A tense moment stretched between the gang and the caravan as the wagon drivers fanned out their wagons before fleeing into the safety of the waiting carriages. The wagons wouldn't do much good as barricades but if any of the assembled cultivators unleashed powerful martial energy, putting the wagons in the way might block stray blasts of energy that missed their targets. With mortals in the carriages, anything that reduced the risk of them encountering the energies of a battle between cultivators was a good thing. In the wagons, several of the scholars peeked out of the windows, nervously watching for the confrontation about to unfold.
Wu Ling stood on the driver's bench of the wagon, his left hand clutching a paper talisman while his right hand tapped the roof of the wagon where he'd painted an intricate design the night before, supplying the last bit of energy required for a Giant Purple Spore Shroom to grow rapidly from the wood of the wagon's roof. "Are you certain we're worth the trouble Fenglun?" Wu Ling called, adding a seductive lilt to his voice. "The sects behind my sister and I aren't easy ones to offend," he purred.
"You've heard of me!" The mountain of a man called Fenglun responded. "Then you know that this Boss always gets what he wants! Right now, this Boss is tempted to use you to warm his own bed little girl," he bellowed, slamming his massive iron staff into the earth and unleashing a minor tremor.
"Br-Sister Ling," Su Xiang said, her sapphire eyes burning in fury at the crude way Fenglun spoke to her younger brother. "Leave the big one to me," she said boldly, hopping off the wagon and drawing her slender sword.
"All yours Sister Xiang," Wu Ling said with a smile that held substantially more confidence than he truly felt. "Yue," he called softly, summoning out the fluffy rabbit. "Help keep her safe while I clean up the trash."
"Trash is it?" Fenglun mocked loudly. "You hear that, men? The little girl thinks you're trash! Fetch her for me, but don't break her," he said before pausing for a moment. "Don't break her too badly. It's her fault if she struggles too much!" Fenglun roared with laughter, eliciting a dark round of matching laughter from the Brawlers behind them as they pulled long knives, wicked hatchets, and thick cudgels from their waistbands.
"Keep laughing," Wu Ling whispered. His left hand flashed out, silver bracelets glinting in the early morning sunlight as the talisman in his hand shredded itself before turning into a rapidly spinning whirlwind. Wu Ling's calligraphy skills were still catching up to the new demands of his cultivation method but four-stroke characters like 'Wind' were well within his grasp. Once summoned by the talisman, the wind rapidly shredded the Giant Purple Spore Shroom at his feet and carried its cloud of debilitating spores to the approaching bandits, scattering the noxious cloud across all eight Brawlers as well as Soldier Fenglun. Laughter turned instantly into surprised coughing and hacking as the men suddenly found their energy circulation becoming sluggish, their muscles weakening and their pace slowing.
"Bitch," one of the men shouted angrily. "How dare you poison us!"
"Tear her apart!" another man shouted, putting all of his energy into bridging the distance between them and Wu Ling.
"Strip her nude! Boss won't mind the show," another man howled, whipping his fellows into a frenzy at the idea of spoiling the pristine-looking fairy who had poisoned them with her noxious purple cloud of spores.
"Like hell," Wu Ling muttered, hopping off the wagon and using a small knife to make a long cut on the palm of his left hand. Lifting the bleeding hand to the side of the wagon he moved quickly along the line of black V shapes that he'd painted on every wagon and carriage last night as though the design was decorative trim. Each side of the wagon carried fifty of the deadly Blade Winged Bird designs and Wu Ling unleashed an entire side at once with a wave of his bleeding hand.
"Fly," he commanded, launching a flock of pitch-black birds toward not only the rushing Brawlers but the over a dozen mortals gathered behind them. While they posed little threat to most cultivators, Wu Ling didn't dismiss them as being unable to threaten the Scholars in the wagons and sought to decisively eliminate them before they could do anything to harm the women he and Su Xiang were here to protect.
Unlike the weak Blade Winged Birds he'd first used against Su Xiang in practice, these birds had been painted with superior pigments compounded last night by Alchemist Huang. Each one of them flew with the deadly force of a dagger hurled by an early-stage Brawler. Of the fifty dark birds swarming toward the bandits, almost twenty could be considered to have wasted their considerable might on the mortals at the back of the pack.
Each mortal struck by a black bird found a hole punched through their torso, a limb severed from their bodies, or their skulls cleaved clean through by the sharp-winged phantoms. The carnage as they died in explosions of blood and chunks of viscera or bone turned the stomachs of many of the Scholars watching from the wagons but Wu Ling's assault hadn't ended yet.
Thirty-two of the remaining birds had only eight targets, allowing four of the birds to strike at each of the men. Six of the eight Brawlers managed to destroy one of the attacking birds with a swing of their crude weapons, reducing the potentially deadly threat to a splatter of black paint. Ten of the birds missed their targets, unable to respond quickly enough to the rapid dodging and panicked swinging of the charging Brawlers, they struck the ground harmlessly turning into even more splatters of paint.
Sixteen of the phantom birds, however, managed to embed themselves in the bodies of the rushing men. Nearly half of the striking birds sank into torsos, stabbing deep enough to puncture lungs, pierce organs, and threaten vital veins and arteries. The remainder sank into meaty thighs or arms the men raised as hasty shields to protect their faces. One man could be considered fortunate to have been struck only once and to have taken the blow on the forearm of his offhand. Another was less lucky, taking blows to the chest, gut, and ultimately his neck, ending his life in a spray of dark red arterial blood.
Just as the seven surviving men thought their nightmare had come to an end, Wu Ling revealed his next terrifying surprise. From each hand, a talisman slowly burned. Like the character for 'Wind' the character for 'Fire' also required only four strokes. In a flash, Wu Ling held not two paper talismans displaying his calligraphy skills but two balls of roiling yellow-orange fire that would make Hou proud. Timing his throw carefully, Wu Ling's twin fireballs arrived just half a breath after the last of the Blade Winged Birds had struck, exploding in a fiery conflagration that not only seared and blistered the exposed flesh of the attacking Brawlers but lit their clothing on fire as well!
Four more of the attacking brawlers died in the twin blasts while the remaining three turned and ran, flinging themselves into the fast-moving stream to extinguish the flames that threatened to burn them alive. "It's not that easy," Wu Ling said, reaching into his pouch for a different four-stroke talisman. This time, the talisman seemed to melt away in his hands like an icicle tossed into the light of a hot sunny day. With a sweeping motion, the water around the men who had just escaped the torture of Wu Ling's flames swirled and churned violently.
The surging waves knocked them from their feet, dragging them beneath the water's surface and trapping them there. It tumbled them over rocks, slamming them into boulders with enough force to crack bones, driving the air from their lungs. Gasping for air and struggling to reach the surface, the panicked men frantically pushed against the streambed, trying to gulp just one breath of air to relieve the burning in their lungs. The water itself fought them, surging into their gasping mouths even when their heads bobbed above the surface of the water until all three had become still and lifeless, floating listlessly downstream.
In the wagons, Alchemist Huang, Laing Xuanji, and the other scholars stared in open-mouthed shock. While a few of the women with more delicate constitutions turned away from the carnage, the remainder couldn't keep their eyes from bouncing between the graceful young Aesthete in an elegant ice-blue dress and the carnage of the bandits strewn across the roadside and the nearby stream.
"Is this how an Artist fights?" Alchemist Huang murmured, overwhelmed by the sight that played out before her. From start to finish, it had taken Wu Ling less than thirty breaths of time to completely decimate Fenglun's gang, even the mortal bandits hadn't been spared! She knew that the pigments she'd helped to prepare last night contained a small amount of spiritual energy, beyond what normal artists would use outside of creating a masterpiece for wealthy cultivators who wanted art that lasted for centuries, but the recipes Wu Ling had provided were very different from the sorts of pigments that would preserve color against the ravages of time. Still, the pigments alone couldn't account for the merciless efficiency with which the young Aesthete had dispatched the bandits.
Silently, she promised herself that she would request additional rewards for their young protectors when they returned safely to the Amber Lilly Academy. She had set out to hire a pair of Brawlers to fight off rampaging Spirit Beasts during the eclipse but this kind of protection went far beyond the meager rewards the Academy had prepared for their guardians!
Exhausted after staying up all night to prepare so many empowered paintings and talismans on top of the energy required to unleash those techniques, Wu Ling slumped against the wagon, clutching at its wooden frame for support. "I've done what I can Sister Xiang," he whispered between ragged breaths. "The rest is up to you and Yue."