Chapter 122: Chapter 120 - Probing Moves
"Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha," Long Ma roared in laughter at Ao Wen's bold statement. "Very well then little girl," he said derisively. "Lady Wan, you may take Master Ao Yang aboard your little boat but you must allow Aesthete Qing to remain beside him and you may not leave with him until Ao Wen and I have finished our business," he commandes as though bestowing a magnanimous favor.
Only when Wan Yue had successfully retrieved Ao Yang and moved her boat to the edge of the illuminated area did Ao Wen allow the last of her apprehension to dissipate. From here, things could still unfold in many ways but the possibilities in which Ao Yang didn't make it home to her mother's side were very low. Now, all she had to do was lay out her remaining cards one by one, building the trap that would doom this serpent and allow her to survive the day.
"I wonder what kind of fighter Long Ma happens to be," Ao Wen commented, pulling the silk fan from her waistband with her left and while her right continued to point Wild Fang at the older man. "Do you fight like a Bandit, ducking in and out from the edges of critical distance, never truly risking your own skin unless you feel you have an advantage? Or do you fight like a Tyrant, suppressing anyone in your range with pure physical might?" As she spoke, she flapped her fan twice sending two flickering butterflies toward Long Ma only to watch as they sizzled out harmlessly on his aura. That they failed to affect him meant nothing. That the one which carried the word 'Tyrant' came several centimeters closer before being extinguished told her a great deal.
"Is that how you see me little girl?" Long Ma sneered at the weak flames she'd sent fluttering his way. He'd barely breathed to snuff out her opening move. If this was all the little girl could manifest with all these hours of preparation then he'd truly given her too much credit. Before absolute power, everything else would be ground to dust! "Let me show you how those with real power fight!"
Pushing off the crumbling wall, Long Ma shot through the air like an arrow loosed from a bow, the point of River's Bite aiming straight for Ao Wen's heart. The move was big, obviously telegraphed and it didn't matter because his movements were too fast for Ao Wen to escape and his strength was too great for her to block.
Wild Fang shivered in her hand as she executed a one-handed circular parry, twisting her body to the side and allowing him to rush past her in a clash of sparks as their weapons met. "So it's all about strength for you," Ao Wen said, unleashing another drifting ember with her fan as she danced away through the air on flaming feet. "Or is it more about power?" she added, sending a second ember to follow the first. Both fizzled out on the Soldier's surging aura but both came closer than the previous two had.
Long Ma didn't bother to respond. Trading verbal attacks with a teenage child brought no satisfaction and idiots couldn't be defeated by words because they refused to accept reality. Instead, he began sliding along the surface of the water, toes and the balls of his feet barely dipping beneath the surface as he rushed Ao Wen. His body swayed with an odd gliding gait as though he alone had become a skater on the surface of a frozen lake, gathering tremendous momentum for his next spear thrust.
Ao Wen's parry this time followed a predictable arc and Long Ma had pivoted to a crouching spin before she had even completed her deflection. River's Bite swung in a full circle, the haft of the spear bending with the force of the strike. Leaping back at the last moment, Ao Wen escaped the sweep that would have sent her tumbling into the frigid waters of the bog but still suffered a long grazing cut along her right shin that only avoided being deeper because the angle of the strike was too extreme to sink into bone rather than being deflected by it.
"First blood is mine, little girl," Long Ma teased, drawing his serpentine spear back so he could run a finger along the edge of the spear blade, fingers rubbing against each other in small circles as he felt the rich and energetic dragon blood that spilled from the young woman's leg. This was the energy he sought! This is what he craved!
"That's what matters to you isn't it?" Ao Wen retorted, landing on the exposed roots of a massive tree to gaze down at Long Ma's eerily smiling figure. "Have to be first, have to be best, have to be in charge. Position, influence, respect, all of those things. That's why you pretend to be some kind of dragon when you're not. That's why, when you couldn't beat him in competition for the position of Deputy City Lord, you had Mao Ailum poison Father Feng!" Ao Wen spat at the end. Evidently, Mao Ailum had confessed to the City Lord days ago but the City Lord wanted to wait until settling the Alchemist's Consortium before telling Ao Wen, fearing that it would be harder to control things if everything became exposed at once. When Long Ma moved against Ao Yang, however, Zhang Bai hadn't hesitated to tell Ao Wen and Feng Xi about his involvement in the sordid affair.
"So the brat told his tale," Long Ma said with a shake of his head. "It doesn't matter. All that matters is that I get what I came for!" As he spoke, he launched towards Ao Wen, spear leading the way in a series of rapid strikes that aimed to take her feet out from under her.
For Ao Wen, there was no way she could continue to resist Long Ma's pressure with only one hand on Wild Fang. She had barely managed to return her silk fan to her waistband when Long Ma's first spear thrust arrived, the force of it ringing along the length of Wild Fang as she stumbled back to block the heavy strike. Long Ma's pressed relentlessly forward, the horsetail tassel of his spear swirling in a dizzying cloud of blue as River's Bite struck at her right ankle, left knee, right knee, left ankle, again and again, shifting unpredictably between targets before he lunged forward with a strike aimed directly at her face!
For most swordsmen, the rapid switch from low to high target didn't give enough time to recover the blade to protect their upper body. Ao Wen, however, had been waiting for exactly this moment. Spinning gracefully as a dancer on multicolored flames, she made no effort to recover the blade of Wild Fang to address the spear. Instead, she lifted directly up with the hilt, allowing Long Ma's spear to pass directly through the ring pommel before twisting sharply to pin the spear in place.
The moment didn't last long. Long Ma wrenched back firmly on River's Bite and Ao Wen followed the weapon back maintaining the lock until she came face to face with the snarling soldier. "Your word," she said, flames dancing in her eyes and sparks surrounding the two of them, "is Inferiority."
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JustJae
JustJae 1 of 1 Bonus chapters for End of Month, Thanks Kinghh for the review!
Thank you everyone for all the support! If you’re enjoying this, please check out my other work ‘Unparalleled Artist Unlikely Hero’, set thousands of years earlier in the same world and following Wu Ling the disciple of one of Ao Wen’s previous incarnations!
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