Lu Na was still shocked, despite Sun Ren’s warning. She reached for her earth wall ward and activated it right in front of the intruders. Inside the small room, the wall was highly effective. The intruders were completely blocked off, but so were they.

There were no other exits.

Sun Ren pulled Lu Na to the side of the room away from the center and the beds.

Seconds later, a large wooden log rammed right through the earth wall. It disappeared right after. It was a spirit technique.

“Get the boss,” a man yelled from outside.

Footsteps walked away.

Sun Ren held her sword up in a defensive stance.

“We have to get to Hen Li.”

“He’s strong enough to take these guys out,” Lu Na said.

“No, he’s probably in more danger than us. He ate all the food. It was probably laced with sleep drugs. I could smell it but since Hen Li already ate so much, I didn’t want to rouse the bandits’ suspicions by warning him publicly.”

Now Sun Ren’s actions made sense. It felt foolish even to Lu Na for wasting so much money to buy someone else’s food that they’ve already eaten. But she was so hungry it didn’t matter.

“Come on out, assassin,” a voice called from the hole. “You killed almost twenty of my men. It’s time for a little payback.”

“Put up a spirit wall and release the wall right after,” Sun Ren whispered into Lu Na’s ears.

Lu Na took out her spirit wall ward and activated it right in front of them. A shimmering, nearly invisible wall sprang up into a half dome. With a quick stomp, the earth wall ward died out and fell.

Sun Ren thrust her sword forward before the earth wall fell. She pierced the first thing she saw, a man standing too close to the earth wall. She hit him in the arm before pulling the sword back.

The man yelped and fell away from Sun Ren and Lu Na.

Right away, four techniques splashed against the spirit wall. One of them was a small fireball that glowed, trapped there.

Sun Ren shifted around it and smashed the men standing there with her sword.

They all cowered from her and retreated into the hallway.

Lu Na followed closely. The moment she hit the hallway, she activated her earth wall ward behind her. It sprang up, covering the entire hallway. It was going to take the bandits a while before they got through that.

Sun Ren fought bandits in front of Hen Li’s room next door.

They were trying to get into his room, but it was locked. When they realized they were no match for Sun Ren’s sword in such an enclosed space, they ran away.

Lu Na knocked on the door.

“Hen Li, it’s us. Open up. We have to get out of here.”

Nothing.

“We have to break the door down,” Sun Ren said.

“Wait, I have a better idea.” Lu Na took out her spirit wand and pointed it at the hinges on the door. She focused on the wood element and pulled. She couldn’t do this with her breathing, but her spirit wand could easily separate the spirit energy.

After a few seconds, the wood warped and the door fell forward.

“You’re going to have to teach me that,” Sun Ren said.

Hen Li was on the floor, almost to his bed. He was snoring loudly.

“He’s knocked out. What do we do?” Lu Na asked.

“You’ll have to drag him out. I’ll cover you.” Sun Ren stalked forward with her sword. Every bandit that tried to match her sword skill was rewarded with a cut or a slash across some part of their body, despite also carrying a sword.

Lu Na pulled Hen Li, but the heavy monk was not moving.

“You remember a few weeks ago I suggested you make an invention that can move heavy objects?” Nugua asked.

“Ugh, not now,” Lu Na said.

“Well, that invention would have been very useful right now. But no, you said that it wasn’t needed.”

“You wanted me to make that so I could carry a heavy snake statue for you!” Lu Na grunted as she finally pulled Hen Li flat onto the ground. This was not working. She pulled him onto the fallen door, but there was no way she was going to lift him over it.

What if she used her earth wards to move him?

“Hey Nugua, instead of reminding me of things that I can’t change, what about helping me with something else?”

“What child? Don’t waste too much time. Your friend is fighting for her life you know,” Nugua said.

“I know that you’ve helped me shape my wall wards all those weeks ago before I made them form a standard shape. Do you think you can keep doing that with just one ward?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can you make the earth lift the door to shift it forward while using another earth wall to keep moving it forward?”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Like making a wave?”

“Exactly! Like how a wave in the ocean can move a large ship, but using the earth.”

“Child, that’s going to take a lot of effort but I can try. Use three earth wards and I’ll see what I can do.”

Lu Na activated three earth wall wards on the door.

The earth below the door shifted up, tilting the door up and forward. But before Hen Li fell off, the earth shifted below again in the front, creating an earth wave.

Lu Na held onto Hen Li to stop him from falling off. They were finally moving. They got into the hallway and made a turn.

“This is amazing Nugua.”

“Shhhh.”

Sun Ren was out ahead, clearing the path. She stayed within the hallway that led to the back courtyard.

“I got Hen Li. Where do we go?” Lu Na asked.

“We need to leave through the back, but they have us surrounded.” Sun Ren parried another sword strike. “And I’m not as fully healed as I wanted to be. My body is not moving the way I need it to if we want to get out of here.”

“Let me use my tiger claws at them,” Lu Na said. “I can cover you until we reach the back door.”

Sun Ren nodded and moved forward, pushing the bandits aside.

Lu Na took out her repaired slingshot and began shooting tiger claw techniques at the bandits that didn’t move. She didn’t lower its setting and blasted them at full. Each one maimed the bandit, forcing them to run away from both her and Sun Ren.

That’s when they tried to make a break for it, well as fast as they could with Hen Li riding on an earth wave behind them.

Sun Ren’s sword skills were amazing. Lu Na has seen her practicing every morning with very slow movements, but now her sword sang through the air in quick, fast motions, parrying and attacking every bandit. They couldn’t keep up.

Lu Na shot a few more of her tiger claws at the bandits, but only used it sparingly. They recognized that to come close was to be mauled by a powerful summoner’s technique so they stood back. Besides, she knew the slingshot was about to fail again. When she got back home, she was going to make an improvement in its materials. Using wood was not ideal.

They were almost to the back door before it swung open so hard the doors slammed into the wall beside it. A man with an iron helmet walked through with his sword swinging. His moves were much more conservative as he stood in a line with three other men. All four of them pushed Sun Ren with trained precision.

Sun Ren couldn’t break through no matter how hard she tried. Slowly, she backed up against Lu Na, stopping them.

Lu Na took advantage of the break and launched three tiger claws at the man.

The man clenched his left fist and a green ibex with dark green stripes across his body appeared in front of him. The ibex was large enough that its flanks absorbed the tiger claws. Only light green lines appeared before disappearing.

“Earth walls now!” Sun Ren said.

Lu Na dropped her slingshot and activated four earth wall wards around her. Earth walls rose from the ground, surrounding the trio. Hen Li’s door dropped and the earth from those wards also sprang up into a dome around them.

Seconds later, the dome shook hard. It had a large crack running down from the top right in front of Sun Ren.

Sun Ren was gasping for air as she kneeled on the ground. She dug her sword into the ground, holding herself up.

“Are you okay?” Lu Na asked.

Sun Ren shook her head. She grabbed a water skin from her pack and downed the water that was still left in it.

“Nugua, how long can you hold this dome?”

Silence.

Nugua must have exhausted herself moving Hen Li and forming this dome.

Lu Na picked up her slingshot and grimaced. It broke from hitting the floor. Not that it had much left, anyway. So that’s another tool down. She had nothing else that could get them out.

The earth dome shook again. That was probably the ibex ramming them again. The horns on that spirit were wickedly long and large. It wouldn’t surprise Lu Na that it could break her dome after a few more strikes.

Maybe she could wake Hen Li?

Hen Li was still snoring despite all the noise.

Lu Na shook the monk as hard as she could. After the next strike on their earth dome, she started slapping him. She had to stop when she realized that her hand stung.

“What do we do?”

Sun Ren dropped a dagger in front of Lu Na.

“I hate to say this, but if they break in here, end your own life rather than let them take you. I’m going to go down fighting.”

Lu Na looked at the naked dagger. Did it really come to this? There was no other way? She racked her brain over and over. She could create another earth wall, this one powered by all her null metals, that can outlast this ibex spirit.

Lu Na could see herself living there now. They still had some of the travel rations from the fishing village. She loved those rations, those dry, dry rations.

Another strike widened the crack in the dome, but it held.

Or maybe they could wait until Hen Li woke up and take them all out with his spirit, Panhu. That five colored hound could easily rip these bandits to shreds. That’s what they can do. Killing herself shouldn’t be the only option they had, could it?

Lu Na took out her earth wall wards with the null metal.

“What if I create a stronger dome and we wait for Hen Li to wake? Couldn’t he take these guys on?”

Sun Ren looked from her wards to the sleeping monk.

“Maybe, but there’s one small thing you forgot to put into these domes. We’re running out of air. The only reason we’re still breathing is because of the crack. If you make another smaller dome, all of us are going to suffocate before the bandits can kill us.”

Lu Na stared like an idiot at the crack. She had been so focused on making a wall strong enough to stand up against anything; she forgot all about what to do when they were inside. There was no air getting in. That set Lu Na off into a different spiral of how to improve her wall for the future.

The striking stopped and instead, a softer knock came on the dome.

“Ladies, my name is Yang Deli. I am the leader of this crew. Might we talk this over instead of resorting to any more violence?” The man’s voice was muffled a bit from the earth dome, but it came in well enough through the crack, the life giving crack.

“Lu Na, answer them, but don’t tell them my name,” Sun Ren said. “The last thing we need is for them to ransom us. But whatever you do, if they ask for us to drop our defenses, then I’m going back to fighting them to the death.”

Lu Na placed a hand on Sun Ren’s shoulders. She was very warm.

“I’ll figure something out. No one needs to die today.”

Lu Na tried one more time to shake Hen Li, hoping he would wake. Whatever sleeping drug they gave him was very strong.

That left one last option. Lu Na would have to pull on everything she remembered of her father’s negotiation tactics. She wracked her head for anything she could use in this situation. And then it hit her.

There was only one time her father was ever in such dire straits that he was about to lose everything. It was before he married Lu Na’s mother. He loved telling the story of how he triumphed over his bully with one simple trick.

Lu Na smiled, not believing that her father’s old stories were going to help save them. It only hurt a little that her father didn’t talk to her like that anymore.

“Yang Deli, my name is Lu Na and I’d like to talk. But you have to move all your men away or else my friend here will attack anyone in sight.”

Through the crack in the earth dome, Lu Na heard a lot of shuffling.

“Done. I promise we won’t attack you as long as you don’t attack us. We don’t wish to lose any more lives,” Yang Deli said.

Lu Na squeezed Sun Ren’s shoulder.

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course. I’ll back you all the way,” Sun Ren said. Her breathing was back to normal.

“Then I’m going to give them everything they wanted and more.”

Before Sun Ren could respond, Lu Na deactivated the earth wall wards and put them back into her chest pocket. The cool air rushed in and doused them with the scents of sweaty men and smelly toilets nearby. And the first thing they saw was a ring of men with swords pointed at their heads.