Under a rain-swept night, where moonlight gleamed like frost upon a sepulchral landscape, a youth named Li Yongyistood resolute, clutching a short sword. Blood trickled slowly from his brow, mingling with the relentless drizzle, crafting a scene both stark and stirring. Across from him, Yue Qianfeng, eyes narrowed to slits, gripped a longsword thrust into the sodden earth, his presence as unyielding as a storm-carved monolith. Li Yongyi, his gaze steady as tempered steel, met Yue's stare, the air between them taut with unspoken menace, broken only by the mournful patter of rain.
Li Yongyi's breath came measured, though his heart roiled with unease. He had come under cover of darkness to seek an antidote and a bronze cauldron, yet fate had ensnared him in a deadly tableau: the Stormweave Knights' nocturnal ambush upon Yue Qianfeng, and Yue's ferocious counterstroke. The dying knight's revelation of Yue's hidden schemes had thrust Li Yongyi into a perilous alliance. Though his blade had felled a knight, binding him to Yue as a co-conspirator, he harbored no certainty of his own safety.
Suddenly, a boisterous laugh shattered the frigid tension. Yue Qianfeng regarded the youth with admiration, as one might a young tiger poised to strike. "Bold lad! Such ferocity, such resolve, such unrelenting spirit!" he roared. "A true comrade in arms!" With a flick of his wrist, he seized Li Yongyi's sword, its blade shrouded in azure mist, its hidden runes pulsing with latent power. This was the weapon that had pierced the fabled Nightgalloper Armor of the Stormweave Knights—a feat no mere mortal should achieve.
Yue's thumb grazed the blade's edge, drawing a bead of crimson. "A peerless sword," he marveled, "rivaling even the ninety-seven ancestral blades of House Nangong." Returning it to Li Yongyi, he added, "Its slender form and delicate edge bespeak not a warrior's weapon, but a lady's last defense against dishonor. Whoever gifted you this blade cherished you above their own life."
Li Yongyi's fingers brushed the sword, softening the sharp lines of his countenance, the crimson glow of a draconic specter fading from his eyes. Yue's killing intent dissolved, and he bellowed, "Comrade, we've work to do!" Pointing to the knights' corpses, where blood still steamed in the rain, Li Guanyi exhaled heavily and nodded.
The task was grim: to erase their traces. Li Yongyi sheathed his sword and dragged a corpse, its flesh cold and heavy, stirring memories of a decade past when he fled the Stormweave Knights' pursuit, poisoned and fugitive. His strength waned, poisoned veins protesting, his wrist throbbing from the earlier strike. The rain leached his warmth, and nausea clawed at his gut.
Yue, watching closely, hoisted the bodies with ease, stacking them like grim trophies. "The first kill is always thus," he said lightly. "Let it out, and you'll feel better." Li Yongyi, jaw clenched, rasped, "No. Better this than my kin or I lying dead. I must master true martial arts."
Yue's grin widened, his approval evident. From the corpses, he retrieved vials of salve and pills, tossing them to Li Yongyi. "Bury these. Unearth them when the storm has passed." Leaning against the temple's great pillar, he drank deeply from a knight's waterskin, now filled with ale, as blood flowed like rivers into the earth, swords glinting in the bone-white moonlight.
Raising the skin, he tossed it to Li Yongyi. "I am Yue Qianfeng, once a fourth-rank general of Chen's Iron Host, stripped of title thirty days hence. And you, lad?" Li Yongyi drank, the moonlight casting skeletal shadows. "Li, apprentice to an apothecary," he replied.
Yue laughed heartily. "Such audacity! You seek the martial path to shield yourself and purge that venom within you, yes? Poison is but a matter of degree—arsenic heals in traces, kills in excess. Your toxin is lethal to you, but to me, it is nothing, for my blood runs hot and my frame is iron. Master the martial breath, and you'll subdue it, even expel it."
He beckoned Li Yongyi closer, handing him a heavy bracer from a fallen knight. "Hold it steady." A single strike triggered its mechanism, a bolt shattering the rain into mist, piercing a temple pillar to strike a hidden figure clad in black. The man's soft armor was rent, blood pooling darkly as he collapsed, stunned.
Yue's hand rested on Li Yongyi's shoulder. "Mark this: spies lurk beyond the obvious. A second wave waits in shadow, ready to strike or flee with secrets." Li Yongyi, eyeing the fallen man, asked, "Why did he not strike you?" Yue's voice was cold: "He feared me. He knew he was no match."
In the rain, a blade's keening cut the night. Yue guided Li Yongyi's hand to the hilt of the longsword, its steel singing as scales seemed to ripple across Yue's grip, exuding a draconic aura. "The art of war is the art of killing, not learned in halls of ink," he intoned, his voice a blade itself. "To master it, begin with blood. This man's sinews are broken—a fitting foe. Take the blade, comrade."
"Let me teach you the art of war!"
**(End of Chapter)**