Nobody moved.

  Shu Yingyue was on her knees with her severed wrist pressed against her ribs. Blood was soaking through her robes and dripping onto the dirt in a steady line. Her remaining hand gripped her right sword so hard the tendons stood out against her skin, and her breathing came in short, controlled bursts through her teeth. She was not screaming anymore. Her face was white and locked into something that was not calm but was close enough to pass for it.

  Yan Qiu’s legs would not move. His body understood what his mind was still catching up to. The grey-robed figure had crossed fifteen paces, severed a hand, and returned to his original position in the time it took to blink. There had been no technique he could read, no qi fluctuation he could sense, no movement he could track. It was like watching someone step through a fold in the air.

  The man in dark robes looked at the three of them the way someone might look at insects on a windowsill.

  “No. 5,” he said, without turning his head. “Stay here and handle these. The others may have finished at the second vilge by now. We proceed as pnned.”

  The grey-robed figure on the right shifted his weight. “Just these three?”

  “They are sect disciples,” the dark-robed man said. “Clean it up.”

  He turned and walked back into the red mist. The other grey-robed figure, the one who had cut Shu Yingyue’s hand, followed without a word. Their footsteps faded and the mist swallowed them and they were gone, heading north toward the tree line.

  The one who remained was the younger of the two grey-robed figures. He was lean and sharp-faced with his hair tied back in a knot, and he carried a short curved bde at his hip that he had not drawn. He looked at the three of them and smiled the way someone smiles when they have been given a chore they find beneath them.

  Liang Feng was already moving. He grabbed Shu Yingyue’s arm and pulled her to her feet. She stumbled and caught herself, and Yan Qiu saw her press two fingers against the stump of her wrist. A faint shimmer of qi wrapped around the wound and the bleeding slowed to a trickle. Spiritual binding. She was using her own energy to seal the blood vessels shut.

  Her face went a shade paler. Half her qi, gone in a single technique just to keep from bleeding out.

  “His cultivation,” Yan Qiu said. His voice came out steadier than he expected.

  “Third stage of Channel Refining,” Liang Feng said. He was not looking at Yan Qiu. His eyes were fixed on the grey-robed figure and his body was angled slightly away, toward the ne behind them. “At least.”

  Channel Refining. Two full stages above either of them. Above Liang Feng, above Shu Yingyue, and so far above Yan Qiu that the gap was not a gap at all. It was a wall.

  “What are our chances?” Yan Qiu asked.

  “Fourteen percent,” Liang Feng said.

  Yan Qiu looked at him. “Where did you get that number?”

  “By running and firing the fre.” Liang Feng’s hand moved to his belt where a small leather pouch hung beside his sword. “If we fight him head on, it is zero. If we run and one of us gets the activation talisman off, someone from the sect might reach us before he finishes. Fourteen percent.”

  “Are we sure those are real chances?”

  “It is the one I have. Run.”

  They ran.

  Yan Qiu turned and sprinted down the ne behind them. Liang Feng was beside him and Shu Yingyue was a step behind, running with her remaining sword in her right hand and her severed wrist tucked against her body. Her footwork was uneven and she was losing speed with every stride, but she was running.

  Behind them, the grey-robed figure ughed. It was a short, quiet sound, like he had heard something mildly amusing.

  Yan Qiu heard the footsteps closing the distance and they were faster than anything the three of them could manage at a full sprint. He pushed his Dust Treading Step harder and felt his qi burn through his legs. Liang Feng was doing the same beside him, his robes snapping in the wind of his own movement.

  Something hit the air behind them. Yan Qiu felt it before he saw it. A wave of cold qi rolled over them from behind and the air thickened and turned grey. A fog spread through the ne, pouring over the rooftops and filling the space between the houses until he could barely see three paces ahead. It was not the red mist from the beasts. This was different. It was cold and it pressed against his skin and it made his head swim the moment he breathed it in.

  His vision blurred. The ground tilted under his feet and his next step nded wrong and he stumbled. The fog was in his lungs and in his blood and it was pulling at his qi, dragging it out of alignment. His channels felt sluggish, like his energy was moving through mud instead of open pathways.

  He heard Shu Yingyue cough behind him. Liang Feng’s stride faltered.

  Yan Qiu clenched his jaw and pulled his qi inward. He tightened his circution and forced it through the pattern he knew, the one that had always worked when the sect’s method could not. His energy steadied and the dizziness pulled back enough for him to see straight.

  Beside him, Liang Feng did the same. His qi fred once, bright and sharp, and his steps steadied. Shu Yingyue’s breathing evened out a moment ter, though her face was drawn tight with the effort of fighting the fog and maintaining the spiritual binding on her wrist at the same time.

  They kept running. The fog kept pace.

  “He is not letting us go,” Shu Yingyue said through her teeth.

  “No,” Liang Feng said.

  They reached the end of the ne and came out into the open ground near the vilge square. The bodies were still lying where they had fallen and the red mist from the beasts mixed with the grey fog from the cultivator behind them, turning the air into something thick and foul that burned Yan Qiu’s throat.

  The grey-robed figure walked out of the fog behind them. He was not running. He was walking, with his hands csped behind his back and his curved bde still sheathed at his hip. He had closed the distance without effort and now he was just following them, watching them run the way a cat watches a mouse cross an open floor.

  Liang Feng stopped. Yan Qiu stopped beside him. Shu Yingyue stopped st, and she was breathing hard and the shimmer around her wrist was flickering.

  Running was not going to work.

  “Alright,” Liang Feng said. He drew his sword. “We fight.”

  Yan Qiu drew his sword. Shu Yingyue adjusted her grip on her remaining bde and shifted her weight onto her back foot.

  The grey-robed figure tilted his head. “Done running?”

  Nobody answered him.

  He shrugged and drew his curved bde in a single zy motion. The steel caught the dim light filtering through the mist and Yan Qiu could feel the qi running through it, dense and controlled, humming at a frequency that made his teeth ache.

  Liang Feng moved first. He closed the distance in three quick steps and struck high, aiming for the man’s neck. The grey-robed figure deflected it with a flick of his wrist that barely looked like it required any strength. The bdes met and Liang Feng’s sword bounced off and his arm shook from the impact.

  Yan Qiu came in from the left. He aimed low, going for the man’s knee with a thrust from the Broken Jade Sword Art. The grey-robed figure stepped back half a pace and the bde passed through empty air. He did not even look at Yan Qiu. His eyes stayed on Liang Feng.

  Shu Yingyue attacked from the right. One sword, one hand, and she drove it forward in a straight thrust aimed at his ribs. The grey-robed figure caught the bde between two fingers and held it there. Shu Yingyue’s eyes went wide. She tried to pull it free and could not.

  He let go and she stumbled back. He had not moved his feet.

  “You are all Breath Weaving,” he said. He sounded bored. “The girl is half-dead already. The tall one has decent form but no power behind it. And the short one…” He looked at Yan Qiu for the first time. “You are the weakest of the three.”

  Liang Feng attacked again. This time he came in with a combination, three strikes in quick succession aimed at different angles. The grey-robed figure blocked the first two and sidestepped the third, and on the return he flicked his curved bde across Liang Feng’s forearm. A thin line of blood opened up and Liang Feng hissed through his teeth but did not stop.

  Yan Qiu circled behind the man and struck at his back. The grey-robed figure spun and caught the blow on his bde without looking, then kicked Yan Qiu in the chest. The impact lifted him off his feet and sent him sliding across the dirt on his back. He rolled and came up coughing, his ribs aching.

  Shu Yingyue tried to use the opening. She lunged in with her sword aimed at his throat. The grey-robed figure leaned back just enough for the bde to pass his chin and then he brought his elbow down on her forearm. She gasped and her fingers opened and the sword fell. He caught it before it hit the ground and tossed it aside.

  She stood there with no weapons and one hand and half her qi gone, and her face was bnk and still.

  Liang Feng pressed in harder. His strikes were faster now and his qi was burning brighter around his bde, and Yan Qiu could see him pouring everything into each swing. The grey-robed figure met him blow for blow, deflecting and redirecting with small efficient movements that used a fraction of the energy Liang Feng was spending.

  While they traded blows, Yan Qiu saw Liang Feng’s left hand move to his belt. His fingers found the leather pouch and slipped inside, and he palmed something small and ft without breaking the rhythm of his sword work. The activation talisman.

  Yan Qiu got up and attacked again. He came in from the side and threw a compressed Gale Palm at the grey-robed figure’s fnk. The burst of wind qi hit the man’s ribs and he shifted his weight but did not stumble. It was like hitting a stone wall. But it drew his attention for half a breath, and in that half breath Liang Feng’s left hand closed around the talisman and squeezed.

  A pulse of qi shot upward from his fist, thin and bright, and vanished into the sky above the mist.

  The grey-robed figure’s eyes flicked upward. He looked back at Liang Feng and his expression did not change.

  “A signal talisman,” he said. “Clever. How far is your sect from here?”

  Liang Feng did not answer. He attacked again.

  The fight continued and it was not getting better. Liang Feng’s strikes were slowing. Each exchange cost him more qi than it cost the grey-robed figure, and the gap was widening with every passing minute. Shu Yingyue had retrieved her sword from the ground but she was fighting with her off hand now, her movements clumsy and half a beat behind where they needed to be. The spiritual binding on her wrist was barely holding and her face had gone from white to grey.

  Yan Qiu kept moving. He attacked when he saw openings and retreated when the grey-robed figure turned on him, and he kept his qi tight and controlled. He was not burning through it the way Liang Feng was. He could not afford to. His reserves were smaller and his cultivation was lower, so he spent only what each strike required and pulled back the rest.

  The grey-robed figure noticed.

  “The little one is careful,” he said, deflecting another of Liang Feng’s strikes. “Conserving energy while the other two burn through theirs. Smart, for a Breath Weaving brat.”

  Liang Feng’s next strike came slower than the one before it. His breathing was ragged and his qi was dimming around his bde. He had been fighting at full output since the start and his reserves were running dry.

  Shu Yingyue dropped to one knee. She caught herself with her sword pnted in the dirt and pushed back up, but her legs were shaking and the shimmer around her wrist had gone thin and translucent. She was running on nothing.

  Both of them were pale. Not the pale of fear or cold, but the pale of emptied channels and qi that had been spent down to the dregs. Liang Feng’s face was the color of old paper and there was a tremor in his sword arm that he could not hide. Shu Yingyue looked like she might colpse if the wind blew too hard.

  Yan Qiu still had few qi left.

  He stepped forward and put himself between the grey-robed figure and the two inner disciples. His sword was up and his breathing was steady and his channels were still circuting, still pushing energy through his body in the pattern that was not the sect’s and never had been.

  The grey-robed figure looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

  “You are the st one standing,” he said. “How does that feel?”