Clearing the Way with His Father on His Back
Fang Yingjie did not wait another moment.
He threaded the strip of cloth under Fang Tieshan's arms, crossed it back over his own chest, then wound it around his waist and cinched it hard, pulling until it bit. Only then did he bend and lift his father onto his back.
Fang Tieshan was too light.
Far too light for a man whose name had once shaken the martial world, for a man whose palms had struck like dragons. When that broken body settled against Fang Yingjie's back, it was lighter than he had imagined—light enough to make his heart seize.
And yet the broken chains, the reek of blood, the underground cold, and the bitterness of more than twenty years in a death cell all seemed to come down on him at once.
Fang Yingjie tightened the cloth one notch more across his chest, until he could barely breathe, and only when he was certain his father would not slip did he slowly raise his eyes.
Only now did he truly see the road ahead.
Behind him lay the narrow hidden door they had just forced their way through. Beyond that slit, the torches in the wastewater cavern were flaring to life one layer at a time; the retreat was already sealed under crossbows and short blades. Straight ahead stood Li Pu on the cold, wet stone platform. To the right was the broken mouth of the old stone passage, where Quzha stood guard with his heavy-backed saber laid across the way like a bar of iron. Deep in that ruined passage, collapsed rock had choked the dark, yet water could still be heard pouring through from the far end; perhaps it was not a dead end after all. Only at the left front, deep inside the stone hall, did a half-collapsed drain still leave a single black opening. Dark water plunged away through it in a rush, as though it had no bottom and no end.
Several red-robed disciples lunged toward the left-hand channel first, blades lowered, while others raised their crossbows. Farther off, from the passage they had come through, came the tramp of iron boots, shouted orders, and the crackling bursts of burning oil, layer upon layer, as though the whole dungeon were being roused from the dark.
Feng Wuying was tied down by Li Pu. Feng Feiyun had been driven aside by Li Ying's soft whip and drifting poison smoke. They were not far away. Yet in this moment, no one could take this step for Fang Yingjie.
All at once, he felt cold in the palms of his hands.
Not because he feared death.
Because he did not know whether he could bear the weight on his back.
His step faltered—only slightly.
But Fang Tieshan noticed.
That hand, so wasted that only bone seemed left in it, lifted and closed lightly on his shoulder.
Fang Yingjie shuddered.
Fang Tieshan lay across his back, his breathing so shallow it almost seemed it might dissolve into the sound of the water. Yet when he spoke into his son's ear, his voice still fell like a stone into still water, steadying the last disorder in Fang Yingjie's heart.
"Yingjie."
Fang Yingjie's throat tightened.
"Father."
Fang Tieshan said, "Don't be afraid."
Heat rushed suddenly into Fang Yingjie's eyes. He clenched his teeth so hard they almost cracked.
"I'm not afraid."
Fang Tieshan gave a low laugh.
It was faint, rough, almost spent—but it was not the bitter laugh of the dungeon.
It sounded, instead, like a father at last being able to say the one thing he should have said many years ago, at the moment his son needed it most.
"You still have me."
Three words.
Light as the last spark in a dying lamp.
But the breath that had been churning wildly in Fang Yingjie's chest sank at once.
Ten years in the dungeon. Thirty days of transmitted palm art. Every mnemonic, every angle of the step, every sinking force, every placement of the palm heel—suddenly, at this instant, all of it seemed to find its home.
He was not walking forward alone.
The man on his back had wasted to almost nothing. He was blind, his channels ruined, his whole body hung with iron chains. He could hardly stand on his own feet anymore.
But he was Fang Tieshan.
The Stronghold Lord of Fang Stronghold.
The thirty-fourth Sect Leader of the Mount Hua Sect.
The Dragoncloud Divine Hand.
His father.
Fang Yingjie drew a slow breath.
His heels rooted.
His waist and back sank.
That small flame, tended through ten years of freezing imprisonment, steadied itself inch by inch in the depths of his energy center.
He said quietly, "Mm."
"You're here."
Then he lifted his eyes toward the firelight, the knife-glint, and the black water ahead.
This time, he did not stop.
The instant Feng Feiyun saw him move, he called out in a low voice, "Left! The waterway's narrow—pursuers won't be able to come in side by side!"
Before the words had fully landed, several red-robed disciples were already bearing down on the mouth of the left-hand culvert. Quzha, who had been guarding the ruined passage to the right, saw Fang Yingjie break left and did not bother chasing the movement of his body. He simply slanted across the center of the stone hall and pressed toward the left-front drain. He had not yet reached the opening, but the line of his saber had already cut off half the road, as though he meant to seal that last black slit shut with the rest.
The man was broad across the shoulders and back. With that heavy-backed saber braced across him, he seemed almost to block half the hall by himself. Several red-robed disciples pressed up behind him at once, their blades catching the torchlight in bright, narrow lines across the wet stone.
Li Pu did not hurry to attack.
He merely stood by the platform of wet stone, sleeves loose, hands folded, as though watching a play whose ending he had known from the start.
Li Ying flicked her soft whip. It streaked across Feng Feiyun's way like a thread of blood.
Feng Feiyun tried to rush toward Fang Yingjie, but the tip of the whip wound at his feet like a snake. Fire flashed. A strip of white smoke rose hissing from the wet stone, forcing him to twist aside.
"My young one," Li Ying said with a soft laugh, "why the rush? If he can carry Fang Tieshan, do you think he can carry you too?"
Feng Feiyun gritted his teeth. "Shut your mouth, old monster!"
His leg swept out, fast as wind. A bamboo segment flicked against the body of the whip, and he tore open half an inch of space through that line of fire by brute force alone. But another thread of red smoke spilled from Li Ying's sleeve and forced him back a second step.
That one step took him farther from Fang Yingjie still.
Feng Wuying, meanwhile, had already come up against Li Pu.
The two had not truly exchanged blows yet, but the firelight in the wastewater hall seemed suddenly to shiver. Feng Wuying's figure blurred, a bamboo-shadow gliding low over the ground. Li Pu did nothing more than turn slightly—and the footwork beneath him slipped aside in the same instant, as though he had known beforehand where Feng Wuying intended to land.
Feng Wuying said coldly, "You've been learning Hidden Bamboo Sect footwork?"
Li Pu smiled. "A little skin and fur."
"Even the skin is filthy."
Before the words were done, the slender bamboo hidden in Feng Wuying's sleeve thrust in from beyond the torchglow.
Li Pu did not meet it head-on.
He only reached back with one hand.
The long saber that had been slung across his back all this time finally came free of its sheath.
The instant the blade cleared, cold light flashed briefly beneath the failing underground lamps.
Li Pu took the saber in hand.
And the moment the weapon settled into his grip, the air around him changed.
All the lightness, drift, borrowing, and emptiness he had so deliberately imitated—the borrowed flavor of the Hidden Bamboo Sect—vanished as though he had tucked it away into his sleeve. What replaced it was the fire bred deep into the marrow of Supreme Cult martial arts. Before the blade had even fully come clear, the lamps in the stone hall seemed to bow away from it.
What Li Pu was using was the Crimson Flame Saber Art.
It was nothing like the quick sabers of Jiangnan, nor like the broad, open, heavy sabers of the north. Fire was hidden in its very bone. The blade rode close and mean. The moment it moved, it made a man's breathing go tight and his road of retreat turn narrow.
The saber slid slowly out through the firelight.
It did not look fast.
But before it even arrived, the heat had already reached Feng Wuying's chest. In that wet, freezing hall of wastewater and stone, a scorched pressure suddenly seemed to gather in the air.
Feng Wuying tapped out once with the slender bamboo in his sleeve and slanted away.
He did not retreat in a straight line.
Sweeping Moon Shadow was never a straight-line footwork. The body appeared to move left while the shadow landed first on the right; the bamboo tip touched the water, the ripples had only spread halfway into a circle, and his figure had already folded through the lamplight and slipped beyond the edge of Li Pu's saber.
But Li Pu's stroke seemed to have been waiting exactly for that turn.
The saber line suddenly sank.
The blade that had been slanting out a moment ago flattened into a horizontal seal, cutting straight across the place where Feng Wuying's shadow was just about to fall.
Feng Wuying lifted the bamboo in his sleeve. The tip touched the back of the saber.
A very light clang rang out.
The saber-back did not tremble.
The bamboo-shadow broke first.
Li Pu smiled faintly. "A fine Sweeping Moon Shadow."
Feng Wuying said coldly, "You're looking at shadows."
His voice had barely dropped when he was already behind Li Pu.
"I strike men."
The bamboo stabbed back toward the nape of Li Pu's neck.
Li Pu did not turn.
His steps slipped suddenly aside, and there was once more a trace of the Hidden Bamboo Sect in them, something like their bamboo-pattern footwork. Yet the movement was too clean, too deliberate—like the copy of someone else's shadow traced over with a ruler.
The cold in Feng Wuying's eyes deepened.
"A fake is still a fake."
Li Pu swayed aside and avoided the bamboo tip. At the same instant, however, the force in his saber changed sharply.
The Crimson Flame Saber Art transformed. The blade's dark red glow flared bright.
This time, the strike no longer hid itself.
The saber-force opened with a crash. Fire poured along the blade like a furnace door being ripped wide. Under the pressure of that saber-force, the damp air in the wastewater hall turned instantly to fine white vapor. The saber-light cut through that mist, and for a moment it carried the terrible impression of a city burning.
This was the path of the Heaven-Scorching Saber Formula.
The Heaven-Scorching Saber Formula was not the same thing as the Crimson Flame Saber Art.
The Crimson Flame Saber Art could still hide its edge, cling close, choke the breath, shut the road. But once the Heaven-Scorching Saber Formula came out, the fire was meant to spread across the field. It did not seek merely to wound with one blow. It sought to burn confusion into the road ahead and the road behind, into shadow, into breath, into nerve. The wider the saber-force opened, the narrower the retreat became. The fiercer the fire, the more shattered the shadows.
And Feng Wuying's greatest skill lay in borrowing shadows.
Once the shadows were thrown into disorder, Sweeping Moon Shadow lost a portion of its ease.
That one portion was what Li Pu wanted.
His saber turned again and again. The first stroke still bore the flavor of the Crimson Flame Saber Art, slashing obliquely along the line of the bamboo-shadow. The next suddenly carried the changes of the Formless Phantom-Breath Art. One ribbon of saber-light split into two—one true and one false, one hot and one hollow—forcing Feng Wuying to strike out three times in succession with the bamboo in his sleeve before he could knock both lines of saber-light off course.
Feng Wuying gave a cold laugh.
"You're using a saber to imitate bamboo. Don't you find that ridiculous?"
Li Pu said, "Anything that kills a man stops being ridiculous."
"You can learn the bamboo-shadow," Feng Wuying said, "but not the bamboo-heart."
The words had not yet faded when the shadow vanished from the bamboo in his hand.
No doubling.
No confusion.
No concealment.
Only one bamboo stroke.
When it came out, even the firelight in the wastewater cavern seemed to still for the space of a breath.
Within Feng Wuying's self-created Thirteen Shadowless Bamboos, this was a killing move: Shadow-Pinning. A thousand shadows drew in at once and settled to a single line.
The bamboo tip shot straight for Li Pu's sword wrist.
Something changed, just slightly, in Li Pu's gaze. His saber-force snapped back into a seal at once. In that instant he forcibly crushed the close, short killing line of the Crimson Flame Saber Art and the broad, blazing force of the Heaven-Scorching Saber Formula into half a move, dragging the saber-back across in a dangerous, hurried block.
The bamboo tip struck the back of the blade.
This time the sound was not light.
It landed with a deep, dull shock.
Li Pu took half a step back.
Feng Wuying took half a step back as well.
Between them, the firelight broke and shivered once, then was smothered again beneath the dark roar of the water.
Li Pu looked at the fine bamboo mark left on the back of his saber and smiled.
"Fourth Master Feng," he said, "so you are not merely good at running away."
Feng Wuying looked at him. His voice was as cold as the water under wet stone.
"And you," he said, "are not merely good at pretending."
Li Pu lifted his saber a little.
Fire rose on the blade once more.
"Then let's try again."
The slender bamboo hung at Feng Wuying's sleeve. His figure blurred, then dissolved once more into firelight and water-sound.
One false. One truly shadowless.
One saber. One bamboo.
Crimson flame and hidden bamboo twisted together in an instant on the wet ground at the center of the wastewater hall.
Fang Yingjie did not look again.
He knew he could not.
Only the narrow waterway to the left remained.
With Fang Tieshan on his back, he charged for it.
Quzha did not try to force himself into the half-collapsed, narrow opening. He merely gave a cold snort, turned, and disappeared into the ruined passage on the right. Though most of that old passage had collapsed, it seemed to join the left-hand waterway somewhere farther ahead. He meant to go around and cut Fang Yingjie off from the front.
Fang Yingjie had only taken two steps when a red-robed disciple came at him head-on with a horizontal slash.
The blade was not fast, but it was steady, perfectly placed across the chokepoint he had to pass through. Fang Yingjie's hand lifted instinctively to block.
A very faint voice came from behind his ear.
"Your feet."
Fang Yingjie's heart jolted.
Your feet.
Don't look at the hands. Once the feet go乱, the palm is already empty.
He forced down the hand that had been rising, no more than half an inch. His heel sank into the wet stone. The ground was so slick he nearly lost purchase, but the weight on his back gave him no room for float or haste. He dropped his waist, turned his left shoulder slightly, and settled Fang Tieshan more tightly against him.
The red-robed disciple's saber was already there.
Fang Tieshan's voice came in broken breaths against his ear.
"Don't block."
"If you block… you yield him the road."
"Drive through."
Blood rushed suddenly into Fang Yingjie's eyes.
He did not raise a palm to meet the blade.
Instead, he slanted half a step in, and the heel of his palm drove up from below the line of the saber—not at the edge, but at the grip hidden behind it.
It was not a great blow.
Barely even half a palm.
But in that instant, feet, waist, back, and palm-heel finally sank into one line. The force of the palm did not strike the blade; it crushed into the bit of power that controlled it.
The disciple's wrist dropped. The saber-edge tilted half an inch.
Half an inch was enough.
Fang Yingjie drove his shoulder through that gap with Fang Tieshan on his back. The man staggered under the impact, and the back of his saber slammed against the wet stone with a heavy crack.
On Fang Yingjie's back, Fang Tieshan said softly, "Good."
Heat stabbed again at Fang Yingjie's eyes.
But in the next moment, two more men blocked the way.
One held a saber. The other held a hook.
And the hook was reaching not for Fang Yingjie, but for the chains on Fang Tieshan's back.
Fang Yingjie's face changed at once.
If that hook caught in one of the torture-chains on his father's body, one hard jerk would tear half the life out of him.
Panic rose in his feet. His palm-force went ragged.
Fang Tieshan said at once, "Don't rush."
Fang Yingjie gritted his teeth. "They're aiming for you!"
"All the more reason not to rush."
He dragged in a breath. His voice seemed lower still beneath the rush of water.
"Fang Family Fist."
Fang Yingjie froze for half a beat.
"Sink the elbow."
"Change the shoulder."
"Stay close."
"Don't give up your center."
These were the very points Fang Tieshan had hammered into him again and again in those thirty days when he transmitted the Fang Family Fist.
The Fang Family Fist did not seek the strange.
It sought first what was upright.
If the body was not upright, the fist scattered. If the breath did not sink, the force floated. At close range, a fist did not go out first. First you guarded your own center, rooted the feet, and bound shoulder, elbow, waist, and hip into one.
Fang Yingjie drove himself hard against the stone wall to the left.
The waterway was narrow. The wet wall was freezing cold. His shoulder scraped against it, and from that scrape he borrowed force. Instead of falling back, his body folded inward by half a step.
The man with the hook saw him seem to give way and thrust forward.
Fang Yingjie's right elbow suddenly drew tight.
The palm did not move first.
The elbow sank first.
The sinking elbow shifted the shoulder. The changing shoulder slipped the body half an inch clear of the direct line of the hook.
Half an inch again.
His palm-heel dropped onto the shaft of the hook.
Crack.
The hook-rod smashed against the stone wall, and the rebound numbed the man's tiger's mouth.
Fang Tieshan said in a low voice, "Iron Gate Ram."
Fang Yingjie slammed forward with his left shoulder.
He was not driving into the man.
He was driving the road open.
It was the short, hard force of close Fang Family striking: the fist had not yet gone out, but the shoulder had already opened the gate. The hook-wielder took the impact square in the chest and went backward, and the saber-man behind him was forced back half a step as well.
With Fang Tieshan on his back, Fang Yingjie squeezed through between them.
But the left-hand waterway was not a straight cleft. A few steps ahead, another break opened across it from the right—the ruined passage Quzha had taken.
From that break came Quzha's deep, heavy snort.
The iron-tower of a man had emerged there at last.
He had not gone after Feng Wuying. He had not gone after Feng Feiyun. He had fixed his eyes only on Fang Yingjie and his father. With the heavy-backed saber held crosswise in his hands, he advanced step by step. Each footfall sent fine ripples running over the standing water in the channel.
Fang Yingjie's heart sank.
A man like Quzha was neither quick nor subtle.
But he blocked roads.
He was like an iron gate.
If Fang Yingjie wanted to get through, he would have to force a slit past that gate.
But Fang Tieshan was on his back.
He could not afford to force it blindly.
Fang Tieshan coughed low. Blood rose into his throat and he swallowed it back by force.
"Don't wear yourself out against him."
Fang Yingjie said under his breath, "He's sealing the way."
"A gate," Fang Tieshan said, "isn't only crossed in the middle."
Fang Yingjie went still.
"Watch his feet."
Quzha's footing was solid.
But no matter how solid a man was, in a narrow waterway there still came a moment when his weight had to change sides. Every time Quzha planted a step and lifted the rear foot, the heavy-backed saber tilted minutely with his shoulder and back. At that instant, the front was heaviest, but the flank emptied.
Fang Tieshan's voice was almost against the bone behind Fang Yingjie's ear.
"Half a step is enough."
"Don't be greedy."
"Open the way. Don't kill."
Quzha's heavy-backed saber came down.
There was nothing fancy in that stroke. The saber-back was heavy, the descending force brutal. It fell less like something meant to cut a man and more like something meant to crush half the waterway flat.
Fang Yingjie dropped his waist and shifted half a step to the right with Fang Tieshan on his back.
Half a step.
The saber-wind smashed past his shoulder and sent water exploding.
He did not retreat farther.
Borrowing that half-step, he drove his right palm from below toward Quzha's ribs. Quzha gave a cold snort, the muscles beneath the ribs knotting hard, plainly unafraid of the strike.
But Fang Yingjie's palm had never been meant for the ribs.
"Crossing Cloud, Breaking Wave," Fang Tieshan whispered behind him.
The phrase hit Fang Yingjie like a blow.
When an enemy's force came on like a wave, you did not meet the crest head-on. You crossed into the gap before it closed and broke the wave at its root.
As Fang Yingjie's palm fell, the force in it did not slam at Quzha's chest or belly. Instead, it cut obliquely into the empty place in Quzha's saber-force before the movement had fully sealed.
He was not striking the man.
He was crushing the footwork.
At the same instant, his own feet sank hard, and his shoulder and back drove forward. Man and father together became like a slab of wet stone dropping in exactly upon the gap in Quzha's shifting weight.
Quzha was forced back one short step.
A rougher, uglier, heavier step than Li Pu's half-step—
but a retreat nonetheless.
Quzha's face darkened. The heavy-backed saber swept across again.
But Fang Yingjie no longer tangled with him.
Fang Tieshan was right.
Open the way. Don't kill.
Borrowing that one step of space, he squeezed past Quzha's flank with his father on his back. The saber-hilt clipped his shoulder hard enough to blacken his sight for a moment, but his footing did not break. He crushed down the breath rising in his chest and kept driving deeper into the waterway.
Behind him, angry shouts, clashing steel, water-sound, whip-sound, bamboo-sound—all churned together.
From far back came Feng Feiyun's voice:
"Sickly one! Go downward! Follow the loudest water!"
Fang Yingjie did not turn.
He could not turn.
Stone steps sloped down ahead. The sound of the water grew heavier.
Cold water climbed over his ankles and up toward his calves. The current was fast, the footing slick; one careless step and father and son would go pitching together into some hidden trench.
With Fang Tieshan on his back, Fang Yingjie lowered his head and kept going.
After several steps, Fang Tieshan said in a low voice behind him, "Heavy?"
Fang Yingjie paused. "What?"
"Me."
His throat clenched.
"Not heavy."
Fang Tieshan was silent for a breath.
"You're lying."
Fang Yingjie's eyes burned red at once.
He ground his teeth and kept walking downward with his father on his back.
Fang Tieshan's breathing was growing shallower and shallower, yet he still spoke in broken fragments.
"When you carry someone… your palm mustn't turn hollow."
"What you're carrying… isn't me."
Fang Yingjie's step faltered.
Fang Tieshan's voice was light enough now that the water nearly washed it away.
"It's the bones of the Fang family."
Fang Yingjie shut his eyes hard.
When he opened them again, the flicker in them had been forced down.
"I know," he said.
"I can carry it."
Fang Tieshan said nothing more.
He only lay over his son's back, his chest rising and falling by the slightest measure.
The pursuers behind them were drawing close again.
From a side channel running almost level with the water, a shadow suddenly slid out along the surface.
Sangji emerged from behind a curtain of wet stone as though from the wall itself. Apparently, when he had gone to block the rear, he had taken exactly these narrow channels skimming the water, moving like a thin night-snake. The short blade in his hand stabbed soundlessly at Fang Yingjie's waist.
It was a vicious, secretive strike, choosing precisely the side Fang Yingjie could least easily turn to while carrying someone.
Fang Yingjie heard it.
Not the knife.
The absence of something in the water-sound.
From his back, Fang Tieshan said, "Left."
Fang Yingjie did not look.
His left foot ground suddenly into the water and his body turned half a circle with the current. Sangji's short blade skimmed past his waist and slit his clothes, but not flesh.
Fang Yingjie's right elbow drew back. The palm did not go out. He only pressed down with the back of the elbow.
The pressure landed exactly on Sangji's wrist.
Sangji hissed with pain, but did not resist by force. His whole body drifted backward like a paper scrap.
"Don't chase," Fang Tieshan said.
Fang Yingjie had no way to chase anyway.
He only kept going.
The waterway grew lower and lower.
Soon he had to stoop as he walked. Fang Tieshan lay across his back, the iron chains muffled under cloth and outer robe, yet from time to time they still gave off a low, heavy clink. Every time they sounded, Fang Yingjie's heart would tighten.
He feared his father's pain.
He feared even more the moment the sound would stop.
Then suddenly the way ended.
Ahead stood a half-collapsed stone wall.
Near its base was a black opening, not high. An ordinary man could bend and pass through, but a man carrying another would have to crouch low and force his way in. The roar of water from inside it was immense, as though it led into a still deeper waste channel.
This must be the way Feng Feiyun had meant.
Fang Yingjie was just about to duck when behind him came Quzha's heavy footfalls.
The man had caught up again.
Quzha was drenched through. His heavy-backed saber lay crosswise over his chest. His face was dark as iron. Three red-robed disciples followed a pace behind him, forced by the narrow channel to stagger their positions one behind another. One of them lifted a crossbow from beside Quzha's shoulder.
Cold shot straight through Fang Yingjie's heart.
The bolt was not aimed at him.
It was aimed at Fang Tieshan on his back.
Fang Tieshan said in a low voice, "Down."
Fang Yingjie dropped at once.
A bolt hissed over his head and buried itself in the stone wall.
A second followed immediately.
He twisted sideways, but he could not let the weight on his back swing too hard. Pressing his shoulder and back against the wall, he shoved at the wet stone with his left palm and shifted his body on a slant by half an inch. The bolt skimmed across Fang Tieshan's outer robe and tore away a strip of cloth.
But the waterway was too narrow, and Quzha was too far forward. The men behind him did not dare loose a full volley. They could only hunt for angles through the gaps beside Quzha's shoulder, between the wall and the bodies of the red-robed disciples.
Fang Yingjie's eyes turned red.
This time he did not retreat.
Instead, before Quzha's saber-force could fully gather, he drove obliquely toward the three disciples behind Quzha with Fang Tieshan still on his back.
Fang Tieshan's hand clenched hard on his shoulder.
"Falling Cloud."
Fang Yingjie's heart jolted.
A cloud looked light.
But when it truly sank, even a mountain darkened beneath it.
His feet drove down into the water. The current made his calves tremble, but he ignored it, forcing the breath downward instead. The palm had not yet fallen, but the weight of the move had already descended.
The three red-robed disciples, who had been about to lift their crossbows again, suddenly felt that the young man with another body on his back was not lunging at them.
He was bearing down on them.
Like a low cloud sinking into a narrow pass.
He had not arrived, yet the pressure had.
They gave way instinctively.
Borrowing that retreat, Fang Yingjie struck out with his right palm. It was neither large nor loud. It landed on the chest of the foremost disciple.
Bang.
The man crashed into the other two, and all three toppled into the water together.
Quzha's heavy-backed saber was already coming.
Fang Yingjie had no time for another palm.
Fang Tieshan suddenly said into his ear, "Use the wall."
Fang Yingjie twisted sideways and braced his back to the stone. His right shoulder drove backward. Quzha's heavy-backed saber smashed into the wet stone in front of him and sent spray exploding.
Fang Yingjie did not retreat. Instead, taking the wall behind him as his root, he pressed half a palm obliquely down onto the back of Quzha's saber.
Quzha's arms sank.
Fang Yingjie's own arm nearly went numb from the shock.
But he did not try to hold it.
He only pinned it for half a breath.
Then he withdrew the palm at once, turned, and borrowed that half-step of delay—the half-step created when Quzha's saber-force had been checked against the wall—to duck with Fang Tieshan into the low black hole at the end of the passage.
Quzha swept the heavy-backed saber sideways, but it only struck the stone around the opening and sent shattered rock rattling down.
Inside the hole, Fang Yingjie slammed one palm upward into a loose section of stone.
This palm was not meant for a man.
It was meant to crush the road shut.
The rock there had long since been hollowed by water. Only a cracked seam still held it in place, and Quzha's last blow had shaken it looser still. Fang Yingjie did not batter the wall itself. He crushed down exactly on that seam.
With a roar, half the shattered stone collapsed and sealed the opening.
A furious shout came from outside.
Quzha's saber-back hammered against the fallen rubble. The broken stone shuddered, but did not give way at once.
Fang Yingjie did not stop.
He hitched Fang Tieshan lower onto his back once more. The cloth strap cut into his chest until it felt as though it might split him open. Bent almost to the water itself, he moved forward on half-knees, half-hands, dragging himself deeper into the dark. Water rushed fast beneath him. Darkness closed in from every side, almost swallowing him whole.
Behind him, the cries of pursuit, the clash of blades, the snap of crossbows—one by one, they were cut farther away by stone and water.
A Dying Lamp, a Legacy of Bone
He did not know how long he had been crawling.
Only that, at last, the tunnel broadened ahead into a hollow barely large enough for two people to stop and draw breath.
The cavern ceiling hung low. The roar of water was closer here, much closer, as though an underground river were racing just beyond the stone wall.
With the last of his strength, Fang Yingjie carefully lowered Fang Tieshan from his back and let him rest against a slab of wet rock.
The moment he let go, he realized how badly his hands were shaking.
Fang Tieshan's breathing had grown so faint it was almost impossible to hear.
"Father…"
Fang Yingjie dropped to his knees before him, his voice trembling.
Fang Tieshan did not answer at once.
After a long while, he drew in the slightest breath and whispered, "Are we out?"
Fang Yingjie looked into the blackness around them, listening to the water rushing somewhere beyond the cave, and felt his throat close tight.
They were not truly out.
There was no sky.
No wind.
No light on the lake.
Only another cavern—deeper, colder, darker than the last.
But for the moment, they had thrown off their pursuers.
And they were finally farther from that cell.
In a low voice, Fang Yingjie said, "We're out."
Something moved faintly at the corner of Fang Tieshan's mouth.
Almost a smile.
"That is enough, then."
"Father, I'll take you with me." Fang Yingjie's words came out in a rush. "Feng Feiyun and the others are still inside. Senior Feng is there too. They'll come. We can still get out. There are waterways outside, boats—"
Fang Tieshan cut him off gently.
"Yingjie."
Fang Yingjie fell silent at once.
Fang Tieshan's ash-pale eyes were open. They saw nothing, and yet it felt as though they were still turned toward his son.
"Don't lie to me."
Tears struck the ground at once.
Fang Tieshan's breath was weak, but he still spoke, slowly, one word at a time.
"And don't lie to yourself."
Fang Yingjie bit down so hard his jaw ached.
"I don't want to let you go."
"I know."
Fang Tieshan's voice was very soft.
"But you've already carried me this far."
"It's enough."
Fang Yingjie shook his head.
"No."
"Not enough."
"Not enough. I've only just found you."
Fang Tieshan was silent for a long time.
So long that Fang Yingjie almost thought he could no longer hear.
Then that gaunt hand slowly groped through the dark until, at last, it found the back of Fang Yingjie's hand.
"It is I who was not enough," he said.
"Not you."
At last Fang Yingjie could bear no more. He bent forward and pressed his forehead against his father's hand.
Fang Tieshan's fingertips stirred faintly, as though he meant to touch his son's head, but he no longer had the strength to lift them.
"Listen to me."
His voice was growing lower and lower.
"The palm art of the Fang family… was not meant to stand watch over the graves of the dead."
Fang Yingjie shuddered from head to foot.
Fang Tieshan continued in broken fragments.
"It was meant… to clear the road for the living."
"Live."
"Get out first."
"And if you see your mother…"
Suddenly something caught in his throat.
That breath nearly broke apart.
Alarmed, Fang Yingjie reached out to support him.
"Father!"
But Fang Tieshan gripped his hand hard, as though using the last of his strength to drive these words into his son's bones.
"If you can kneel before her… tell her for me…"
He stopped for a long time.
So long that even the sound of the water seemed to recede.
"Tell her… I never bowed my head."
A torrent of tears poured down Fang Yingjie's face.
"I'll tell her."
"I swear I'll tell her."
Fang Tieshan seemed to hear him.
His hand loosened a little.
After a moment, he said again, "Don't let hatred… foul your palm."
Nothing came from Fang Yingjie's throat. He could only nod.
Fang Tieshan's breathing was growing lighter and lighter.
So light it was like the final thread of smoke from a dying lamp.
"If you make it out…"
he murmured,
"then it will count… as me making it out too."
Fang Yingjie froze where he knelt.
His mouth opened. He wanted to call him father.
But before the word could leave his lips, Fang Tieshan's hand suddenly grew light.
Truly light.
Like a length of iron that had pressed on his wrist all this time, and had at last slipped free.
The water still rushed through the cavern.
The darkness remained unchanged.
Fang Yingjie knelt there for a long, long time without moving.
He did not dare move.
He was afraid that if he moved, it would become real.
Afraid that if he let go, his father would no longer be his father, only a cold body.
But Fang Tieshan no longer spoke.
No longer coughed.
No longer cursed him for a stubborn fool.
No longer murmured that one sharp reminder in his ear—Footwork.
No longer told him, Drive through.
No longer let himself be carried on his son's back.
Slowly, Fang Yingjie lowered his head.
He took his father's hand again and pressed it to his forehead.
It was cold.
Cold as the deepest stone beneath the earth.
He did not know how much time passed before he finally bent down, little by little, and lifted Fang Tieshan onto his back once more.
This time, the weight on his back had suddenly grown lighter.
But in all his life, he had never carried anything heavier than he did in that moment.
Poetic Coda
With Dragoncloud Palm through blood and cold he broke the pass;
A dying lamp entrusted son to cross the line of death and life.
False flames closed in, and true bone showed itself at last;
Beneath the crushing saber's weight he fought on half-alive.
The hidden river cast no light upon a hero's face;
Cold stone alone still seemed to hear the old palm's echoing sound.
The burden on his back turned light; the world turned grave—
From this day on, each strike he threw became his homeward road.
(End of Chapter Thirty-Five)