The courtyard fell silent after the saber snapped. Commander Wei regarded the snapped steel in his hand as though it belonged to someone else. His pride, once a bannering flag, lay in pieces in the aftermath of the snap from Li Xian's palm.
He tried to roar, to reclaim the fight. But all that emerged was a thin and hollow noise. Blood sprinkled his lips where the saber had cut him. His armor rattled on his shoulders, as if he was now past fighting age. The riders behind him gazed with uncomfortable eyes; their commander's pride was unraveling into something small and fragile.
Li Xian walked as on a stage, each step deliberate. The flagstones in the courtyard lay tilted toward him. His wounds still smoldered weakly; his clothes clung in tatters. But his mass depressed, making men stoop, and breathe in short gasps. He stopped two paces from the bloodied commander and regarded him as though with an amused panther.
You came to kill a cripple," Li Xian said to him, his words cutting like a lightning-tempered sword. "You came to instill fear into us. And now you are here before me; how visionary.".
Wei locked his fist around the hilt of the saber, but his knuckles paled with shock. "You—" he began, and then his throat closed. He used to be a man who knew for sure, a victor on so many fields with steel and cunning. Here, certainty had been taken from him. He could not locate the presence before him: not a cultivator, nor a survivor. It was something that defied heaven and consumed arrogance.
Li Xian's smile was grim and unattractive. He bent and picked up the splintered saber from the bloody earth as if it were a lost toy. He rotated it, flipped the saw-edged blade in his calloused hands. Wei's eyes widened at the nonchalance of the gesture, as if his fate had become a trinket.
"Show your bravery," Li Xian breathed. "Show why your sect sends dogs to nip at my heels."
Wei charged, desperate final affirmation of pride. The motion was reflexive, muscle memory; he had to try. But Li Xian did not meet a charge with one of his own. He moved like the failure of a shadow folding inward: faster than response, hungrier than precision. With a speed like lightning, he traversed the distance, pinned Wei's wrist, and wrenched. The shriek that issued from Wei's throat was a gasp. Bone cracked under pressure, and his sword dropped from his hand.
The courtyard observed as the leader of the Blood Saber Sect knelt, breath escaping him, chest heaving from the shock of being undone. Li Xian's palm found Wei's face, fingers cool and steady against the commander's jaw. He leaned close enough that Wei felt the heat of his breath.
You thought you could teach me the art of dying," Li Xian breathed, the words aimed to fall like a stone. "You came to gauge Heaven's child and came up short. Hear this, then: go back to your sect and tell them what you have seen. Tell them what it's like to cross me.".
Wei's jaw tensed. Pride screamed for him to stand tall and die with honor, but the courtyard had witnessed too much that night—lightning breaking Heaven, a woman stepping into death for Li Xian—and honor had become brittle. Another feeling moved behind Wei's eyes: a raw, ragged understanding that he had been outplayed.
Li Xian straightened and spat on the ground between them, an act meant to crush what was left of Wei's dignity. Then, slow and deliberate, he sentenced him. There was no grand flourish, no dramatic finish. Li Xian's hand closed around Wei's throat like an iron band. The world narrowed to that grip, to the frantic heartbeat under his palm. Wei clawed at Li Xian's sleeve, eyes wide, a stunned, final plea bright as a flare.
Li Xian held him there, amused like a cat with a mouse. He toyed with the panic and regret swirling in Wei's gaze. He savored the man's fear like a spice. The riders behind Wei shuffled, a chorus of helplessness.
"You will leave a broken man," Li Xian swore, his voice gentle and conspiratorial, "and you will say my name not in rage, but in the knowledge of what happens to those who think they are greater than Heaven." He cinched his grip, a sentence delivered in one decisive motion.
Commander Wei fell. His knees gave way. The life that had boomed across war fields ended quietly, unobtrusively in the dust of Li Xian's courtyard.
Afterward, silence bloomed—not the shocked silence of surprise, but the heavy hush of a crowd that had witnessed the unthinkable and realized the rules had changed. A few of Wei's riders turned and fled, faces stripped of certainty. Others stayed, eyes fixed, fear lingering on their tongues.
Li Xian did not gloat. He wiped his hand on Wei's robe, as if cleaning away a stain. He stepped back, and the courtyard felt the shift: this was no simple defeat; it was a lesson in power and consequences. Su Yao watched from his side, jaw clenched, silver fire in her pupils. She had seen the blade, heard the crack of bone when Li Xian dislocated Wei's wrist, and watched the commander's dignity unravel. Her breast heaved with something wild and owning, a thought that was an oath: "He is mine."
Mei Ling, standing at the edge of the crowd, smiled like she was beholding a prize achieved. There was no sympathy in the delight in her eyes. She reveled in the ruthlessness as assurance: Li Xian would take what he wanted, and he would do so by destroying those in his way.
As the riders were driven out and the dead bodies were removed, Li Xian addressed the courtyard. His voice was flat and full, clinking like a bell.
"Let the Blood Saber Sect say what they want. Let them know that anyone who rides to our gates with knives will know how the sky itself can be disrespected. Tell them all: the world is changing."
No one protested. No one laughed. People bowed—some out of fear, some out of dawning comprehension. The courtyard had a new center of attention now, and that attention was most certainly Li Xian.