Typer’s room: Hello guys. Since you chose it, I’ll post what I have as soon as I can from now on.
It took some time, but I’ll post the two chapters I have up today and next week I’ll post the chapter as soon as I’m done with it. Should I write more than one, then more than one will be posted. On the bright side, it will be faster to implement suggestions and other things you guys say on the comment.
Anyway, storywise, things got a bit darker as I said they would. I kinda wanted to leave Lia a still down to earth character, not a cold blooded person. I’m NOT going to remove the light-heartedness of the story, but I do feel that such serious moments like these are needed.
Lastly, I would like to thanks everyone who gave their opinions on the whole crossbow thing. As I said, political intrigues isn’t my forte, so your comments help me a whole bunch at times like these, and if you see anything that could be improved, just point it out and I’ll look into it.
I should post the next chapter soon. At most before tomorrow afternoon (afternoon for me, so within 24 hours)
As I said before, this is VASTLY a work in progress, and wasn’t made to be posted initially, so there might be some inconsistencies. If so, please do tell me, as I want to make it an enjoyable read ^^
May your reading be enjoyable.
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“I don’t know who you are or what is your intention in attacking this house, however, by the name of Dia Son-Lao, I swear that I will not let a single one of you through this door.” Dia said while taking a step forward and taking a fighting stance.
Following her lead, the other guards quickly readied themselves, taking a stance with the sword before them and a low posture. The two aides from our household also took position, crouching on the ground while aiming the crossbow at the bandits underlings. Strangely enough, no one was aiming at the leader of the bandits, the one who was clearly the main threat.
While I was confused about what was happening, I started taking some ammunition for my own miniature crossbow before loading it with a fairly heavy pebble.
The enemy all hesitated for a moment while looking around in confusion, only the spiritualist taking a step forward and pointing towards us.
“How did you know about our attack?” The man in front asked.
I noticed how the two aides looked at me briefly, just like Miss Dia. Smiling wryly, I knew that the answer would be up to me, so after a brief moment of thought, I finally sighed and took a step forward.
“That big brother told me when he came here earlier!” I said while pointing towards the man that I had sensed scouting the terrain earlier.
For a good half minute, the whole garden froze as both sides stared at the man whom I had pointed to. While our side had a confused feeling to them, theirs had an almost comical murderous air while the man in question
was completely taken aback with a clearly confused face.
However, it was clear that it wasn’t enough for them yet, so taking a brief time, I soon gave my best smile and pointed towards the general position I had sensed him a bit earlier.
“Big brother was over there, and when I saw him I asked what he was doing.” As I said that, I noticed the man flinching and trying to say something, however, I quickly regained the momentum and went on to speak. “He said that he was looking if there were any problems for him and his friends to come and play!”
That settled it, because not even a second later the Spiritualist surged with Chi and blinked towards the man and did something I couldn’t quite see, sending the man flying through the garden until he hit the metal fence on the farther reach of the garden.
“Idiot, lowering your guard just because she’s a kid!” The man said angrily while all the other bandits looked in shock and fear at their ally. Even I couldn’t help but swallow dryly at the bloody mess that the man became.
“I see… So that’s how it was...” Dia said while glancing at me once again.
Strangely enough, I had the feeling that she didn’t quite believe my story, because the look she gave me felt more like a suspicious one than a surprised one. Faking my confusion, I looked at her while tilting my head, she simply sighed before turning to look to the bandits.
“Well, we wanted to make this nice and clean, but looks like we will have to do this the old fashioned way.” The spiritualist said while motioning towards us with his head. “You lot take care of the guards, I’ll deal with the girl.” The man said while staring at Dia. “It looks like she’s a spiritualist.”
At his words, the men on both of his sides quickly nodded and took a step forward, opening their mouths to say or shout something. However, not even one step forward, and two of them fell back with a yank of their heads, as two short but stocky bolts pierced their foreheads.
With only the dry sounds of the rope hitting the wooden surface of the bow, the bandits once again stopped confused, trying to understand what was happening, and even the spiritualist took a moment to try and understand what was happening.
In that single moment, I noticed as Dia converged all her Chi towards her feet and ran forwards the other spiritualist. While I watched amazed at the scene, or rather, at the blur that happened, the other man barely managed to block the powerful kick aimed at his head, however a grimace appeared in his face as he jumped back.
“Fire chi?” He said annoyed while looking at her and holding the arm he had used to block, where the initial signs of a burn was there.
Dia smirked briefly, before going back to her serious look, focusing on the man before her and channeling the chi towards her hands from the center of her chest. Like a river that met with a stone wall, her chi crashed into the man’s chest, for a brief moment igniting the hand while the Man’s Chi rippled dangerously after blocking the attack.
Noticing how his Chi seemed to fail his control, the man quickly channeled the little he still had control towards his feet and jumped away, with Dia soon following him. However, he managed to trick her by making a feint to another direction.
He took the time to recover control of his chi and quickly replenish what he had lost by spending his Inner spirit. While I wanted to continue and watch their exchange, I didn’t have the chance to do so because the guards on our side quickly began their charge.
The bandit’s group managed to react on time, parrying the attacks and the ones at the rear were pulling out their short bows and started to tie the string on its ends
Noticing that, I took a brief look at the two aides who came with us, but they were still trying to reload their crossbows, and since the two were women, it was taking a bit longer than usual, since these were made for adult men.
Grimacing, I quickly took my own miniature crossbow and aimed at one of the men tying the string. Thanks to my training I had while bullyi… Erm… playing with the kids from the neighborhood, I managed to land the flying piece of pebble right on the spot where I aimed. A place right between the legs.
I know this is considered a low blow, but I sincerely can’t bring myself to fight honestly when I’m barely a kid, can I?
The man crouched down in pain, but since I didn’t have enough time to try and attack the other one he managed to quickly tie the string and nock an arrow. Soon after, one of the soldiers from our side fell back with an arrow in his shoulder.
Grimacing at the sight, I quickly hid myself behind one of the other guards and started reloading the small crossbow. While hiding behind the small wall of soldiers, I couldn’t help but notice how little sound they were making, besides the sword crossings, of course.
Briefly gathering my courage and looking over the scene, I caught the exact moment the sword from one of the bandits pierced one of the soldier’s arm.
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At the gruesome scene, I felt my stomach churning and convulsing, and when the blade was removed from the arm, I could see the meat and muscles from the arm.
From being very small in amount, all the food I had earlier during the party didn’t leave through the way it came from. Feeling my knee shaking as the situation finally dawned on me, I saw as the bandit raised the sword once again and prepared to bring it down on the man’s head. Understanding what it meant, I quickly took my small crossbow and aimed at the man, trying to take aim to stop him.
However, I missed.
My arm was trembling, so the pebble missed by a fair margin when I pulled the trigger. For a moment the bandit blinked and looked towards me angrily, but he soon turned to look to the soldier, who was valiantly trying to hold the sword up despite his injury.
But the three of us knew that he wouldn’t get to lift it in time to stop the blade.
And just as the sword started to come down on him, I heard the dry sound of rope hitting wood, and a bolt hit the bandit right on his arm. The sword missed its target by the sudden impact and brushed off the guard’s armor.
Not even a second later, a sword pierced the bandit’s gut from his side, coming from another guard helping his friend.
However, for me, that moment seemed to freeze, as I could see the man’s face contorted in pain before widening his eyes in surprise. Anger, surprise, fear, sadness, confusion, relief, and contempt. All of those appeared through his face in a flash, before he fell to the ground on his knees.
The soldiers quickly opened space so that he would fall between them, leaving the man to fall right to my side.
This was the first time I had ever seen someone die. I could say many things on how I wasn’t shaken or how I shrugged it off after a few seconds, but neither of those were true. I was literally scared stiff while seeing the dead body.
There are some things you only understand when you are right there when it happens. Seeing someone die like that is one of them. No matter how much I put it into words, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain this sheer… Shock? Terror? Confusion?
Whatever it was, I was unable to move while looking at the man whose eyes slowly lost their light.
“Little Lia!” I heard a voice calling me suddenly.
For a moment I snapped out of my state, looking up to her and seeing as she made a motion for me to move out. Confused, for a moment I stared at her, trying to understand what she meant with her words.
It was only when I noticed the two clumps of Chi approaching me from behind at high speed. No, one clump, the one that was unmistakably Dia’s was approaching me a bit too fast. Moving away in a hurry, I saw as Dia bounced off the ground where I stood, almost hitting the dead man before hitting the wall on the back. A pained expression appeared on her for a moment, right before the bandit leader passed besides me furiously, channeling his Chi in a strange way.
Right before his fist connected with Dia, I saw as steam briefly covered it, taking on the shape of a spearhead as it closed in on the spiritualist.
“Seems like we were a bad match, fire girl.” The man said while pulling back his fist and preparing to pierce the girl’s body.
“Stay away from her!” I heard one of the guards shouting, right before taking the crossbow from the aide and aiming at the man.
However, as fast as the bolt flew, the moment it met with the spiritualist’s body, the shaft simply broke in half and the triangular head bounced off harmlessly. I watched the scene in shock and confusion for a moment, trying to wrap my head around what had happened.
The man was mostly unscathed, and if it wasn’t for a brief glance of his, we would think that he didn’t even notice the bolt hitting his body. Dia took that brief glance of his to react. A victorious smirk appearing in her face right before she compressed a chunk of her chi in a sphere and left it right below her neck, where the man’s fist was aimed at.
As the battlefield froze for a moment, watching the scene, we saw as the bandit’s mist covered fist approached Dia’s neck, making contact.
Then, the man was blown back while making a pained grunt.
“What?” The guards said surprised while opening some space for him to fall. Twisting his body, the man barely managed to fall on his knees amongst the guards, who all simply stood there looking at him confused.
While confused as to why they didn’t try to attack him, I was also amazed at what had happened. In fact, I was the only one who seemingly understood what happened at that moment.
Dia exploded the chi sphere the moment that the bandit was about to make contact. The shockwave disrupted his control of his chi and led him to undo the attack. Even now I can feel as the Chi in his body thrashed around violently, as if suffering a backlash.
He grimaced, before forcing all the tumultuous Chi out of his body, a large amount of energy seeping into the air around him before being absorbed back by the worldly spirits.
“Did you say something about match?” Dia said while standing up and cleaning a bit of the blood dripping from her mouth.
The man grimaced a bit while trying to stand up and use his chi to run open some distance, but his Chi immediately became tumultuous again, possibly damaging his body while doing so, because he fell to his knees in a pained expression.
“Little Lia. It was enough for now.” I heard one of the aides saying while helping me up.
“Huh… Wha...” I said confused, the words not really entering my head for a few moments.
“Master Bo said that this would be a good chance to get you used to such scenes.” She said while helping me up.
“What do you...” I asked confused.
“We, aides from the Lon-Ying household are usually trained to deal with this kind of situation sooner or later in our training cycle.” She told me with an apologetic tone. “So that should something happen when our master is under danger we can deal with it with greater ease. This is why he didn’t stop you when you said you wanted to come.”
Ah… I… Think I understand. If I were to get shocked like that, Lady Tian might get into danger. Making a nod, I turned to the aide and saw as she looked at me with a slightly apologetic tone.
“Leave me here then.” I said while trying to free myself from her arms, somehow recovering enough to move myself.
“Are you sure? You already...” She started, but I shook my head.
“Yes.” I said, and she let me go hesitatingly. Feeling my legs trembling, I quickly leaned back against the wall just outside of their field of view and closed my eyes.
Feeling as the aide fell back to the conflict, I quickly counted the remaining soldiers and bandits using my senses. From the half a dozen soldiers and two aides, now only four soldiers and the aides were left, while the bandits lost about half of their original numbers, and only eight still stood.
Besides them, the two spiritualist were still at it.
Holding back the uncomfortable feeling in my stomach that threatened to expel all my dinner, I decided that, even if I wouldn’t finish watching everything with my own eyes, I would at least know the result by myself, seeing how such situations might repeat itself in the future.
So, steeling my resolve, I kept my eyes closed, and kept on watching the scene as the battle unfolded.
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Tyoer's room: Another thing. I know that i'm not exactly an expert when it comes to writing wuxia fights, so feel free to point me to a direction that i can follow. Preferably without pointing me to a story in specific as i've been kinda burned out with Wuxia/Xianxia nowadays