"Military blade work?"
Wei froze.
For a fraction of a second, his feet stopped moving. The cavalry saber trembled faintly in his hands, suspended mid-air as if uncertain where it should fall.
He hesitated.
And hesitation, in the middle of a fight, was a fatal mistake.
The silver warrior seized it instantly.
He stepped forward and drove a kick straight into Wei's stomach.
The impact knocked the breath out of him. Wei flipped backward and crashed to the ground, landing on one knee, his palms scraping wet earth.
Somewhere in the wind, he heard a girl cry out.
Wei had killed before.
Wild goats in the mountains. Rabid dogs. Even that feral boar that had nearly gored him the year before.
But he had never faced a warrior like this.
Someone shaped by real battle.
Someone who knew exactly how to punish weakness.
"Afraid?" the silver warrior asked.
The word echoed strangely in Wei's head, but the voice that followed it was not the enemy's.
It was his father's.
Low. Steady. Heavy.
If you want to master a blade, the voice said, you must first have the will to go straight forward.
Wei gritted his teeth. His fingers clenched around the hilt until his knuckles turned white.
Afraid?
Of course he was afraid.
But Chun was still behind him.
She believed in him.
So he could not stop.
His heart hammered harder, faster.
Because in that instant, he realized something else.
The silver warrior was not mocking him.
He was studying him.
Judging his origin.
Wei did not answer.
Because he was asking himself the same question.
His father had taught him only eight techniques.
Eight cuts.
Eight movements burned into muscle and bone.
So simple they barely seemed worth naming.
Yet they had taken ten years to practice.
The first: Split the wind.
The second: Sever the flow.
The third: Sweep across.
The fourth: Press the neck.
The fifth: Lift the heart.
The sixth: Intercept the wrist.
The seventh: Seal the throat.
The eighth: Spare the life.
His father had said eight were enough.
The rest, he claimed, would come naturally when death was close enough to smell.
Wei had never believed him.
Not until now.
Every time he swung the blade, those movements shifted inside him.
Not copied.
Transformed.
The angles changed. The force changed. Even Wei himself could not predict where the next cut would land.
The saber was no longer a sequence of motions.
It became breath.
Reflex.
The single thread tying him to life.
The silver warrior noticed.
When his armored forearm blocked the seventh impact, his foot slid back half a step.
Just one.
Water rippled faintly at the edge of the pond. Wind hummed against the saber's edge.
Wei thought he heard a girl cheer.
His chest heaved, but for the first time, his eyes were bright.
So his father had been right.
A real blade was forged between life and death.
And Wei was standing on that line now.
"So," the silver warrior said calmly, "there must be someone skilled in military techniques in your village."
He spoke as though reviewing a minor error.
"It seems we did not kill thoroughly enough."
Then, just as calmly, he continued, "I was going to take you as a slave. But now, I'll have to kill you."
The mountain wind rose again from nowhere.
Cold air swept over Wei's soaked clothes, clinging to his skin and sending a sharp chill through his body.
It was exactly what he needed.
The cold sharpened his nerves.
Pulled him deeper into a fight he could not win.
Wei snorted loudly, forcing disdain into his voice.
"You've got it wrong," he said. "This isn't military blade work."
He paused, dead serious.
"This is pig-killing technique. I made it up myself."
Outwardly solemn.
Inwardly, he almost laughed.
He had learned that kind of verbal jab from arguing with friends. If it threw the other side off balance, it was worth it.
The silver warrior was not fooled.
"Boy," he said, "have you grown tired of living?"
He swung his fist.
The air cracked with the force, like thick cloth tearing.
But the blow did not meet steel.
It met a foot.
Wei was upside down.
One hand braced against the ground, the other gripping the saber. His body inverted like a spike driven into the earth.
"This is the moment I was waiting for!"
His heart felt like it would burst through his chest.
Because this move was not one of the eight.
When life pressed hardest, instinct took over.
A strike born of desperation.
Cut the pig's leg.
The saber flashed.
Fast.
Brutal.
From an angle no trained warrior would expect.
Straight for the silver warrior's knee.
Wei had noticed it long ago.
The undead noticed nothing but efficiency, and their knees were bare, unarmored, likely to preserve movement.
The hollow of the knee was every warrior's weakness.
If he could cripple that joint—
Just a little time.
Just enough to rush past and reach Chun.
The blade cut through the wind in a pale arc.
Wei knew.
This was his only chance.
Pchh.
The sound of the saber biting into the knee was not sharp.
Not like bone.
Not like wood.
It was the sound of hardened metal forced into something tough and wet.
For a split second, even the wind at the pond's edge seemed to stop.
Wei felt it clearly.
The instant the blade cut flesh and severed tendon, the pressure that had held him in place—constant, unyielding—collapsed at one corner.
Not retreat.
Imbalance.
The silver warrior's body jolted.
Not backward.
Not aside.
But away from the exact point where it should have stood.
Just for an instant.
Wei's heart nearly exploded.
Yes.
This was it.
As he wrenched the saber free, black blood surged out.
It was not warm.
It did not stink.
It oozed like rotten oil, squeezed from the wound under pressure.
The flesh tore outward. Dead tissue peeled back. Severed tendons twitched faintly in the night.
The silver warrior's left leg buckled.
Just slightly.
Barely noticeable.
But unmistakably real.
For the first time, the being that had dictated every rhythm was forced to correct its stance.
Fog rolled across the water.
Wei did not stop.
He did not even look to confirm the depth of the wound. His foot drove forward, pushing him closer again.
He knew—
If this moment passed, it would never return.
Then—
The silver warrior did not counterattack.
He lowered his head.
Not to examine the wound.
Not to assess damage.
But to look at his knee.
The glance was brief.
So brief it barely registered as an action.
More like the recalculation of a result that should never have failed.
Then—
He lifted his head.
And the world seemed to hold its breath.