Af­ter all of that, of course Sobon wasn't go­ing to ig­nore her promise to Mian. He, and Ki'el, wait­ed pa­tient­ly for her to be­gin un­til af­ter Lui had left in the house court­yard. Ul­ti­mate­ly, Sobon start­ed with the easy ques­tion.

"How do you use your in­ter­nal qi? With a vi­su­al­iza­tion, an in­stinct, a feel­ing?" She stud­ied Mian, who closed his eyes and con­sid­ered the ques­tion.

"Mm. An in­stinct might be a way to phrase it." Mian cocked his head. "I know I heard peo­ple talk­ing, when I was younger, about uti­liz­ing qi with your 'heart' and your 'guts'. And I've lis­tened to peo­ple talk­ing about cir­cu­lat­ing your qi, and done those sort of ex­er­cis­es, let­ting it cir­cu­late through my body. Af­ter what you said the oth­er day, that my qi wasn't reach­ing all the way to my hands... I sup­pose that was part of it. But the thing that is most con­nect­ed to me isn't my hands, it's my heart. I'm not sure how to move from one to the oth­er."

Sobon nod­ded. "My spe­cial­i­ty was al­ways with... what you would call en­grav­ing, or aether tools, and I'm not the best at ex­plain­ing per­son­al aether. But we were taught that there are gen­er­al­ly nine cat­e­gories of per­son­al aether users, bro­ken down by where their cen­ter is. Those types are the mind, the sens­es, the voice, the heart or lungs, the stom­ach, the hands, the feet, the skin, and the mus­cles."

"War­riors who are cen­tered on the heart cir­cu­late pow­er through their en­tire bod­ies, but it's dif­fi­cult to use ex­ter­nal qi. They ex­pect all parts of their body and spir­it to syn­chro­nize dur­ing a fight. As long as your ex­ter­nal qi can also syn­chro­nize, there should be no prob­lem. Tools that match your spir­it, for ex­am­ple, or at­tacks and de­fens­es that you can put your en­tire spir­it be­hind. You are very dif­fer­ent from Lui, who I think would be Hand or Sens­es-cen­tered, or me, who is Mind-cen­tered."

Ki'el was frown­ing, and Sobon looked at her. "If you can't tell what your cen­ter is, Ki'el, it's prob­a­bly skin or mus­cles, be­cause most of the rest are fair­ly ob­vi­ous. Giv­en what you've said about want­i­ng things to be pure, I would imag­ine that you are a skin-cen­tric war­rior. That means that you want to draw a sharp line be­tween your own aether and the world's; any­thing that might in­trude feels dirty and in­va­sive. Mus­cle-cen­tered war­riors are gen­er­al­ly not as... calm as you are. And most of the rest would be able to place their cen­ter some­where."

"Skin..." Ki'el mused, qui­et­ly. "It feels like an... ad­e­quate de­scrip­tion." She re­fo­cused her eyes on Sobon. "It al­most feels like it should be an in­sult, to say that I am fo­cused on my skin. For much of my life, my skin has not been any part of my think­ing. And yet, the way you de­scribe it is too fa­mil­iar."

"Not fo­cused. Like I said last time, your en­tire spir­it is alive, and that in­cludes your skin, and bones, and in­ter­nal or­gans. Those parts of your spir­it con­tribute to your whole; your skin has its own na­ture sep­a­rate from all oth­er parts of your body, and that na­ture is in part to sep­a­rate the hos­tile out­er world from the frag­ile in­ner one." Sobon shrugged. "There are also those whose aether is cen­tered in oth­er or­gans, but they gen­er­al­ly are not good for war­riors. But your cen­ter is only the start­ing point; in time, you should adapt your soul to cen­ter it­self in every part of your body at once."

Mian's eyes bulged at that idea. "Is that how strong you are? Or were?"

"I was not a per­son­al aether spe­cial­ist, and I lived with... an ar­ti­fi­cial body. I syn­chro­nized with every part of that ar­ti­fi­cial body, but it did not con­tain liv­ing spir­it. That's be­side the point, how­ev­er." Sobon took a deep breath. "For you, Mian. When you wish to use ex­ter­nal qi, you can­not fo­cus it in your hands, or any oth­er part of your body. That kind of fo­cus doesn't work for your heart-cen­tered spir­it, not to start. You can only cir­cu­late it, and vent it. The vent­ed aether should still be con­nect­ed to you, so with that, you can con­nect to your sword, or oth­er aether tools, as long as they have qi chan­nels."

"Vent it?" Mian sound­ed a lit­tle in­trigued, but cau­tious­ly, as though he wasn't sure if it was good or bad news.

"As you might think, it's not ef­fi­cient, but it is the way you'll have to start. As a heart-cen­tered war­rior, your whole body wants to be in the same state, so vent­ing aeth--vent­ing qi means re­leas­ing it from your whole body at once." Sobon stud­ied the look on his face. "This is fa­mil­iar to you."

"...Maybe." But Mian was qui­et, clear­ly think­ing, so Sobon turned to Ki'el.

"If you re­al­ly are a skin-cen­tral user, it makes sense that you would only want tools that use pu­ri­fied aether. You prob­a­bly won't en­joy us­ing ex­ter­nal aether, be­cause skin keeps things in, not just out. From what I've seen, I think you'll be able to get over it, if you choose, but stay­ing true to your skin-cen­ter will help you ad­vance. In­stead, keep­ing aether fo­cused with­in your­self and your tools, or fo­cused just on the edges of it--the skin of it--will feel nat­ur­al. Now that you have reached Gold Qi, your next task will be to be­gin at­tun­ing parts of your body to your qi. You will prob­a­bly feel an in­stinct to fo­cus on your skin, flesh, and mus­cles first--and you can prac­tice with those pieces, but the parts of you that need the at­tune­ment most are the ones you feel least con­nect­ed to, not the parts you are al­ready syn­chro­nized with."

"For you, as with me, it's fine to use aether from ei­ther your left or right dy--cy­cles for at­tune­ment. Ide­al­ly, you should use the same cy­cles, or only those very close to match­ing, for your en­tire body. You need to gath­er as much pu­ri­fied, at­tuned aether as you can cur­rent­ly han­dle, and not only flush any oth­er aether from a tar­get part of your body, but hold the aether over it un­til it be­comes sat­u­rat­ed. If there is any sort of re­ac­tion, stop. That may be a sign of in­jury or dis­ease, and it will in­ter­fere with the process. In the worst case, try­ing to pro­ceed while sick or in­jured may cause those mu­ta­tions I talked about. As for the quan­ti­ty of aether you can han­dle... trust your cen­ter to know what feels right."

The two of them con­sid­ered what Sobon said for a long time. While she had been talk­ing, Mian had be­gun to slow­ly vent some of his aether, and Sobon stud­ied him, not­ing that the process of vent­ing was help­ing him cir­cu­late pow­er to his hands and feet. Since he was dis­tract­ed, Sobon went and fetched Mian's sword, and re­paired the nicks and gash­es in the blade from his spar­ring with Ki'el, and re­con­sid­ered the scripts on the blade.

She con­tin­ued work­ing on it right up un­til the mo­ment she was dis­tract­ed.

----------------------------------------

Lord Mofu Gin could be con­sid­ered an ar­ro­gant man, even by his own stan­dards, al­though he wasn't the sort to dwell on such things. Late­ly, he had turned his thoughts to his cul­ti­va­tion, as he fi­nal­ly had ob­tained an­oth­er Star­beast core, and was work­ing on in­te­grat­ing it into his left hand, match­ing the one he had in­te­grat­ed into his right hand four years ago. The house of Mofu wasn't poor, but it was dis­placed; they were not in fa­vor in the Djang courts, and as such, any­thing that took more than mon­ey to pro­cure--such as Star­beast cores, or the kind of mil­i­tary ap­point­ments where they might get their own--was out of their reach. At this rate, it would take him an­oth­er decade, if not more, to have ac­cess to enough Star­beast cores to fin­ish his pro­mo­tion out of the No­ble Met­al phase of Qi, and into the Earth­ly Gem phase--putting him back with­in reach of the el­ders of the neigh­bor­ing clans.

He had spent months in seclu­sion only to come out and find that his son Suno had gone and ru­ined the en­tire clan's face by swear­ing on their house's name, then los­ing a bat­tle to some for­eign witch a full rank be­neath him. Worse, it was wit­nessed by noth­ing less than a City Lord, and even record­ed as such with­in the doc­u­ments of the Em­pire. It had tak­en more fa­vors than the Mofu clan could af­ford to have those records in­ter­cept­ed be­fore they could spread, and now Lord Mofu Gin was be­ing tasked with the un­pleas­ant task of clean­ing up af­ter his son's fail­ure.

It was a de­mean­ing task for some­one at Mithril Qi, and so he had brought sev­er­al of his clan's less­er ex­perts, each at Ti­ta­ni­um Qi. And now here they were, ap­proach­ing the so-called city's gates, and--by whose fault, he didn't care--the guards had yet to clear every­one away to let them pass in peace. It would have been a mean­ing­less de­lay, if Mofu Gin weren't al­ready wrestling with in­te­grat­ing his new core tis­sues, but as it was, the in­sult was just too much for his frayed, sleep-de­prived nerves.

He pressed on his Mithril Core, and the shod­dy gold­en palan­quin in which he was be­ing car­ried be­gan to melt around the edges, its ta­pes­tries catch­ing fire. The in­fu­ri­at­ing­ly low qual­i­ty of the fam­i­ly's hired trans­port was only briefly on his mind, be­cause one of the work­ers hired to car­ry the damned thing couldn't stand his qi and dropped the weight, mak­ing the whole thing be­gin to tip.

He didn't let it, of course. He sim­ply shat­tered the car­riage apart, stood up, and stepped down, though he pur­pose­ful­ly stepped over the man who couldn't han­dle the pres­sure from his spir­it, let­ting that pres­sure com­plete­ly crush him as he walked over.

There was a mo­ment of shock, when the peas­ants at the gate should re­al­ly have un­der­stood their role in this in­suf­fer­able stage play and bowed po­lite­ly to one side, but they in­stead stared. So he pulsed his qi again, re­veal­ing more of his anger at this sit­u­a­tion, and those who didn't faint fled from him.

If there was one thing that he hat­ed about his cul­ti­va­tion, it was that he couldn't con­tin­ue to rev­el in the short tem­per he'd had as a youth. His in­stincts warred with his mind, now, for con­trol over his qi. A teacher in his youth had called him de­mon­ic, but he had nev­er come into con­tact with any spir­it, or not to his knowl­edge. But he could ac­knowl­edge that what his buried, depth­less rage want­ed was of­ten not what the sit­u­a­tion called for, and if Mofu Gin want­ed to clear the name of his clan, he couldn't let the city lord es­cape, which meant not be­ing de­layed.

That in­stinct to stay and slaugh­ter or tor­ture peo­ple for stand­ing in his way was be­neath him, even if it felt like an old friend, a fa­mil­iar com­fort. He had a task, and he could not be side­tracked.

"With me," was all he chose to say, his qi mak­ing sure that each of his at­ten­dants heard him clear­ly. He moved for­ward with pur­pose, not quite spend­ing enough qi to tele­port for­ward, but step­ping up his mo­tions so that he pushed for­ward like a blade through the gate, and into the city streets. Screams met his ap­pear­ance, but he didn't care.

With­in min­utes, he was on the so-called Way of Di­a­mond, which seemed an in­suf­fer­able in­sult, link­ing this back­wa­ter in any way to the Em­pire's own Di­a­mond Lord. An un­pleas­ant melange of less­er peo­ples were stand­ing on the road, but his eyes were at the city man­sion, a struc­ture that only bare­ly de­served to be called such, where a num­ber of guards had been drawn up, and the City Lord him­self was just ex­it­ing the build­ing, look­ing suit­able cha­grined, or per­haps just alarmed.

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"Go," he or­dered, and the four Ti­ta­ni­um Qi guards rushed for­wards. Al­though the City Lord's guards were pa­thet­ic--no more than Sil­ver Qi apiece--each and every one of them were able to block at least one blow from his war­riors, be­fore col­laps­ing of qi ex­haus­tion, their swords drop­ping to the ground one af­ter the oth­er. One of his guards took de­light in stamp­ing out the last dregs of their life force, while the oth­er three, keep­ing to task, sur­round­ed the city lord, who had the temer­i­ty... no, the hon­or­able in­tegri­ty to re­main stand­ing, fac­ing Lord Mofu Gin with his back straight.

Mofu Gin let his foot­steps car­ry the full weight of his qi as he walked to­wards the man. It was a trick that his grand­fa­ther had taught him, and one which came nat­u­ral­ly to them; every foot­step was heavy, leav­ing cracks in the pave­ment, but each also re­leased a wave of qi that could be felt for kilo­me­ters, a wave that came with the sub­tle im­pres­sion of a foot­step and noth­ing more. Those that felt his qi wave would know that cer­tain doom had cho­sen a tar­get, but the rest would be left to their small, fevered imag­i­na­tions.

"You are Shi­da Ken," Lord Mofu said, "sup­pos­ed­ly, the City Lord of Emer­ald Val­ley."

The man bris­tled, and shiv­ered, but held him­self straight. "I am."

"You are the one who has slan­dered my son, Mofu Suno."

"My re­port was ac­cu­rate." There was doubt and ter­ror in his voice, but ir­ri­tat­ing­ly, no sub­servience. No sub­mis­sion.

Not that that would have saved him from his fate. He had to re­strain him­self from putting the full weight of his qi into his voice, know­ing that the man's gold­en qi would shred if he did. "You will take me to the for­eign woman who shat­tered my son's core and then bru­tal­ized him."

Shi­da Ken glanced in a strange di­rec­tion, then an­oth­er, but nod­ded, and be­gan to move. Mofu Gin only paused to en­sure that there were no hid­den qi pres­ences near­by pow­er­ful enough to threat­en him, then ges­tured to his war­riors to fol­low. His thoughts drift­ed back to Suno's body­guard--a man who had pre­vi­ous­ly been com­plete­ly loy­al to the fam­i­ly, and whose re­port on the case of Suno's shat­tered dant­ian had held up re­mark­ably well un­der tor­ture. Even when the fam­i­ly el­der had brought him to the very edge of death, hold­ing him back from dy­ing by the small­est thread, he had sworn that his words were true.

It was enough to put some doubt in Mofu Gin's façade. He was ar­ro­gant, and of­ten lost con­trol, but not stu­pid. Prodi­gies ex­ist­ed, and when they were hos­tile, it was best to stamp them out be­fore they could be­come a great blaze. This stu­pid for­eign woman might not--just might not--die to one of his Ti­ta­ni­um war­riors, and if she was a real, true prodi­gy, she might even be able to stop all four of them. But Mofu Gin could tell that no one with­in a hun­dred kilo­me­ters ri­valed his Mithril qi, or even close.

He only sensed one anom­aly, and as far as he could tell, Shi­da Ken was lead­ing them straight to­wards it. An­oth­er No­ble Met­al Qi source, but low. Ti­ta­ni­um. Had the witch had a backer, who had in­ter­ced­ed on her be­half? But Ti­ta­ni­um Qi was still be­low Suno's body­guard. The man should have been able to sense such a pres­ence.

If Mofu Gin hadn't locked on to that sense of the oth­er qi user, he might have been in­sult­ed when Shi­da Ken took him to­wards one of the less­er quar­ters of the city. It in­censed him, to think that the one who had harmed his son had tru­ly been of less­er sta­tion, but when they turned the last quar­ter and found a small, pa­thet­ic walled town­house as their des­ti­na­tion, there was no more deny­ing it.

His new left hand itched to be used, but Mofu wasn't ea­ger to dam­age his new core tis­sues by let­ting his rage-con­trolled qi fil­ter through them. No, he used his good, right hand to pro­duce a tight­ly con­densed ball of qi, filled with ha­tred and the in­tent to de­stroy. Shi­da Ken and his four war­riors all stepped aside as he fin­ished the tech­nique, let­ting it rest com­fort­ably be­tween his fin­gers, then stepped forwards again, let­ting his steps echo across the en­tire Emer­ald Val­ley as he ap­proached the gate.

In­ter­est­ing bar­ri­er. He ad­mired it as he ap­proached, re­call­ing that Suno's body­guard had also praised the bar­ri­er around the inn where the witch had been. But stop­ping a brat at Gold Qi was en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent from stop­ping an ac­tu­al tech­nique of the House of Mofu, one en­forced with Mithril Qi at its peak--Mithril Qi on the verge of be­com­ing Gem Qi, chan­neled through Core Tis­sues.

[ Gold­en Sun Shot ]

Mofu Gin was in com­plete con­trol of the mar­ble as it left his fin­gers, though he let his con­trol lapse once it was a few feet from him. It was a mas­sive amount of So­lar Qi con­tained with­in a thin shell, de­signed to pierce any foe and ex­plode af­ter a cer­tain dis­tance. Since Mofu Gin could tell that the witch was not in the main build­ing of the house, he had sim­ply set the shot to go all the way into that house be­fore ex­plod­ing, shred­ding the en­tire domi­cile to pieces.

Mofu Gin was a bit of an ar­ro­gant man, but he en­joyed watch­ing qi at work, learn­ing it, and pre­dict­ing it; it was that ob­ses­sion which had got­ten him as far as he was now. So his eyes were on the mar­ble as it touched the bar­ri­er, ex­pect­ing it to con­tin­ue.

It made not even the slight­est sense to him when the Gold­en Sun Shot hit the bar­ri­er and bounced back.

He had good re­flex­es, of course. His qi ex­tend­ed back out, try­ing to re­gain con­trol of the shot, but the shock of be­ing mis­tak­en dis­ori­ent­ed him, and the im­pact of the shot against the bar­ri­er had weak­ened its shell. His qi only met up with the mar­ble in time to de­cide that he couldn't re­in­force the shell in time to reuse it, and so he shift­ed his qi to de­fense in­stead.

The Gold­en Sun Shot erupt­ed, blast­ing away the build­ings that they stood be­tween, and slight­ly burn­ing the four war­riors be­hind him. The de­fens­es of all four held, and even that rat Shi­da Ken sur­vived, but all of them were pres­sured just from surviving against the blast, their spirits beginning to fray around the edges.

It was pe­cu­liar, then, that the tar­get stood in­tact. No, pe­cu­liar was the wrong word, but Mofu Gin was be­yond the reach of words at that point. The walls and gate were far from pris­tine, but they were all in­tact, the house still pro­ject­ing an even, un­yield­ing qi sig­na­ture.

Mofu Gin, no longer con­scious of his new core tis­sues, gath­ered pow­er into both hands, grit­ting his teeth in range, and all but tele­port­ed for­wards to the gate, slam­ming both hands into it.

[ Gold­en Sun Dou­ble Palm Strike ]

In that mo­ment of con­tact with the bar­ri­er, he could sense its pu­ri­ty, and might have been im­pressed. From what he could tell, the strain of the bar­ri­er was be­ing dis­trib­uted through­out the en­tire wall, and the wall was... was some odd ma­te­r­i­al, which could take the strain. Still, the blow seemed to dam­age some­thing, and the bar­ri­er, though it didn't shat­ter, col­lapsed from with­in. That left only the gate it­self, which Mofu Gin back­hand­ed with his left hand, send­ing it spi­ral­ing into the com­pound.

With­in, a woman with grey hair tinged with red was lev­i­tat­ing a crys­tal tube above her palm, and Mofu Gin rec­og­nized the qi pat­terns around it as the woman be­ing in the process of in­scrib­ing it, though he couldn't rec­og­nize the char­ac­ters or in­tent. This woman gave off the un­mis­tak­able qi of a hard­ened war­rior, and she ges­tured with her oth­er hand, build­ing a strange qi pat­tern in midair, which rapid­ly grew in com­plex­i­ty from one sim­ple, per­fect cir­cle to at least two dozen linked pat­terns.

He moved to crush her, but stopped him­self. It was al­ready em­bar­rass­ing that a Lord like him­self was forced to deal with the bar­ri­er. In­stead, he ges­tured with his right hand, feel­ing an un­fa­mil­iar twinge in his left. "Kill her."

The four Ti­ta­ni­um War­riors, af­ter a too-long mo­ment of con­fu­sion, all leaped through the ru­ined gate and into what def­i­nite­ly should not have been a pris­tine, if ab­solute­ly hideous and beg­gar­ly court­yard. The four rushed to­wards the woman, but the pat­tern she had been build­ing un­fold­ed into more bar­ri­ers around her.

Then, she with­drew from some­where a half-dozen crys­tal rods, all of them floating around her with just a touch of qi, all of them buzzing slightly as qi gathered around each seemingly of its own accord. The sight of them shocked Mofu Gin; al­though he knew that crys­tals didn't in­di­cate the use of Gem Qi, it was un­nerv­ing to see an op­po­nent re­veal them. And these, if he didn't miss his guess, were quartz--pure and clear, like the low­est of the Transcendent Gem Qi tier, just be­low Di­a­mond it­self. He knew--knew--that she was not any form of Gem Qi user, and yet every­thing she had done de­fied sense.

All four of his war­riors at­tacked the woman's bar­ri­ers. She just stared at them with cold eyes, and then, with a flash, poured en­er­gy into those six rods. It wasn't nec­es­sar­i­ly more en­er­gy than any of the four of them should have been able to han­dle, but it was ridicu­lous­ly pure and heavy, so dense that even a mortal would have felt something watching it flicker through the air.

In less time than Mofu Gin would have tak­en to kill his own sub­or­di­nates, the six rods fired three times each, and two of his war­riors fell, their flesh melt­ing off of their bones and their charred remains scat­ter­ing across the court­yard. Fires sprungg up from the holes in the ground left where the beams had com­plete­ly passed through the war­riors, in spite of their shield­ing, and around the edges of those holes, the earth itself sagged, molten.

But that seemed to have spent her crys­tal rods, be­cause she dis­card­ed them, and Mofu Gin could hear them crack even before they hit the ground.

"Ki'el," she sim­ply said in­stead, and drew a mas­sive blade out from her space ring, one that looked out of place in her hands; not only was the blade itself too large, but the grip didn't fit her hands, and she held it as though unfamiliar with its weight. "De­lay one of them." She fo­cused, then dropped the bar­ri­ers that had been pro­tect­ing her.

From one of the prop­er­ty's sheds, a thin waif of an Il­lan girl ap­peared, a more el­e­gant blade in her hand, if one that seemed blunt, per­haps for train­ing. But Mofu Gin was drawn in­stead to the war­rior's blade, which sud­den­ly be­gan emit­ting qi from its blade, qi that felt like death--no, de­struc­tion it­self. His two re­main­ing Ti­ta­ni­um War­riors split them­selves be­tween their op­po­nents, and Mofu Gin knew that this woman was more than a match for at least one of them with this new script­ed weapon.

He didn't ex­pect the man to be tak­en out be­fore he could even in­ter­fere, but the man was in shock. It would not have been a rea­son to for­give him, but for­give­ness was no longer rel­e­vant. The woman's sword had flick­ered back and forth with ab­solute mal­ice, and when even the small­est flaw ap­peared in the man's shields, she had forced the en­tire blade through the crack, and through the man's tor­so, all in a sin­gle thrust.

"You are in­deed a mon­ster," was all Mofu Gin had to say, en­tire­ly writ­ing off his last sub­or­di­nate, who was strug­gling to bat­tle with a child with Gold Qi. "But even if you had your weapon rods, you could not hope to de­feat me."

"If I'd had more time, it would be triv­ial," the woman said, her voice not filled with con­fi­dence so much as a war­rior's de­ter­mi­na­tion--the kind that said she would win, whether the fight to come would be easy, hard, or im­pos­si­ble. "But those weapons were not de­signed for some­one like you."

Mofu Gin re­al­ized what she meant even as the large, hol­low quartz cylin­der sud­den­ly piv­ot­ed to face him. And then, for the first time in his life, Mofu Gin ex­pe­ri­enced some­thing tru­ly ter­ri­fy­ing.

The woman drew so much pow­er into that cylin­der that none re­mained. The air be­came still, de­void of qi. Nev­er in his life had Mofu Gin been in a qi desert, un­able to sense any­thing, and as far as he knew, it was im­pos­si­ble to draw that much in all at once. All life in in the world, and all stones, and all of the skies, were full of qi.

As all of that pow­er gath­ered into the hol­low of the crys­tal tube, Mofu Gin could swear that for a mo­ment, he could see through the lack of qi into an­oth­er world, a world that op­er­at­ed in dif­fer­ent ways. When all of the laws of qi were stripped, some­thing re­mained. In that mo­ment when he stood trans­fixed, though, sud­den­ly the woman and her can­non shot for­ward, the can­non mov­ing low to the ground. Mofu Gin, no stranger to pow­er, rec­og­nized idly that she was choos­ing what would be be­hind the man when she al­lowed the weapon to fire.

But he also rec­og­nized that qi of that quan­ti­ty had weight, and she had moved it pre­cise­ly, ef­fort­less­ly. This woman, this war­rior, had known ex­act­ly how heavy that pow­er would be, and she nei­ther over­shot nor un­der­shot, but moved it ex­act­ly where she want­ed it.

Even as his own qi formed into a bar­ri­er, and shift­ed into po­si­tion to try to block the strike, he could cal­cu­late that it wasn't enough, could tell af­ter hav­ing met the woman's qi bar­ri­ers that this tool of hers was tru­ly di­vine. And it came to mind--not burn­ing, not con­fus­ing, just... there, that her bar­ri­ers and beams had been name­less. She knew that this at­tack, too, the one that end­ed his life and would for­ev­er shat­ter the no­ble House of Mofu, would be name­less.

[ Di­vine Sun Shield ]

Mofu Gin died, his re­main­ing en­trails and extremities scat­tered for many kilo­me­ters around, hav­ing nev­er ex­changed names with the war­rior who had com­plete­ly out­classed him. And some­where, the most pow­er­ful be­ing in all of Djang and all of the world, smirked.