wind, a leaf refusing to land. He met Li's thirteenth—overhead splitter—with Soft Flow Palm. The strike spilled left, found stone, and carved rock.
Li snarled and revealed his trump: Wind-Stepping Shoes—artifacts that let a body cheat the world. He lunged, traction fierce, trajectory crooked, sword singing hunger. Qin's hands had no metal so he used bone.
He caught Li's blade by the flat with the back of his wrist—insane, heretical. The wrist bruised. He nudged. The sword's tip traced a crescent that kissed Li's own shoulder. Blood smiled.
Qin tapped the hilt. The blade spun and left Li's hand. Qin caught it by mere disinterest and broke the talisman with two fingers. The wind in the sword died. He tossed it back. "Try again when you mean it."
Murder boiled up Li's throat. Before it could pour out, a talisman hidden under his collar burned, and a translucent palm pressed his chest from afar, gentle as a parent and firm as judgment. It dragged him backward, off the cliff, up to safety. An elder's unseen hand.
Qin looked up into the air where the hand had been. "Hello," he said.
The hand was gone. The crowd was not. In their eyes, something that had not been there before: fear. Respect. A different future.