Rain fell like a curtain, obscuring the world for miles around. It soaked into the road, turning it into a river of mud that sucked at the horseshoes and the boots of the five county magistrates. It soaked into their straw hats, and rivulets ran out of their mold infested straw cloaks. Only burning them could remove the forest of mold, insects, and other parasites that infested them. Their leader, Dong Quan, was mounted, carrying a fine saber and an official seal at his waist. The others walked alongside a horse-pulled cart which carried a cage, a wooden roof and a wooden floor surrounded by iron bars. Retrieved items were placed alongside it- jade hairpins and a golden necklace wrapped in an oilcloth, as well as a crate with a fine silk robe and other miscellaneous things.
There was a criminal inside the cage, a dark shape hunched over themselves, their hands bound in a wooden stockade. They were also the driest person present. The magistrates had to live with insects in their cloak and clothes that weighed a ton from all the water. The cart had to be pushed with cold and shivering limbs like a plow as the criminal inside grinned maliciously at the two pushers heaving in the mud. The other two had long dagger-axes on their shoulders, each walking abreast of the cart and flicking glances into the dark wood that surrounded them.
This was not a friendly forest, the kind that surrounded the manses of gentlemen or cultivated within cities. This was an old, old forest, the kind that peasants feared to tread in and made sure to pray to all the deities of earth and sky before each brief foray, the sort whispered to harbor bandits, ghosts, and demons.
"I say we chop the criminal's head off here," Chao Quan hissed as he walked, the youngest of the five. "She's headed for the mines anyway, so we'd be doing her a favour."
"Doubt it," his fellow, Wang Yentai said. "She's rich- either some daughter of a nob or a servant that scarpered with the jewels. Her family'll be wanting her back, I betcha."
"Oh, that's more reason then. They're sadistic. Mines'll be a mercy." He lent over and rapped a fist on the bars. "Hear that? You say the word, and I'll have your head off right quick. Painless-like."
The only response was a gimlet stare through a curtain of matted hair. He shrugged and turned away. "I hate it," Chao Quan complained. "This rain, that is. I can't see anything. There could be anyone hiding in those woods."
"Demons," Wang Yentai leered. "There's a man-eating tiger living in the mountains. She can turn into a beautiful woman, and seduces good villagers and leads them off to the mountains to eat their livers. Perhaps she's stalking us like cattle. Eh?"
Chao Quan stared at Yentai. "Fuck off," he eventually said to the cackling of all of the magistrates excepting Dong Quan, who played the noble to the hilt and stared dead ahead, scanning the treeline.
"Wickle Chao Quan scared of tigers," Tao Qisan chuckled as he pushed the cart.
"Wickle Chao Quan wets his bed when he sees a cat," Mu Lubai added besides Tao Qisan. Chao Quan's cheeks burned, and he was glad when Dong Quan tersely ordered his subordinates to shut up. But the next words out of Dong Quan's mouth was less welcome.
"I hear something. Rustling in the woods," he said sharply. "Three or more, one is a master. On your guard."
"Sir?" Wang Yentai was all business now, pointing his dagger-axe at the treeline, which had crept up close to the road as they traveled. Chao Quan hadn't noticed then, but he did now. "Are you certain?"
"As certain as the rain comes," Dong Quan drew his thin Luoyang forged saber. "Who goes-"
An arrow flashed in the rain, embedding itself in the flank of Dong Quan's horse. It reared and shrieked as Dong Quan jumped eight meters into the sky like a fairy, eyes searching for the archer.
"The archer is there!" He cried. "Stay your course! Defend the prisoner! I will resolve this matter-" For the second time today, Dong Quan was cut off, this time by an indistinct blur of motion slamming him out of the sky like a falcon does to a songbird. Chao Quan lost them as they hit the dirt and faded into the rain. He was distracted by two men bursting out of the woods waving great, ugly cleavers of sabers, shouting and screaming like demons at the four magistrates.
Chao Quan and Wang Yentai readied their polearms, jabbing them with no real art at the two bandits as Tao Qisan and Mu Lubai snatched up their iron maces and split into two the fend off the two bandits. Yet they fought like tigers, and the one Chao Quan faced grabbed his dagger-axe in an iron grip and with a shout and two strikes first splintered the haft and then lopped off Chao Quan's fingers with a victorious ha!
My fingers, the thought ran through Chao Quan's head as he stared numbly at his missing digits. My fucking fingers. How can I lift a sword anymore?
Mu Lubai screamed and swung his mace at the bandit, who dodged the first blow with a sneer, cut off the second by throwing the remains of the dagger axe in his face and cut him down in a single strike. A raw scream tore out of Chao Quan's throat as he flung himself at the bandit, clawing and biting at him as they fell into the mud. It stuck to their clothes, to their skin, as Chao Quan desperately clawed upwards to the bandit's throat. "You beast!" the bandit growled as he fended Chao Quan off, punching and kneeing him until a final blow left him reeling in the mud, staring at the tangle of legs shuffling across the cart.
Who was winning? Chao Quan couldn't tell. But from the urgency of the bandit's voice as he yelled, "brother!" he would bet that Wang Wentai and Tao Qisan were. They were old hands as magistrates, quelling multiple rebellions. A body- a bandit- was flung over the cart, landing with a sickening crack. Good, a sadistic part of his mind thought.
He heard something crack and splinter. And another, and then another, the sound of wood smashing against wood like a drumbeat until the cage roof split open and the convict stood, all six and change feet, grinning like an ogre.
In one move, she smashed her cuffs into the head of Tao Qisan and he fell like a puppet without strings. In the next, she leapt over Wang Wentai's swing of his dagger-axe, landing with grace that didn't seem proper for one six feet tall and with muscles as thick as tree trunks. Tao Qisan turned to Wang Wentai, going to his insensate body to protect it, but was cut down in turn by the second bandit.
Dong Quan! Chao Quan pushed himself off the mud and ran. Dong Quan must have survived, he had to. He was a master of Liu Flower Swordplay, who could defeat ten men without a sweat. No bandit could defeat him, he was sure of it!
Dong Quan was kneeling on the ground, the light in his eyes already dead, the shape that had smashed him out of the sky holding a bloody spear through his chest. A young, scraggly man wearing a peasant's robe stared at Chao Quan before he ripped the spear out from Dong Quan's chest in a spray of blood.
Chao Quan shook like a leaf. "Y-you bastard," he spat out. "Do you know what you've done? Jingcheng Commandery will hear about this! The inspector will-"
Chao Quan died this way.
The scraggly man dashed forward in a spray of mud, so fast that Chao Quan's eyes could not track. His fingers, curled into claws, dug into Chao Quan's skull, and as he passed Chao Quan by his speed alone snapped Chao Quan's neck.
"Brother Xiaopeng!" came a cry. "How was the magistrate?" One of the bandits stepped through the rain, holding a broken arm. "I got a run of bad luck. Landed poorly and snapped my arm."
Xiaopeng grunted, scratching the stubble that covered his chin. "He was good. Not good enough, though. What's the loot?"
"Ah, gold, some jade hairpins, a nice silk robe and this fine fellow!" A shadow in the rain squelched forward, a woman that stood head and shoulders over the bandit. "She's a good person! Came to my rescue and everything." Xiaopeng stared gormlessly at her, before shaking it off.
"My name is Li Xiaopeng, formerly a Shaolin monk, then a mercenary, and now a bandit." he said, bowing to the rescuer of his brothers. "Who might sister be?"
She raised her hands, still in stockades, in an approximation of the bow. "Imperial Princess Yongming," she declared, bold as brass. "My teacher was…"
[ ]- General Chui Hanlong. Princess Yongming learned under the Barbarian Quelling General, slipping away from her studies to receive instruction in Hanlong's personal style, Rain Dragon Fist, as well as the arts of tactics, strategy, and command.
[ ]- Priest Shui Jing. Princess Yongming took well to her studies, and eventually the head priest of the Imperial Palace personally tutored Yongming, teaching her Chenwu Sword Dance, as well as knowledge of rites and the names and natures of gods and demons.
[ ]- Master Bu Tong. Princess Yongming never learned from the palace, instead sneaking to Master Bu Tong's forge. From the days watching and then working at the forge, she learned Iron-Forged Hero and the arts of craftsmanship, barter, and metallurgy.
Style Outlines
Rain Dragon Fist: Consider the dragon. It has the horns of a deer, a body of a snake, the scales of a fish and the limbs of a lizard. So, too, is General Hanlong's Rain Dragon Fist. There is no famed style that he did not dissect, no style to humble for him to refuse examination. It is a young style yet, and there are many of this style that travel the Jianghu to challenge older styles to prove the Rain Dragon Fist's superiority.
Rain Dragon Fist is an external martial art that places more emphasis on the proper steps, counters, and stances than internal energy. It is a highly aggressive style that overwhelms the opponent with a barrage of constantly shifting strikes, disguising one's intentions with ten thousand ever-changing blows. Among it's taught weapons are the spear, the halberd, the saber and sword.
Chenwu Sword Dance: Sword dancing is a method of prayer as old as the sun. Each dynasty had their own schools, rigid and formal and scholastic, that spoke with the authority of the emperor. A sword dance could compel the wind to blow or calm, and masters could banish storms or drought, or draw a spirit out of hiding and ward places from ill intent.
Chenwu Sword Dance is only a martial art by definition. In a fight, it is far too rigid, far too open to read, and its strikes are far too weak to commit to killing blows. As for internal cultivation, it is good for banishing old age and illness, nothing more. Yet, a dance for wind and storm on the battlefield can command a wind to whip and distract opponents, for fire to leap from candles and become a killing flame.
Iron-Forged Hero: A man works at the forge. His flesh and bones are just meat. But he works more and more, and as the days wear on his flesh becomes hard as iron and his bones bronze. He works and works until he finds that he can grasp hot metal without flinching and stand for forty nine days straight without food or drink.
Iron-Forged Hero is a primarily internal martial art that recalls the famed Iron Body Skill of the Shaolin Temples. The tactics of it's practitioners are entirely simple, direct blows with massive weapons like hammers or with their bare fists, rarely dodging blows in favor of gritting their teeth through the pain (if they feel any) and returning them tenfold. Heat and cold no longer matter to them, and some say that iron whispers their secrets to masters of Iron-Forged Hero so they know where armor is weak or where a sword is rusted.
