"And how do you know that?" I asked, somewhat suspicious. Huang Hong Lin shrugged, and then raised her smartphone.
"Someone issued a challenge, and these three responded to it online."
…were they idiots? Who the hell announced where they would show up online? Also, why would summoners and cultivators be posting about their battles online? I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the sheer absurdity of this.
"You laugh, but it's really what happened." Huang Hong Lin sulked, refusing to give in. She shoved the smartphone toward me and I was forced to see the chatroom in which the summon-type cultivators had posted in. "Besides, even if it's a hoax or fake accounts or trolls, we have nothing to lose by going to check it out."
"That's fair," I conceded. It wasn't as if we had any other clues, so we might as well investigate these rumors. If they turned out to be real, then all the better. But if they turned out to be false, then we only wasted a night that we would have spent chasing other false leads anyway.
Mu Rong Shu looked a little grumpy, mostly because she failed to find the leads. Or perhaps she did find the information about the gathering, but dismissed it as false. Not that I blamed her. I was actually inclined toward her opinion.
But she agreed with me in that we might as well check it out.
"All right. Ready your preparations. We move out at eight."
Rising to my feet, I took Mu Rong Shu's hand. Huang Hong Lin nodded in agreement, a smile spreading across her lips.
"You bet I will prepare everything I can."
Right. She had a lot of money, which meant she could buy a lot of charms and talismans, in addition to her already impressive summoning abilities. Yay, I guess?
That night, the three of us showed up in the square. We weren't bold enough to jump straight into the center of the square and show ourselves to the whole world. Instead, we kept our distance and watched the square from afar.
"Whoa…the chatroom turned out to be authentic after all."
I couldn't help but shake my head in disbelief. There was at least one summoner here, his potent qi saturating the entire atmosphere. At my words, Huang Hong Lin smirked.
"See? I told you so."
"Where are the others, though?" Mu Rong Shu asked.
"Others?" Huang Hong Lin repeated incredulously. "There's practically an army over there."
Perhaps my observation earlier might sound misleading because I said there was at least one summoner here. I still stood by that, but only because the rest of the people there weren't summoners. They were regular cultivators, or at least cultivators who practiced either elemental arts or body tempering techniques.
And like Huang Hong Lin said, there was an army of them. I counted at least fifty. We were completely outnumbered.
"Wang Ni Tian," I muttered, recognizing the most powerful cultivator among them. "The Imperial Family…and seems like he brought along his subordinates."
"This is going to be troublesome," Mu Rong Shu muttered. I grinned.
"But when has that ever stopped us?"
"True." My wife giggled and nodded. Huang Hong Lin stared at us as if we were crazy, but both of us ignored her.
"Do you two seriously think the three of us can take on an entire army of cultivators? Even taking into account our spirits, there's still only six of us in total. And we don't know what kind of spirit Wang Ni Tian can summon."
"We'll find out," I assured her. "And don't worry. It won't just be us."
As soon as the words left my mouth, a newcomer showed up. Someone who was very familiar to me. I smiled and cocked my head to the side.
"Liang Cai Gui."
The summoner in question hadn't spotted us, but he was already striding into the square boldly, with Yue Fei accompanying him. The army of cultivators tensed when they saw him, spreading out to form a defensive shield in front of their young master.
"Oh? So you're going to let your lackeys do all the fighting for you?" he asked in disdain, sneering at Wang Ni Tian.
The seventh young master of the imperial family remained silent, not deigning to rise to Liang Cai Gui's provocation.
"So have we all gathered?" A new voice spoke up, a sultry tone that sent shivers throughout my spine. Everyone glanced upward and spotted a beautiful lady seated on top of a statue in the front of the city square, her head resting on her knees. Like Liang Cai Gui, she was also accompanied by her summoned spirit, a woman who was incredibly enough, more beautiful than her.
At the same time, she felt mysterious and dreadful, with nine tails unfurling behind her, each of them barely containing the immense power locked within them.
Hu Li Jing was here as well. And none of us even noticed her presence. The summoner of Su Da Ji was strong. Very strong.
She was also accompanied by eight other beautiful girls, all of whom elegantly descended on various portions of the titanic statue. Each was clad in a silk, embroidered dress that emphasized their loveliness.
"So is that all of us?" Liang Cai Gui asked, glancing around and looking faintly disappointed. "I was hoping there would be more."
"Oh, there are," Hu Li Jing assured him with a smile. "There are a few…rats hiding around the corners of the city square, not having the courage to show themselves and join in. I supposed they think themselves the hunters, hoping for us to exhaust ourselves before they show up to attack us."
Damn. So she noticed us. On the other hand, it seemed that small groups such as ours existed in numbers way more than I imagined. Glancing around, I noted a few summoners and their allies scattered around the edges of the city square. While Hu Li Jing was incorrect regarding our motivations specifically – my group was simply here to watch the fight and gather data, and we had no intention of intervening or attacking after all parties were exhausted from fighting each other – I had no doubt that many of the other groups harbored such thoughts.
I didn't blame them. I probably would have come up with a similar strategy. Strike while the iron was hot and all that.
"It's useless," Wang Ni Tian declared, shooting down such hopes. "No matter how many of them there are, the vast gap between our strengths means that they have no way of defeating me."
"Only because you have the imperial family backing you, correct?" Hu Li Jing giggled. "I wonder how confident and strong you will be without those bodyguards protecting you."
"Even without the guards my parents sent to protect me, none of you together are a match for me," Wang Ni Tian replied stonily. Closing his eyes, he then raised his hand and summoned his chosen spirit.
"Ugh?!"
I winced when I felt the sudden invisible shockwave ripple across the entire area. The spirit that Wang Ni Tian summoned was incredible, his sheer presence alone intimidating everyone in the vicinity and suppressing us. Potent tsunamis of qi continued to weigh down upon individual cultivators, the weight so tremendous that even the concrete began to crack and crumble from the raw amount of esoteric energies.
A single person sat inside a customized chariot, his head half-concealed beneath a classical Guan (a type of Chinese headdress that sometimes served as a crown). Clad in golden robes, a dragon had been imprinted into both front and back, symbolizing his majesty. A grave, solemn expression and an overwhelming force of personality, the figure couldn't be anything less than an emperor.
"The Qin Emperor," I whispered, recognizing him. Both Mu Rong Shu and Huang Hong Ling glanced at me in horror.
"What? He actually summoned the Qin Emperor?!"
"Yeah. As befitting of someone from the imperial family." I couldn't help but shake my head in disbelief. This wasn't good. Just being in the presence of someone so…majestic, I already felt intimidated. I quashed the fear inside me and steeled my resolve, hardening my mental strength to combat the passive psychic assault that had reverberated throughout the square.
Not everyone could endure it. I noticed that several…no, many cultivators had passed out just from the Qin Emperor's sheer presence.
"Stand down, all of you," Wang Ni Tian commanded. The fifty or so subordinates who followed him obeyed immediately, retreating behind the carriage. The Qin Emperor looked upon them with disdain.
"Have the warriors of this era fallen so low?" he asked.
If they were offended by his statement, none of the imperial family guards showed it. They remained as stoic as ever, alert for any threat to their seventh young master. As expected of professional bodyguards.
However, in the midst of such intimidation, there were a few cultivators who were completely unaffected.
"Why don't you come test yourself the strength of warriors from this era?" Liang Cai Gui asked scornfully. "Yue Fei!"
The noble heroic spirit surged forward, thrusting his spear forward. The Qin Emperor stared at him impassively, as if bemused by the audacity of his assailant.
However, he wasn't arrogant enough to think he would be able to escape unscathed if he did nothing. Slamming his hand against the armrest built into his chariot, he summoned spirits of his own. All around the chariot, spirit soldiers emerged from the ground and materialized, first starting out as wisps of qi before expanding and reforming into humanoid figures. Their skin, armor and weapons hardened, taking a brown texture.
Terracotta soldiers. The Qin Emperor had just summoned an army of terracotta soldiers numbering in the hundreds. Each of them was armed with a spear, sword, shield or bow, their clay bodies protected by thick armor. As one, they silently pointed their weapons at Yue Fei.
The noble spirit did not hesitate, plunging right into the midst of the unspeaking terracotta soldiers. With impeccable discipline, they formed a phalanx, bringing their shields up to turn themselves into a living wall.
Initially, Yue Fei's spear struck their clustered shields without much effect, the smooth surfaces turning his deadly weapon aside.
However, this was the legendary hero Yue Fei. Mere terracotta soldiers couldn't stop his advance. With the next swing of his spear, Yue Fei obliterated the shields and sent the soldiers flying back, many of them broken into pieces.
Undaunted, the other terracotta soldiers reformed their ranks and continued to defend their emperor from the assailant. While a few dozen locked their shields to form an impassable barrier between Yue Fei and their lord, a greater number had flanked the aggressor, catching him in a pincer maneuver. The majority of them using spears, they closed the net around him, trying to impale him with countless long weapons.
Yue Fei realized this, and he quickly switched tactics. Skidding to a stop, he ignored the shield bearers for now, spinning his spear about to parry and deflect the enemies' weapons. Making use of his incredible speed, his body turned into a blur and he counterattacked skillfully, his signature spear lancing into the clumsier and slower terracotta soldiers and wrecking them. Sweeping his spear about, he knocked several more off their feet, scattering them into shrapnel.
The surviving terracotta soldiers stoically bore the brunt of the broken shards of their comrades. Unlike mortal human soldiers, these warriors knew no fear. Their morale would not break and they would not flee. As long as their emperor ordered it, they would fight until the very last man.
And even though Yue Fei had already obliterated dozens of terracotta soldiers in under a minute, there still hundreds more to replace the casualties. Within moments, Yue Fei disappeared under a brown tide of terracotta soldiers, the horde simply using their weight of overwhelming numbers to crush him.
For a few seconds, it appeared that the Qin Emperor had prevailed.
Then something stirred in the midst of the terracotta soldiers…before a titanic explosion engulfed those closest to the center and blowing them apart.
Emerging from the epicenter of the explosion, Yue Fei stood strong, wielding his spear and bellowing a challenge to the reeling terracotta soldiers.