Li Yun stood before the great boulder, perfectly still. Only the flame swords' fire swayed in the mountain wind.
Jiang Chen walked to his side and read the carving.
"Twelfth year of Yongtai. A hundred battles fought, undefeated with empty hands. Words left for later generations to admire!"
The signature: Wu.
It looked unfinished. Beside it ran one vertical stroke — clearly just the beginning of something.
Yongtai was the current emperor's reign title. This was now the fourteenth year of Yongtai — the year 3917 of the Dao calendar.
The carving was two years old. Exactly when the Upright Brush had been cleared for the first time.
Li Yun had slain beasts, spoken no boast, offered no summary, moved no further. He stopped before this stone that plainly held a story — and fell silent.
The mood shut even the talkative Huang Azhan up.
Li Yun stood quiet a while, then dismissed the flame swords. For the first time in front of Jiang Chen and the others, he slowly drew the sword at his waist.
It was the first time Jiang Chen had seen the blade leave its sheath.
Bright. Radiant. Those were the first words that came to mind, words that suited a sword not at all — and yet fit this one perfectly.
Li Yun held the sword in one hand and added a few strokes to the carving.
Wu Shan.
An ordinary name. But that must be the senior with the air of an undefeated master.
Li Yun's blade moved, and on a new line, he carved: "A later generation comes to pay respects."
Then another line, and the signature: "Li Yun, the dog who lost."
Stone dust pattered down, burying something in the dirt.
"Let's go." Li Yun turned. "We're going to the summit."
Past the boulder, they walked among jagged rocks and dead branches.
There may have been a path here once. Two years had returned it to nature.
The mountain held no road. But the Dao lay underfoot.
"Your sword broke earlier. When we finish clearing the Upright Brush on our own, we can trade for an artifact sword. Take it." Li Yun said casually.
"How can I?" Jiang Chen waved his hands. "I wasn't the only one fighting, and you were the main force..."
As a sword cultivator, Jiang Chen's hunger for a good blade went without saying. If it had been just him and Zhao Yan, he would not have felt awkward. But with Li Yun — and even Huang Azhan — their friendship had not reached that depth.
Li Yun patted the sword at his waist: "I have Peach Branch. I need no other blade."
So the sword was named Peach Branch. A fitting name for something so bright and radiant, Jiang Chen thought.
Li Yun went on: "A sword of this level runs about six hundred Dao merit. You can give each of us a hundred."
By that math, Jiang Chen still came out far ahead. And the others did not lose either — Dao merit was hard currency, and the artifacts a mission offered might not suit them.
"Fine." Jiang Chen stopped fussing.
The other two had no objections.
Li Yun turned to Huang Azhan: "From your arts, you follow the same path as Shen Nanqi. Except he's metal-element, and you're fire."
Huang Azhan scratched his head, smiling: "I worked it out myself. Not a real system."
"Fire arts are violent. You need to master the art itself. Take the Flame Pellet." Li Yun formed a Flame Pellet with a casual seal.
"When it explodes, how it explodes, what size, what speed. You need full command of all of it." The Flame Pellet darted back and forth under his control, swelling and shrinking, then shot forward and blasted a rock apart.
"Understood." Huang Azhan bowed properly in thanks.
Li Yun waved a hand, then addressed Zhao Yan: "You're clever. Earlier I said Du Hu had the highest combat talent of your group. I overlooked you. Your combat talent is no less — he relies on inborn instinct."
He tapped his head. "You rely on this."
Zhao Yan laughed it off: "Is that so? I wouldn't have known if you hadn't said."
Huang Azhan chewed on it a moment: "Wait, Senior Brother Li. So of the three of us, I'm the only one who needs coaching?"
Li Yun smiled and said nothing.
In that fierce fight just now, he had read every detail of every man's combat. It said enough about how far above them he stood.
Yet at the Three-City Trial, he had shown nothing matching his strength. Strange.
A writing brush: the shaft straight and tall, the tip round and full, the point sharp as a needle.
Turn it upside down, and you had the shape of the Upright Brush Peak.
Past the mountainside, a stretch further up, lay the brush tip — the widest cross-section of the whole peak.
And here was the beasts' headquarters.
The party could hear the howls from far off. As they drew near, beasts that could not restrain themselves burst out.
It was a signal. Like a hornet's nest erupting, beasts of every strange shape swarmed out.
Wind Centipedes. Rock Serpents. Tiger-jackals. Mountain spiders...
In the middle of it all, Li Yun still had leisure to count roughly: "Not bad. Under a hundred. Nowhere near a real tide."
He stepped forward. Peach Branch left its sheath!
Radiant sword-light. Vast sword-qi.
He pressed into the beast tide wrapped in a gorgeous crimson.
Like spring arriving. Peach blossoms opening.
The peach blossoms were the color of blood. What bloomed was the life-soul.
Li Yun swept through the tide like a red flood.
Jiang Chen and the others had no chance to act at all. They stared, stunned.
The red flood receded. Every howl, every shriek went still.
Only Li Yun's lean figure stood.
One man. One sword. A ground of beast corpses.
A picture to hang in a gallery.
"Se-Senior Brother Li." Huang Azhan was too shocked even to flatter: "You're this strong — why bring us along?"
Peach Branch in hand, Li Yun turned toward the mountainside. Among the corpses he suddenly let out a long, ringing cry!
It shook the cliffs. It carried across the far peaks.
Like years of knots dissolving at once. Joy unbounded!
The cry done, he sheathed his sword and said: "The man who left those words on the stone loved showing off before crowds, loved boasting of his feats. I brought you here to satisfy him — to let a later generation of students come admire him."
Jiang Chen hesitated: "That Senior Brother Wu Shan... was he a student of our Maple City Academy too?"
"He was in the same cohort as Senior Brother Zhu, more or less. But his strength was nowhere near. His skill back then was far beneath mine today." Li Yun shook his head. The look on his face — hard to say whether it held more remembrance or more grief.
"I told you before, didn't I? My teammates all died."
Li Yun paused. "They died under his lead."
He turned toward the peak of the Upright Brush — or maybe just to face away from them.
His voice rang across the mountain: "He was weak. Utterly weak. But when the beast tide broke through the line all at once, he stood in front of it. Said people of the Maple City Academy couldn't let the folk of Three Mountain City look down on them."
"They all stood in front of the tide. I ran."
Jiang Chen and the others looked at his back — a back that looked terribly alone in the mountain wind. In an instant they understood the signature he had carved: Li Yun, the dog who lost.
Those words had been carved in his heart for two years. Seven hundred days and nights.
And only now — carving them into the rock for real, slaughtering every beast on the Upright Brush — could he finally make peace with himself.