Chapter 4: The Caravan of Broken Blades
Three days later, Lin Qiu learned that power attracts wolves faster than blood.
He had been following the merchant road north, keeping to the tree line, eating wild spirit pears and drinking from streams that tasted faintly of lightning. The Thunder Monarch's Heart refined everything he consumed into pure qi; he hadn't slept in seventy hours and felt sharper with every mile.
That afternoon the wind brought the smell of smoke and iron.
Lin Qiu crested a ridge and saw the caravan.
Six overturned wagons formed a broken circle in the valley below. Silk bolts burned like bright banners. Dead oxen lay with their throats opened to the sky. Twenty guards in gray livery (the sigil of the Three Rivers Merchant Union) were fighting for their lives against twice their number in black.
Bandits? No. Their movements were too clean, their qi too thick. Mid-to-late Body Tempering, every one of them. One man in particular stood out: tall, bare-chested despite the cold, wielding a nine-ringed saber that sang with every swing. Seventh layer. Maybe eighth.
A massacre wearing the mask of robbery.
In the center of the circle, a single covered palanquin lay on its side. Crimson silk curtains fluttered, soaked dark. Whoever was inside had already bled a lot.
Lin Qiu's first instinct was to keep walking. Twenty-six days. He had no time for other people's tragedies.
Then he heard the girl.
A thin, furious voice from inside the palanquin.
"Get your filthy hands off me or I swear on my ancestors I'll—"
The big man with the saber laughed and ripped the curtain aside.
The girl couldn't have been older than fourteen. Fine brocade robes now torn and muddy, hair ornaments scattered like broken stars. A delicate face twisted with contempt even while blood ran from a cut on her brow. She held a short sword in both shaking hands, but the blade trembled too much to threaten anyone.
The saber man licked his lips.
"Little miss of the Su family, was it? Your father paid for twenty guards. Seems he should've paid for thirty."
He raised the saber.
Lin Qiu was moving before he decided to.
He stepped out of the trees and onto the road as if he belonged there.
"Hey," he called, voice calm. "Leave her."
Every head turned.
For a heartbeat the battlefield froze, bandits and guards alike staring at the barefoot boy in a patched cloak, violet eyes glowing like lanterns in dusk.
The saber man blinked, then threw his head back and laughed.
"Another stray dog looking to die? Boy, I'm busy."
He brought the saber down.
Lin Qiu lifted one finger.
A needle-thin thread of violet lightning leapt from his fingertip, crossed thirty paces in the blink of an eye, and punched through the saber an inch above the man's knuckles.
The blade exploded into molten fragments. The shockwave hurled the bandit leader backward; he hit a wagon wheel hard enough to crack it.
Silence.
Then chaos.
The remaining bandits roared and charged. The surviving guards, seeing a miracle, found new strength and counterattacked.
Lin Qiu walked forward.
The first bandit to reach him swung a wolf-fang club. Lin Qiu didn't slow. The club met an invisible wall of thunder qi and shattered. The bandit flew ten meters and did not get up.
Two more came from the sides. Lin Qiu flicked his sleeves. Twin bolts forked out, struck them in the chest, and left them convulsing on the ground, hair smoking.
In ten breaths the fight was over. The last bandits fled screaming into the forest, leaving their leader groaning amid the wreckage of his weapon.
Lin Qiu stopped in front of the palanquin.
The girl stared at him with wide dark eyes. Up close he saw the family resemblance to someone famous jade-carving features of the Su Clan in Qingyun City. Also, the sword in her hands was now pointed, shakily, at his throat.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"Someone passing by."
"You're… twelve?"
"Almost thirteen."
She lowered the sword a fraction. "I'm Su Ling. My father is Su Tianhao of the Three Rivers Union. You saved my life."
Lin Qiu shrugged. "I dislike bullies."
Behind her, an old woman groaned—the chaperone, arm broken, face pale. Several guards were wounded badly.
Su Ling bit her lip. "We were carrying the yearly tribute to Qingyun City for the sect recruitment. Spirit stones, pills, three high-grade artifacts… all gone now. My father will lose everything. And I'll never reach the examination in time."
Lin Qiu felt the violet star pulse, curious.
"How many days by wagon?"
"Twelve, if we push the oxen and the weather holds."
He had twenty-three days left. Plenty.
He looked at the dead animals, the broken wheels, the bodies.
"I can get you there in eight," he said.
Su Ling stared. "How?"
Lin Qiu smiled for the first time since leaving the mountain. Tiny sparks danced across his teeth.
"Ever ridden a thundercloud?"
An hour later the survivors watched in stunned silence as Lin Qiu stood in the center of the road, palms pressed together.
The Thunder Monarch's Heart spun faster and faster until the air itself began to hum. Dark clouds boiled overhead, unseasonal and angry. Violet lightning crawled across the sky like living calligraphy.
He spoke a single word that tasted like the birth of storms.
"Rise."
The entire caravan (wagons, people, even the spilled crates of spirit tea) lifted gently off the ground, wrapped in a cradle of coiling thunder. The wounded guards floated as comfortably as if on feather beds. Su Ling clung to the palanquin pole, hair whipping in the sudden wind, eyes shining with disbelief and something dangerously close to awe.
Lin Qiu rose last, cloak snapping, eyes blazing violet lanterns.
"Hold tight," he said.
The thundercloud shot north at the speed of a startled dragon, leaving only an arc of ionized air and the smell of petrichor in its wake.
Far behind, the bandit leader finally managed to sit up. He stared at the empty sky where a boy had stolen the heavens themselves.
He began to laugh, high and broken.
"Thunder Monarch… it's really him…"
Then he coughed blood and passed out, dreaming of the day the world would burn violet.
Eight days to Qingyun City.
And the storm had chosen its rider.
To be continued…