Sword-qi, not a light cannon. That was the little trick Swordmaster Tomie had worked out for herself.
Using the rhythm of her breath, she held the ripple in balance between the motion of the exhale and the stillness of the inhale.
A single breathing cycle took only the barest sliver of time. Before the ripple could discharge from the Soul Reviver's Sword, it was already flowing back into Swordmaster Tomie's body.
Cycle after cycle, controlled with exquisite precision, kept the life force coiled around the blade instead of bleeding away.
And the bursts and compressions of that cycle, swinging between motion and stillness, gave the sword-qi wrapped around the steel the mass of an artillery shell. Its power was in no way inferior to a Soul Reviver's mouth cannon. This book debuts on Tiantian Kan Xiaoshuo, reading along with you, at ttks.tw, so very considerate, bringing you chapters without errors and chapters that never fall out of order.
Swordmaster Tomie advanced one step at a time. Bullets came down like a driving storm, and not one of them slowed her stride.
Sparks from metal striking energy bloomed around her in ring after ring of light, as though she had draped herself in a halo of stars that died the instant it was born.
Watching that absurd display of power, the men stared open-mouthed, their minds blank for a heartbeat.
"Monster..."
One soldier mumbled it in a daze, the finger on his trigger trembling.
"Energy weapons? An optical shield?!" The Superintendent-General's voice cracked out of its register.
"Is this Star Wars? Don't tell me we're the cannon fodder standing in front of a Jedi Knight, the ones who get cut down without a second thought."
The corner of the Deputy Superintendent-General's eye twitched. Watching that woman swing her lightsaber, the sheer unreality of it made him want to laugh.
A tremor ran through the soldiers on the forward line.
They watched the woman strolling through the rain of bullets, watched their own rounds shatter uselessly against that white blade-light, and a ridiculous, bottomless dread rose up in them.
"Don't stop! And don't panic! So she can deflect bullets, so what? Can she deflect a high-pressure water cannon?" The Superintendent-General dragged in a breath, snatched up the loudhailer beside him and roared into it.
At his order, the riot water cannon truck rumbled as it adjusted its angle, the thick muzzle swinging onto Swordmaster Tomie.
"Fire!"
The truck bucked. From the heavy nozzle burst a torrent as thick as a barrel, a white dragon that roared straight at the curtain of light standing in the smoke and dust.
Yet Swordmaster Tomie did not stop for the water dragon bellowing toward her.
She only turned her wrist. The glowing blade went from guard to attack, meeting the leading edge of the torrent, carving a savage arc of light upward from below.
"Slash!"
The clear shout was not loud, but it cut through the thunder of the cannon.
White light sank precisely into the water column.
There was no earth-shaking explosion. The unstoppable torrent simply split from the point of entry, as though an invisible, peerless edge had opened it down the middle.
The terrible mass and keenness carried in the sword-qi forced the flow apart, and it burst outward to both sides in a chaos of spray.
It was not over.
Riding the momentum of her own swing, Swordmaster Tomie drove her feet against the ground and shot forward like an arrow off the string, straight down the seam she had cut in the water.
She moved fast enough to leave afterimages, chasing the very light of her own stroke. In the blink of an eye she crossed dozens of meters and was on top of the water cannon truck.
The operator on board saw only a flash of white before a figure appeared before the hood like a ghost.
One-handed, the white glare along her blade surging violently as though it carried a thousand tons, Swordmaster Tomie brought the sword down on the truck's heavy frame.
A shriek, then a roar.
Metal twisted and tore with an ear-splitting scream, the hydraulics inside bursting after it. Sword-qi compressed to its absolute limit went through hardened special steel like a hot knife through butter, and the entire thick cannon barrel, along with part of the chassis, was cleaved apart by that single stroke.
The high-pressure water caged inside lost its bindings and sprayed wild from the severed housing and the ruined muzzle, lashing the surroundings like an enormous whip. The soldiers nearby scrambled away on hands and knees, souls half fled from their bodies.
The image of a water cannon truck split open by one swing burned itself into every retina on that line as if in slow motion.
The scream of tearing metal, the dull roar of bursting water, the panicked shouts of fleeing men. All of it blurred together, and all of it seemed muffled behind some invisible membrane, distant and unreal.
They looked at the wreckage, and at the swordswoman standing right in front of them, and the battlefield fell briefly silent.
Every gun had stopped. Not only because Swordmaster Tomie had already cut her way into the line itself, friend and foe tangled together, but because that one stroke had carried enough spiritual pressure to crush the will of any ordinary man.
The soldiers stood with their mouths open and their eyes round, staring at the figure amid the twisted steel and the drifting mist. Cold sweat slid down their spines. Something crawled up from the tailbone to the crown of the skull, prickling their scalps, leaving their palms slick on their weapons.
Was that thing really human? A glowing short sword, splitting a riot vehicle reinforced with special steel like it was a paper carton? Was that something flesh and blood could do?
Confusion and terror spread through every man who had seen it, quick as plague.
Just as the Deputy Superintendent-General had, they all arrived at the same thought, the same image.
The Star Wars films. A Jedi Knight swinging a lightsaber looked exactly like this.
Were they playing the extras, then? The nameless bodies who charged a Jedi Knight wave after wave and got cut down for it?
"What's wrong?" Swordmaster Tomie's gaze swept the frozen line, over all those faces stiff with fright. Her own face showed nothing at all as she spoke, cold and flat.
"Why did you stop attacking?"
There was no triumph in her tone, no taunt, barely any feeling at all, as if she were asking about the most ordinary thing in the world.
But that calm question shamed them more than any accusation could have.
"Is it because... I let you see me being slightly serious by accident, so now... you don't dare?"
She took a step forward, and the standing water splashed under her boot.
That single step sent a visible ripple of panic through the whole line, like a hedgehog jabbed awake. Men who feared her strength gave ground without thinking.
Morale had collapsed, and the cohesion with it. Anyone could see it.
The Superintendent-General, watching from the rear, saw it most clearly of all.
At the sound of her voice his face went from pale to ashen, the color of humiliation and fury together.
"Don't let her bluff frighten you! Yes, she's strong! But don't forget, we have numbers! We have weapons we haven't even used yet! Helicopters! Snipers! Heavy fire teams! Reform the formation! She's one person!" He grabbed the loudhailer, his voice carrying out through the amplifier with a dignity he was straining to hold together.
It was, however, laughable.
Especially here, especially now, when every word of it reeked of a guilt and hollowness he could not hide.
More than a hundred elite tactical officers, every kind of advanced riot equipment, a force that stood for the state's own power to enforce its laws, and it had come to their commander screaming himself hoarse about their advantages to lift a morale broken by one woman. The irony was exquisite.
Even Mara Tomie, inside the building, let out a soft laugh.
"What a farce."
She sat facing the front entrance, propping her chin on one slender arm, lounging like a patron in a theater box, her red lips curved in derision.
And it was not only Mara Tomie. Many of the men on the line, tense as they were, heard the emptiness under their commander's words plainly enough.
Behind that supposed rallying cry lay cowardice and a naked panic at a situation slipping out of his hands. What courage could a shout like that possibly restore to men already frozen through?
Swordmaster Tomie listened in silence. She lifted the short sword and let its point drift toward the ground, the white glow throwing unsteady patches of light and shadow across the wet asphalt.
"Is that so?" she asked in return.
"If the advantage is yours, if you still have stronger weapons..."
Her eyes went to the helicopters circling overhead, to the distant perches that gave off that dangerous prickle, and finally back to the Superintendent-General.
"Then why haven't you attacked?"
She tilted her head slightly, black hair sliding off her shoulder.
"Is it composure? Are you waiting for the perfect moment? Or are you ashamed, because you have the numbers and the fine equipment and you're aiming all of it at a single opponent? Or maybe... maybe you already understand something."
Swordmaster Tomie stepped forward, water splashing at her feet, the white glare of the short sword flaring hot for an instant as if the blade itself were breathing.
"Even if you fire every bullet in this place, even if you throw every shell you have at me, you still aren't my match. So you hesitated. You got scared. You don't know whether it's me who dies if this continues, or you."
Her voice sawed at them like a dull knife, because she had said exactly what was already in their heads.
We're human. How could a human ever beat a monster?
If we keep fighting, we die. Don't we?
Every soldier there had reached the same conclusion.
And now that she had said it aloud for them, guilt and shame came flooding after.
"Do you want to run? That's fine. I don't intend to hunt cowards. Anyone who runs hasn't earned the right to die on my blade," Swordmaster Tomie said, tilting her head, her tone perfectly level.
As the words left her, she clicked her tongue.
Killing every last one of them in a single sweep would have been cleaner. That was what she would rather do.
But there was one person who would dislike that kind of ruthlessness.
So she would leave a way out. A narrow one.
Those who fled could go on living. Those who stayed had chosen death themselves, and could hardly blame her for showing no mercy.
The disorder on the line reached its peak.
Men traded glances and found nothing in their comrades' eyes but the same fear, the same wavering.
Losing the job beat losing the life.
Did the brass seriously expect them to charge an enemy they could not beat? Ridiculous. A country that ordered them to die might as well collapse.
Someone gave a step of ground without meaning to. Then someone else gave a second. Hands drifted toward tactical pouches at the waist, where the smoke grenades were, not for an assault, but to cover a retreat.
"No! This can't go on!"
The Superintendent-General saw the danger at once.
Let her grind their morale any further and they would lose without a fight, or simply scatter at the sight of her.
Rank-and-file officers could run. If he abandoned those hostages and ran, his political life was finished.
"Rocket launchers! Anti-armor team! Now!" The Superintendent-General snatched up his radio and barked the order down to them.
His low voice carried urgency and a fraying temper. Hearing it, the two soldiers shouldering AT4 launchers exchanged a look, then leaned out from behind cover, sighted, and squeezed.
Two hisses tore the air.
Two rockets streaked out trailing white-hot exhaust, one from the left and one from the right, converging on Swordmaster Tomie where she stood before the ruined water cannon truck.
Watching them scream toward her, Swordmaster Tomie smiled with genuine pleasure.
"Now that's more like it."
The instant the words fell, she moved.
Not away. Straight into them.
Crimson Lotus Breathing Method, Limit Burst. The vast life force in her body surged under the pull of her breathing rhythm and poured explosive strength into every muscle. In that instant her speed rose past what the eye could follow, leaving only a smear of afterimage.
Godspeed Draw.
The arc of the blade came and went too fast to be more than a blur of residual light. Less than three meters from her flank, the first rocket was opened cleanly down the middle.
The blast rolled out.
The rocket detonated early, blooming into a ball of fire in midair, fragments and shockwave spreading outward. Swordmaster Tomie was already flitting along the edge of the flames like a phantom, the white sword-qi flicking out to touch the side of the second rocket.
Not a cut. A deft nudge, a guiding tap.
A crisp ring of impact, and the second rocket's flight path bent nearly ninety degrees under the force transmitted through her sword tip, tumbling off crookedly into another armored vehicle being used as cover.
"No!"
The soldiers beside that vehicle threw themselves flat in terror. It made no difference.
The explosion was deafening. The rocket struck the armored car head-on, and the body twisted and split apart in the firelight, burning wreckage and shrapnel flung in every direction.
And the one who had arranged all of it was already gone, using the chaos and the glare as cover, her body a bolt of lightning as she drove into the infantry line ahead.
One long blade, one short. In that moment they became the scythes of death.
Every swing brought the same sounds with it. Steel plate parting. Weapons snapping. Bodies dropping with a heavy, wet thud.
No screams, because the blade was too fast, and the suggestion of the Consciousness Slash arrived with it. Many soldiers had their minds invaded by the intent to kill before the steel ever reached them, went blank in an instant, and collapsed unconscious.
The real cut followed after. Clean and decisive.
She was a tiger loose in a sheep pen. Everywhere she passed, men went down in heaps. Automatic fire looked clumsy and slow in front of her; more often than not, the arm holding the rifle was severed at the shoulder before the muzzle ever came around. Those who tried to close and grapple never even brushed the hem of her clothes before the sheer force of the blade hurled them away with tendons torn and bones broken.
Because she had already buried herself in the crowd, tangled up with their own men, the helicopters overhead were paralyzed. They did not dare fire and risk hitting their own. The distant snipers had lost every angle and could only watch. And the Superintendent-General could do nothing but clutch his radio while that white figure raised a storm of blood in the middle of his men.
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