I scrambled to my feet, the concussive force of the blast leaving a high, piercing ring in my ears that whited out the sounds of the burning city. I stared in disbelief as the great stone arch of the Tianjin Bridge, the artery that connected Luoyang to the western capital, buckled and then disintegrated into the churning river below. A shower of stone and timber and bodies rained down into the dark water. In the distance, like hellish aftershocks, two more fireballs bloomed against the night sky as the Zhongqiao and Star-Gathering Bridges met a similar fate. The path to Chang'an was severed. The civilians, who had been a river of humanity fleeing for their lives, were now trapped on the bank, their faces illuminated by the fires of the city, their expressions frozen in the same dumbfounded horror that held me in its grip.

  My eyes found the severed arm again, lying just a few feet away, its small hand still clutching the child's wooden toy. My own spear lay beside me, its ash-wood shaft snapped cleanly in two. With a shaking hand, my fingers closed around the spearhead and the splintered wood of its shaft. I gripped the small toy, its painted eyes staring blankly at the sky, as hot tears, shameful and unbidden, began to stream involuntarily down my face.

  A sound behind me, the scrape of boots on stone, pulled me from my grief. From the direction of the city, a line of my own soldiers appeared, their forms silhouetted against the raging fires. Blood dripped from their hands and weapons. Their eyes, like hungry wolves, shimmered in the firelight. Luo Qinji was at their head, his burned face a grim mask. He took in the ruined bridge, and the expression that crossed his features was not one of horror, but of pure, profound tactical disappointment.

  He did not see the trapped civilians as people. He saw them as an obstacle. My men, my vanguard, saw them as spoils. They began to approach the huddled, terrified mass, their blades held ready. A woman’s scream was cut short. An old man who tried to plead with them was shoved to the ground and run through. Men, women, and children alike were cut down where they stood. A wave of humanity, driven by a terror of our steel that was greater than their fear of the water, surged toward the riverbank. They threw themselves into the freezing, dark current of the Luo. In the ghostly orange glow of the burning city, the river began to run red.

  Chen Huarong’s final words echoed in my mind, a devastating judgment that cut deeper than any blade. You are the raiders now. You are the looters… You have become the very scourge you were meant to defend the Great Tang against.

  Taking a deep, shuddering breath, I felt the white-hot rage that had driven me for months, the searing need for vengeance against the man who killed my father, simply lift from my shoulders. It did not leave me with peace, only a vast, hollow emptiness. I turned my head to the turbulent, smoke-filled sky and let out a long, broken laugh. It was a sound devoid of mirth, the laugh of a madman who has finally understood the punchline to a terrible, cosmic joke.

  With a flick of my wrist, the bloody tip of my broken spear drew a deep, straight line in the mud and gore at the river’s edge. My voice, when it came, was not a commander’s roar, but the flat, dead pronouncement of a man with nothing left to lose.

  “I will kill any soldier who dares cross this line.”

  I was ignored. Three of my own men, their eyes alight with the thrill of the sack, charged past me, chasing a screaming mother and her two small children. The mother was dressed well and golden trinkets hung from her appendages. True to my word, I moved. I was a ghost of vengeance, but my target had changed. A single, precise cut across the throat of the first soldier sent him gurgling into the mud. The second man spun to face me, his dao rising to block the high swing he anticipated. I feinted, then flicked the butt of my spear shaft against the bottom of his blade, driving his own weapon upward and exposing his side. I stabbed him deep in the armpit, in the gap his lamellar pauldrons did not cover. He collapsed with a choked cry of surprise and pain. The third soldier, his bloodlust extinguished by the sight of his comrades falling, backed away, his eyes wide with a fear that was suddenly directed at me. The advancing line of my celebrating, looting army came to an uncertain halt.

  A sharp whistle cut through the air. Luo Qinji strode forward, and by his side, the four masters An Lushan had hired materialized from the chaos: the Heavenly Sword Daoist Qingxuan, the Mountain-Shattering Palm Abbot Huiyuan, Thousand Shadow Yan Fei, and the Jade Flute Lady Yin. They were the Jiedushi’s wolves, here to enforce his will.

  “BoFeng,” Luo said, his voice hard, the familiar warmth gone. “Is this really what you want to do? The men have fought and bled for this city. They have earned their right to plunder. You should not stop them.”

  The disappointment was a cold stone in my gut. I looked past him, my eyes finding the scarred, familiar face of Batu, the Khitan warrior who had shared his pork and his fire with me so many times. I appealed not to the commander, but to the brother.

  “Look at us, Batu,” I said, my voice cracking. “Look at what we’ve become. We are the raiders now. We are the wolves at the door.”

  I saw him flinch. His gaze swept from the slaughtered civilians to the fear in the eyes of the living, and for a moment, the hardened warrior was moved. He allowed himself to fall back a pace, his hand loosening on his weapon. I laughed again, a wild and desperate sound, and pointed my broken spear at the line of my own army.

  “If you must kill these innocents,” I declared, my voice ringing with a conviction I had not felt since the battle began, “then you will have to do it over my dead body!”

  A part of me, the part that was broken and hollowed out, hoped that they would. Perhaps my death, here, in defense of these people, might wash away a small part of the crushing weight of my failure.

  I stepped forward, raising my broken spear in the formal salute of a martial challenge. My voice cut through the chaos, clear and commanding despite the ruin around us.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "I, Cui BoFeng, challenge any who would cross this line to single combat. Let the jianghu witness—if you would slaughter these innocents, you must first go through me by the old laws."

  Luo sighed but before he could respond, the massive form of Abbot Huiyuan stepped forward. The bald monk's expression was serene, almost sad, as he returned my salute with a deep bow.

  "The young general honors the old ways," he rumbled, his voice like stones rolling down a mountainside. "This humble monk accepts."

  The other masters drew back, forming a loose circle. Even Luo, his face twisted with impatience, was bound by the tradition. A formal challenge, once accepted, was sacred. The civilians behind me would be safe—at least until one of us fell.

  The Abbot settled into his stance, palms open, feet rooted to the earth like ancient trees. He did not advance. He simply waited, his breath slow and measured, his qi a palpable pressure in the air between us.

  I feinted left, a sharp jab toward his shoulder that I converted into a sweeping strike at his knee. He didn't flinch. His palm swept down in a lazy arc, deflecting the blow with the barest expenditure of energy. I tried again, high, low, a spinning flourish meant to disguise my true target. Each time, he read me perfectly, his movements economical.

  And each time, he took a single step forward.

  I realized too late what he was doing. He wasn't trying to hit me. He was using his vastly deeper qi reserves to maintain constant pressure, forcing me to expend energy on attacks that found only air while he slowly, inexorably closed the distance. At close range, my spear's reach meant nothing. At close range, those mountain-shattering palms would end me.

  I gave ground. A step back. Another. Until ten exchanges later the broken stones of the ruined bridge pressed against my heels.

  Nowhere left to retreat.

  The hollow emptiness that had replaced my rage filled with something else, a cold, crystalline clarity. If I was going to die here, I would not die defending. I would take this monk with me.

  I reversed my grip on the broken spear and lunged directly at his throat, leaving my entire left side open to his counter. A killing blow for a killing blow. Mutual destruction.

  The Abbot's eyes widened. His palm was already in motion, a strike that would have caved in my ribs, but he pulled it short, twisting aside at the last moment. My spearhead drew a thin line of blood across his cheek.

  We froze, locked in a deadly equilibrium. His palm hovered an inch from my heart. My spear kissed his jugular. Neither of us breathed.

  "You would die for these strangers?" he asked quietly.

  "I would die for what's right," I replied.

  A flicker of something, respect, crossed his weathered face. "Then you are a better man than—"

  A sharp, burning pain exploded in my lower back, just above my hip. I gasped, my grip faltering. The Abbot's eyes went wide with shock, not at me, but at something behind me.

  I reached back with a trembling hand and found it. A thin needle, no longer than my finger, buried deep in the meridian point at my core.

  Lady Yin stood at the edge of the circle, her jade flute missing from her hands, her beautiful face hidden in shame. Beside her, Luo Qinji watched with grim satisfaction as he lowered her flute.

  "Dishonorable," the Abbot spat, withdrawing his palm and stepping back. His face was a thundercloud of disgust. "I will have no part in this." He turned and strode a few paces away, his saffron robes billowing behind him.

  The Heavenly Sword Qingxuan sheathed his blade with a sharp click.

  None of them would finish me. Honor, even among hired killers, had its limits.

  I tried to rise, to bring my broken spear to bear, but as I took a breath to channel my qi, a pain so excruciating it felt like liquid fire flooded my veins. The poison. I doubled over, gasping, and collapsed to my knees.

  Through the haze of agony, I looked past Luo, past the line of my former soldiers, to the civilians huddled at the water's edge. The ones who couldn't run. The ones I had failed to save.

  A young woman in a simple green dress, struggling to her feet at the very edge of the crowd. She wasn't running. She wasn't screaming. She was just... rising, slowly, as if the weight of the world pressed down on her shoulders. Her face was turned toward the ruined bridge, toward the place where Chen Huarong had stood.

  My heart clenched. My final thought, I realized, would be guilt. Guilt for what would happen to her. To all of them. When I was gone.

  I'm sorry, I thought. I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough.

  I thought I heard a flicker of genuine regret in Luo's voice. "Sorry it has to end this way, BoFeng. You were a great general… and a good friend."

  I looked up into the eyes of the man who was once my brother, and through the agony, through the betrayal, I smiled through gritted teeth. His dao came down.

  I saw a flash of light as his blade descended, a silver arc against the backdrop of the burning city. Then, with a high, ringing shriek, his dao flew from his hands in two pieces. I looked up. Standing over me, her own blade still humming from the impact, was a maiden who looked as if she had descended from the heavens themselves. Her sword was made of a dark, matte steel that seemed to drink the light, a weapon I had only ever seen in the hands of the Masked Specter.

  But now it was wielded by the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She had delicate features, a high nose, and was thinner than the soft, rounded beauties so prized by the wealthy in the capital. Her simple green dress billowed in the wind, and my breath caught as I realized it was the same girl I had seen by the bridge, the one for whom I was prepared to die.

  Wordlessly, released from their unspoken code of single combat, all four masters attacked to cover Luo’s retreat. The Jade Flute fired another needle, but the girl casually deflected it with a flick of her dark blade. The abbot struck at her with a heavy, open palm.

  “Careful!” I warned, desperately trying to muster some qi of my own, but the poison left me paralyzed with pain.

  She met his palm strike with her own. There was a clap of thunder as their qi collided, a concussive boom that sent dust and debris swirling around them. They both took a single, stumbling pace backward.

  “Tiān Hé Dàfǎ!” the abbot exclaimed, his calm demeanor shattered by disbelief. “Inconceivable!”

  Then the Heavenly Sword’s flash of lightning arrived. His blade clashed with the dark steel of hers and sparks flew, a shower of brilliant light, but neither weapon broke nor chipped. Several more clashes occurred in a fraction of a second, the sound a continuous, high-pitched ringing. Seeing his opening, Thousand Shadow Yan Fei slipped toward her flank, knocking me aside with a contemptuous shove as he passed.

  “Look out behind you!” I yelled as I fell, my vision starting to grey out at the edges. She heard me and stole a glance back towards the approaching assassin.

  The girl’s dress billowed as her Qi flared in a sudden, brilliant aura. A single, horizontal swing of her sword drove all four masters and Luo back a step, a wave of pure force clearing the space around her through a blade they couldn't meet. She paused and looked down into my eyes. I felt her lift me, as if I weighed nothing, and the world dissolved as we flew off into the heavens just as I finally lost consciousness.